Mesopotamia - The Redeemer (45 page)

He waved the tablet in both hands
and turned in all directions as he held it. “This clay tablet, the
Redeemer's Tablet, the ancient tablet of Uruk, immortalizes the
historic connection between us all. It is with great apprehension
and trembling that I accept the role of redeemer: I shall redeem
anyone who desires freedom from the shackles of loneliness and
alienation; I shall redeem he who longs to belong, like a son
returning to his fathers.”

He paused as his words sunk in to
the audience and then called out loudly, “Long live the brotherhood
of man!”

“Long live the brotherhood of man!”
their voices echoed back in response.

###

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Yehuda Israely is a Clinical
Psychologist and Psychoanalyst, Practicing and teaching in Israel.
Previous non-fiction book: "The Philosophy and Psychoanalysis of
Jacques Lacan" was published in Hebrew by IDF publishing, following
a radio program. His third book "Craft of the treatment – a
Lacanian Orientation" will come out in September 2012. Dor Raveh
who is Yehuda Israely's step son, is Intelligence and Risk
Management Director at a private international security firm.

Connect with Yehuda Israely and Dor
Raveh

mailto:[email protected]

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Mesopotamia - the Healer, the Slave
and the Prince

The healer and his apprentice slave
live in an old and sweet Shechrezada-like legend. Their lives hang
by a thread as they struggle to exorcise a demon out of the
possessed Sumerian prince's body. How can the two shamans of 3000
BC, influence the fate of the prince, the deamon, and
themselves

Sample chapters
from:

Translated from Hebrew by Sodhamilim

Copyright 2012 Yehuda Israely and Dor
Raveh

Smashwords Edition

Link to author page at Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/yehudaisraely

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of this author.

T
onight,
the lots shall be cast: freedom, slavery or death.

After the final verses of the
harvest song had been sounded, Rukha straightened his back and
stretched his bones, which made popping noises in response. Behind
him trailed a wake of barley stalks, swollen by the water of the
Euphrates. He was proud of himself. After years of dependence on
the surreptitious crutch of his muscular friend, in recent months,
Rukha had at last succeeded in meeting his harvest quota by
himself.

The taskmaster started to hum the
harvest song again from the beginning. Rukha shifted all the
pent-up tension from his soul to the arm grasping the sickle and
continued on with his labor.

It was likely that today, of all
days, Rukha's friend would require his help for the first time to
meet his harvest quota. Normally, his friend could harvest a full
donkey's load more than he could, but not today. Three years his
senior, he was nearly a head taller, with broad shoulders and a
muscular chest. These features inflated his price as a slave. In
contrast, the gaunt Rukha bowed under the weight of his large head.
His ability to survive as a slave was astonishing in light of his
frailty.

The harvest labor was backbreaking,
though it was an honorable pursuit considering that waged workers
were also employed in the task. The waged workers were paid silver
and copper according to the weight of the barley they harvested.
The slaves only received an allowance of barley and liquor, but
they were also allowed the sheep's wool that had been caught in the
thorns and thistles. Rukha was grateful to the patron God of his
fathers. The majority of prisoners of war were tortured to death in
order to sow fear into the hearts of enemies and to force them into
submission without resistance. Unlike his older friend, who was
born free and later captured as a slave, Rukha, who was born into
slavery, was content with his lot in life. In comparison to the
victims of war, or to those slaves who became injured, he felt as
if fate had smiled upon him. He did not dare compare himself to the
free men.

Rukha's father had been captured in
the Land of Cedars, and was repeatedly sold until he was brought
down the Euphrates where he was purchased for a bargain by a
Sumerian landowner. Rukha's mother was captured in the east and
sold as a spoil of war by a Sumerian officer. Rukha was born in the
captivity of the master of his parents.

A slave who failed to meet his
harvest quota was lashed. Sometimes the whip spurred on his efforts
and served as the impetus to meet his quota, but at other times,
when a slave had already been pushed beyond his physical limits,
the whip only served to further exhaust him to the point of death.
Rukha had been whipped many times, and had found himself on the
brink of death more than once. Rukha's soul was bound together with
his friend's soul: without his help, Rukha would have been whipped
to death. Ever since the grueling labor had claimed the lives of
Rukha's parents, his friend had been like family to him.

The golden ears of barley filled
the spaces between the fruit trees until they met carpets of white
narcissus flowers and rows of cypress trees that marked the border
of the plot of land. Beyond the cypresses lay the lands of other
masters, and beyond that, on the western horizon, the sun had
already begun to cloak himself in crimson robes in preparation for
his descent into the netherworld.

The moment the sun God kissed the
horizon, the men, waged laborers and slaves alike halted their
labor. They knew that they must abandon the field before the gates
of the netherworld opened to receive him. The demons of the
netherworlds took advantage of the setting sun to furtively eat the
barley left in the fields. Those who remained in the fields during
these twilight hours, before the moon God rose to protect the
people, were in danger of madness and possession by demons and
strange spirits. When the sun passed the horizon into the
netherworlds, Rukha finally found respite from his daily toil. Thus
was established the balance between the Gods and the humans. When
the sun God rested in the sky, Rukha and his fellow slaves worked
the fields, and when Shamash engaged in his nocturnal work in the
netherworlds, Rukha rested.

Despite the danger, these were the
hours that his friend utilized to plan his escape to freedom. He
understood that he had been tempting the demons of the night but
had found no other recourse. Only during those hours could he work
in the light without being caught. While his friend soaked reeds to
be used for thatching, or conducted experiments with canes to be
used for breathing, Rukha sat in their hut reciting protective
verses that would conceal his friend from the eyes of both demons
and taskmasters alike.

T
he
taskmaster was fond of Rukha and seized the opportunity to exchange
a few words with him. “You have been working better lately,” he
complimented him.

Rukha appreciated the taskmaster's
good intentions. His relationship with his taskmasters and master
were his only hope for improving his situation. He had forbidden
himself from allowing dreams of freedom to occupy his thoughts.
Instead, he focused his hope on the sole ambition of being sold
into lighter labor. He tried to be content with the lot that he had
been dealt which had been decreed and written on the tablet of
destiny by the God Enlil. If he were a free man, he would free his
thoughts and invent ways to improve the efficiency of the field
labor to double its value. But Rukha knew his place and did not
allow himself to be drawn into temptation. Some of his wise advice
had been accepted in the past but they could just as well anger his
masters.

“Yes, Master.” Rukha responded with
a bow while thinking to himself that as long as the taskmaster's
attention is focused on him, he won't notice his friend Timin's
evasive glances.

“The master understands your value.
Even though you are skinny, you have been endowed with wisdom. He
has set your price at four donkey loads of seed barley and field
water rations for the months of Tashritu and Arahsamnu. This comes
to the sum of at least two hundred zuzim.”

“Thank you, Taskmaster,” replied
Rukha.

The respectable free men habitually
came and observed the slaves who were displayed to be sold as they
worked. The master tried not to separate spouses or children from
their parents, yet the fourteen year old Rukha was an orphan and
was deemed mature enough to be sold. If Enlil leaned in his favor,
he would be sold to a craftsman as an apprentice, and then he could
acquire for himself the profession of a freeman. Yet it was also
possible that he could be sold to yet another master who would be
even harder on him. It was likely that he would not be permitted to
take a maidservant as a wife. Slaves were not permitted to raise
such matters with the revered elders at the city's gates.

Before his parents died, Rukha
feared that he would be sold and forcibly separated from them.
Three years had passed since his mother had left this world and two
years had gone by since his father had followed in her footsteps.
'If I am sold,' he thought to himself, 'I won't miss my mother any
more that I already do. I won't miss the embrace of her hands, dry
from quarrying clay for the potters, smiths and scribes. I won't
miss the grits with onions, garlic and spinach that she cooked for
me in the cauldron set atop coals.'

His father used to sit with him on
the banks of the irrigation channels and tell him stories about
kernels of wheat as fat as olives and as sweet as crab apples, and
about the snowy mountains of the northwest. When he thought that no
one was watching, he would lay a lump of mud in his palm and Rukha
would knead it until it was sufficiently dry. Then he would
secretly teach him the great wonder of the Ugaritic language --
script of sounds. He meticulously drew the symbols: a bull's head
for aleph, a hut dwelling for bet, and so on. Rukha invented new
symbols for the sounds: symbols made of lines and wedges like the
script of his Sumerian masters, pressed into the clay with a reed
stylus. He felt a recurring thrill as he recalled the trust his
father felt in him when they shared this dangerous and illegal
activity.

“Shamash is particularly red
today,” Rukha remarked in hopes of diverting the taskmaster's
attention from Timin, who was running to their hut.

“Shamash is especially glorious
this evening. This is a sign that the Netherworlds are bustling
with activity. It's best if we don't stick our noses out too much
tonight, Rukha.”

“What activity, my master?”
inquired Rukha, feigning ignorance.

“The Gods of the netherworlds are
conducting a ceremony tonight and require human blood to flavor
their wine,” the taskmaster replied smugly. He had fallen into
Rukha's trap of flattery and was eager to show off his
knowledge.

“If that's the case, my master,
then we must make haste.”

With affected urgency, Rukha opened
and then retied his daily ration, a modest sack of barley and a jug
of liquor. Only after the taskmaster rushed out of the plot of land
did Rukha follow Timin into their mud hut.

Since the time when Utnapishtim,
son of Lamech son of Methuselah, returned and rebuilt the kingdom
of Uruk after the Great Flood which had washed away everything one
hundred and seventy four years before then, and certainly since the
ascent of Meskiagasher, King of Uruk, almighty on his throne,
twenty years ago, not even one order had been written endorsing the
freeing of a slave. Stories about fugitive slaves almost always
ended in death by torture by the hands of soldiers, who conducted
slave hunts during periods of peace. Rukha's attempts at dissuading
Timin from escaping were futile. When he understood that he could
not stop him, Rukha offered to help, but Timin refused.