The King’s Daughter by Tala Bar	Table of Contents Synopsis Chapter 2 appeared in issue 169.
Chapter Three: Ahino’am Part 1 of 3

I

I talk about the temple in the past tense because it does not exist any more. Its destruction is connected with the life story of my mother, who had arrived there from the town of Yizre’el in the north as a little girl, in order to train as a Love priestess. Like Sha’ul, Ahino’am came from a family of mixed blood of Israelites and Canaanites; her mother had been a daughter of a long line of priestesses and, like her daughter, saw great honor in the child being accepted as a temple trainee at such a tender age.

I heard that story many years later from my mother. She was about ten or eleven years old when she met Sha’ul for the first time, one year since she had received her first period. After years of training for the act of love, the priestesses had at last announced her ripe in body and soul for her first independent mission. I wondered about the love act between two children, but Ahino’am was hurt by my question.

“I was born to the Profession,” she said softly, “since the age of three I had been training for love; since the age of seven I had taken an incomplete part in Naaman’s wedding festival. You, who had grown up at the King’s court and not in Ashtoret’s temple, cannot, perhaps, understand this.”

* * *

I can recall the way I looked at her; we were both old by then — she with years and events, I from pain and bereavement. I gazed at her, trying to see her image as a young woman. She had never been a beauty, I knew. Small of stature — shorter than I by a head or so — she had dark complexion, hair and eyes, thin body and thighs with a flat chest. Is that the image of a Love goddess?

Two things were prominent in her thin face: her full red mouth, ready for kisses; and her eyes — how hard it is to describe Ahino’am’s eyes! Though they were dark, their color was uncertain, always changing. They seemed misty, full of secrecy and mystery; there was magic in them which men could not stand against if she had so decided.

I heard about Ahino’am’s talent in lovemaking from the priestesses at the Circle of Arawna the Yevusite. She had a special sensitivity, which allowed her to know the needs of her mates without their having to tell her what these were. If she had had any needs of her own, I never heard what they were. I just know she was able to fulfill them without forcing herself on others.

* * *

Ahino’am did not conceive when she received Sha’ul at that first meeting. She had the special skill priestesses have to conceive at their will, and she did not feel ready for that at the time; she felt the need to be free to express herself in her profession, in which she had just began working independently.

Sha’ul returned to the Giv’a more mature in his understanding of women, better able to exploit, as boys do, the availability of maidservants in the house and field who did not withhold themselves from him. These readily availed themselves of the tall, dark-curled, handsome boy who was the son of the master of the house. A short time after his visit to the Temple he married his betrothed Re’uma, who, although of the same age he was, was ready for her first pregnancy. Very soon after that he held his first court of justice in public, then led his men to his first battle. I have an idea that the hand of Ahino’am was invisibly effective in those events, even before she became his partner at the royal wedding.

* * *

Once the need for a king, which would replace the old structure of occasional leading judges, had taken hold over the people — as observed in neighboring nations — it was clear to Ashtoret’s worshipers that the crowning could only be effective if the new king ceremoniously married Ashtoret’s Love priestess, the representative of the Goddess as a Spring Bride. That idea might have been the actual reason for the worshipers of Yhwh’s objecting to the basic concept of kingship. Especially, when they found that the coronation, by force, led up to the sacrifice of the king himself.

“There is no king without a queen, there is no king without a sacrifice,” was the conventional saying, and Yhwh’s believers, no less than anyone else, understood its meaning.

Still, leading decision-makers like Kish, Maakha and clan chiefs from Giv’on and the neighboring villages were too full of their new scheme to pay too much attention to its result. Missions were sent to Ashtoret’s centers of the neighborhood — the Love Temple at Naama and the oracle place at the Temple of the Three Asses, inquiring about the procedure of crowning a new king.

* * *

Ahino’am was presented by the chief preistess at Naama as the leading Love priestess most suitable for the task of Spring Bride to wed the crowned Sacred King; she was then at the peak of her power, one of the most requested priestesses of love. For a few years running she had been acting as the Spring Queen at the annual ceremonial wedding between the Goddess and the chosen representive of Naaman, which had been held by the priestesses at the Temple with no connection to the regime of the land.

In that ceremony — a mystery enacted only for the eyes of the Temple’s inhabitants and a few specially invited guests — the part of Naaman was taken sometimes by an image of the god, sometimes by a man who had volunteered to identify with the destiny of the god.

The sacred Spring Wedding was one part of the three stages in the life of the god: in autumn, with the rebirth of vegetation after the long, dry summer, his believers celebrated his birth; at his wedding in springtime he was crowned King of the Year; and at the peak of summer and the death of all vegetation he was sacrificed in order to be born again in autumn and the first rains.

When the god was represented by a statue, it was burned on the altar on top of the mountain above the Temple; when his image was enacted by a man, he had to be a voluntary victim dying in the name of his Goddess. Any man who had chosen this fate for himself knew that by this act his spirit gained eternal youthful existence in the Underworld, while his soul would be reborn in the body of some baby in autumn.

* * *

That much I had heard from my grandmother Maakha: “Once,” she used to tell me, “it was women who had determined the lives of men, as symbolized by the ritual of Ashtoret and Naaman. Women,” she said, “had a mother’s power and authority over any man alive, as long as he was ignorant of his necessary part in conception. That was the time of the Garden of Eden. Unfortunately, since men discovered women’s dependency on them for bearing children, women have lost that power.”

I am pondering over this situation, thinking how women are no longer the sacred, untouchable beings they used to be; any woman or girl a man fancies, he can take, even by force, if she does not ‘belong’ to some other man — father, brother, uncle or husband. Although there is still no king without a queen, and Shelomo must have many queens to strengthen his kingship, there is certainly no queen without a king, as there used to be many generations ago.

Sha’ul had a character which made him quite suitable to be a ruling queen’s mate, with his passive nature, bursting bravery and uncompromising sense of justice; but his ignorance of the ways of the world, combining with his indecisiveness, prevented him from fulfilling his roll as an independent ruler.

* * *

When the decision to make Sha’ul king was made, he had proven himself a true representative of Naaman-Rimmon. Still relatively young and full of vigor, he had proved his fertility by Re’uma’s four children, and countless others born by women and girls who occasionally shared his bed. But his dark hair and eyes, depressive moods and fame as a judge made him a fitting consort for the Queen of the Underworld, the goddess of Justice after Death. That was how the Sybils at the Oracle temple of the Three Asses saw him; more than anything else, they wanted him as a sacrificial victim who would descend to his natural home and rightful place in the Underworld. Of all the house of Kish, the one who absolutely disliked the idea of Sha’ul as king, the one whom nobody asked, was his wife Re’uma, mother of his wedlock children.

“But Sha’ul, my darling,” I imagine her say, talking in a complaining voice which was becoming stronger as the idea of his kingship was unfolding, “what do you need it for?”

Her hand playing with his black curls, her mouth hovering over his face, his body, trying to stir his desire which was the source of her power over him. The practicality of her nature was stronger than her wisdom, and she was completely unable to fathom the dark depths of her husband’s mysterious personality.

* * *

Re’uma’s strong character was as simple as it was straightforward. She was not what is usually called a ‘great woman’; a good manager, she had no interest in leadership nor any skill for it; all her cleverness and energy was invested in her house, her farm, her children, of which she was immensely proud. But mainly, she loved Sha’ul as a woman would love her own man, with all his faults; I think she was possessive of him in much the same way she was possessive of everything else she owned.

Perhaps it would have been good for her to have served for a little while at Ashtoret’s temple, to learn to give some of herself to others; maybe her hold over Sha’ul, then, would have been stronger. But Re’uma worshipped Yhwh, although she was never a fanatic, never expressed an open opposition to Ashtoret. The Goddess’s ritual simply did not touch her heart, for she did not understand its meaning. Thus, when Sha’ul — pushed by his grandmother and the Goddess’s faithful to an unknown fate, while even his father took their part for the sake of the alliance which would unite the people — turned to his wife to ask her advice as he always used to do, all she did was reject his question.

“No,” she replied simply, “I cannot advise you on this. If you are unable to see for yourself what is going on here, you are the one who will have to bear the consequences.”

In the end, of course, we all bore the consequences — and Re’uma was the first to suffer.

* * *

Sha’ul, lost of counsel, went on his own to roam in the fields, as was his wont; it was a hot summer’s midday, the sun burning high in the sky with no clouds veiling its harsh rays. He sat under a huge terabinth tree, then stretched on the ground and closed his eyes; the heat of the sun stirred his body while he saw himself lying on an altar. The Goddess was standing over him, magnificent and awful, holding his heart in her hand, its blood dripping on his face and into his own mouth; but instead of disgusting him, it revived his soul.

Night fell, dark, with half a moon in the sky. For a long time Sha’ul lay motionless, staring at the silver profile of the Goddess sailing in the black sea; one black eye burned in the pale face, a red flame in its center. At last, she declined in the west, trailing after her a shawl of mist veiling the world. Then, inside the mist, there was an entity beside him, a warm young body joining his own. He closed his eyes and surrendered to her caresses, his arms encircling her unknowingly, he knew her as if he had never known a woman before.

He wakened at dawn, shivering with cold, alone in the field under the large terebinth tree. Drops of dew lay on his forehead, a feeling of freshness and peace in his heart as he had not felt for a very long time; all his doubts were gone, peace came to stay in his heart.

II

The day of Sha’ul’s wedding with the Queen of Spring was saturated for him in complete confusion. A mental fog filled his mind and he hardly knew what was going on around him. Women came to wash him, soaked his skin in perfumed oils, dressed him in a white robe and a red cloak, put new sandals on his feet and gold ornaments on his neck and arms. He was completely unused to being thus adorned, always dressed simply with no love for jewellery; now he felt like a dressed-up doll.

He was led at the head of a procession, with the musicians playing around him and his children running among the dancers. Two high thrones were put on a dais, the Queen of Spring already sitting on one of them. He saw her shape vaguely under her multilayered garment — a small figure, dark face peeping out of a red head-dress, her head crowned with a garland of flowers. As he was pushed up the few steps to the throne, Sha’ul was still supported by the women; some young men of his family stood behind his chair. As he sat down, the Queen stood up, took a golden crown from the hands of one of the women behind her own chair and put it on Sha’ul’s head. The people cheered. He looked at her as she sat down again. Her face looked both strange and familiar. The people celebrated, ate and drank all day while their new king was sitting in a haze.

Towards evening, as the sun was sinking, the Queen stood up again and gave her hand to Sha’ul. The people cheered. He went with her, paid no attention to the couples following them, rocking on their feet full of drink in the embrace of love, the rest of the town’s crowd after them.

The Queen led Sha’ul to the field, took off her cloak and spread it on the farrow and sat on it, pulling him down to her; all round them the other couples were doing the same, falling on the earth to fertilize it with their love. Sha’ul closed his eyes and then, suddenly, he knew her; she was the shadow who had come to him in the field, when doubts were eating at his heart. Again, he let her stir his body, all his senses awakening to her love; he desired her as he had never desired a woman in his life, loved her as he had never loved another.

Proceed to part 2...

Copyright © 2005 by Tala Bar