The Philistine Warrior

Peoples of the Sea

Singer, sing again the ancient
Nomiad
: the song of

Nomion, our King,

When Philistines in plenty dwelled and Dagon smiled

On us in peace.

His grain was ripe in Karia; Astarte, too, the

Fish-tailed Queen,

Neptune
’s Realm once blessed: the wine-dark sea,

Aegean Sea
, by
Anatolia
’s shore;

Karia: our home now lost; Philistine no more.

--the
Nomiad
, Stanza I

Patrolling in the hill-lands had kept me away from Askelon for several summers past, and I’d almost forgotten how hot the nights can be down on the coastal plain of Canaan. I awoke before dawn that day, having hardly slept at all; my bed was damp from sweat. I stood by my window, but the sultry air outside was no better than my sheets. Colored fingers of light just then touched the scattered clouds drifting over Askelon; soon the sun would bake our clay-brick walls and another blistering day would begin.

Leaning on the window sill, I let my eyes close and my head nod; perhaps, I thought, there’ll be time for a swim before my beach gets scorched by the morning sun.

Standing there in that miserable half-sleep, I came to life at the sound of wind and surf. I looked to the west where the
Mediterranean

lay, deep-green and brooding under a cloudy, still nighttime sky. A wave built up along Askelon’s waterfront, cresting near her docks to my left; fresh air tightened my skin. Bigger waves then flew up the beach, lapping at the sand dunes near my home; life might be worth living after all, in this cool and briny air, close by the seashore we love.

I wandered out onto the beach until I felt spray in my face. Westwards in the ocean, I could just make out the mist-shrouded rocks which break the water before our coast. There, they say—though I’ve never seen Her—there, Goddess Astarte sometimes sits in the moonlight, combing Her seaweed-entangled hair, weeping for the home She once enjoyed in Karia—land of our grandfathers, by the wine-dark Aegean Sea. Like Her, we’re all exiles, and few of my generation have ever set foot in Karia, or in Crete—that land of Philistine brides; but Canaan is our home now, and we cling to it, close by the ocean and its gods; we, the Philistines: Peoples of the Sea.

As my feet cooled in the watery sand, another wave came up; although it was still quite dark, I could see the crest-line’s foam, splashing white as it rolled northwards, all the way to my Uncle Zaggi’s palace. Then I spied
her
, tumbling out of the water like some luckless mermaid dashed ashore, a wisp of a girl, pale and naked against the ocean’s green, almost invisible when she landed on the white-sand beach. Rising to her knees, she shook the water from her hair and plunged in again, lost from view in
Neptune
’s abode. One of Uncle’s servant girls, I supposed, out for a swim in the early dawn.

Shedding my robe, I dove into the waters, submerging to the pebble floor, the shells and seaweed of my Philistine coast. Perhaps a romp in the sand with this bewitching nymph would start the day off right….

When I surfaced, she was only some fifteen yards away, thrown up again on the shore, brown hair clinging to her naked back. I’d almost reached her when I noticed an oil lamp on the balcony of Uncle’s house, his palace now silhouetted against the dawn; a woman

stood there, and—from her style of dress—I gathered she was Canaanite, hence a servant.

“Mistress Delai!” this woman cried out, addressing my erstwhile water fairy; “come in, quickly!” It was half a command and half a plea. “Come!” she begged again. “You aren’t even dressed! What if someone sees you? Naked!” Indeed, someone had: me, though no one knew. I sank down to my nose in the water and watched as the girl picked up her robe and scampered across the beach, putting on her clothing as she ran, losing her balance and slipping in the sand as she made her way to Zaggi’s palace door.

Can she really be Delai, I wondered—my cousin, my Uncle’s ward? Sure enough, she soon appeared on the balcony of his palace, and the slave girl took her inside—lest some commoner should see her undressed. But Delai, I thought, is no more than a child…whereas this mermaid of mine, though slender and half-hidden in the dark, clearly had reached the age of budding breasts.

Well, true, I hadn’t seen my cousin for over a year and a half, not since before the last heavy fighting against the Judaeans. Yet this must be she, grown up now, a lady of the Philistine nobility.

Girl, nymph, or gentlelady, she’d exited now—and I emerged from the surf into a glowing dawn. With a sea breeze coming in, I mused, it may be a bearable day after all. Wiping salt from my lips, I stared at the palace for a moment, then turned back to my own quarters just down the beach. Clouds broke up in the western sky, and I thought again of the distant Aegean lands which I would never see, but also of the war yet to come in the Danite hills at harvest time; then I pictured young Delai, daughter of Askelon, innocent and beautiful child of this scarred and blood-soaked plain of Canaan.