The Nomadic Alternative – Page 104

shepherd women drape about themselves. She prefers the delights of settlement. She will eat bread and beans and wear fine muslins. She will embrace the farmer.

The shepherd despairs. The Goddess has insulted his virility. He knows his creamy milk is better than the frothy grain beer of the farmer, his cheese more nourishing than bean curd, his yoghurt and wild honey than bread. And he says so, shouting out loud insults against the farmer. On impulse he drives his sheep out of the wilderness onto the irrigated land. But then he sees Enkimdu and the Goddess copulating in a field and makes off abashed. The Goddess runs after him, and when she catches up, explains her conduct. She says she couldn't bring herself to marry a shepherd because a shepherd was not the class of man a civic goddess married. But she is prepared to make concessions that the two rivals can live together in peace.

The sheep are free to nibble the grass along the edge of the irrigation canals and to drink its water. Then once the crops are harvested, they may graze on the stubble fields. Such was the peace formula the goddess proposed.

Irrigation works dammed the flow of the rivers and spread their waters over the land, And as the hungry mouths grew in number, the dykes rose higher and the risk of flood increased. Permanent gangs of forced labour were needed to keep them in repair. Meanwhile the men of the mountains kept descending to the plain, first to trade, then to raid and invade. Either the exiles returned as conquerors, or the settlers employed nomads as mercenaries to protect them from other nomads. But the protectors stayed on to impose themselves as an aristocratic military caste. War-lords with mace and axe vaunted their virility on monuments of stone. "[illegible]", said one, "am Shepherd of the People." The shepherds of sheep used their technical expertise to lord it over human sheep. They crowded them into walled enclosures, battlemented and glistening with brazen spikes, to protect them from the human wolves outside. The City is a pen to protect its sheep from the unknown danger. It also lines them up for slaughter - particularly when they are fat.