Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin Shulamith
Place me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm: love is strong like death, jealousy is cruel like death: its arrows are arrows of fire.
Song of Songs
King Solomon had not yet reached middle age - forty-five years - and the fame of his wisdom and beauty, the splendor of his life and the splendor of his court had spread far beyond the borders of Palestine. In Assyria and Phenicia, in Upper and Lower Egypt, from ancient Tabriz to Yemen and from Ismar to Persepolis, on the Black Sea coast and on the Mediterranean islands, they pronounced his name with surprise, because there was no one like him among the kings in all his days.
In the year 480 after the departure of Israel, in the fourth year of his reign, in the month of Ziph, the king undertook the construction of the great temple of the Lord on Mount Moriah and the construction of a palace in Jerusalem. Eighty thousand stonemasons and seventy thousand porters worked continuously in the mountains and on the outskirts of the city, and ten thousand woodcutters out of thirty-eight thousand went in shifts to Lebanon, where they spent a whole month in such hard work that after it they rested for two months. Thousands of people tied felled trees into rafts, and hundreds of sailors floated them by sea to Jaffa, where they were trimmed by the Tyrians, skilled in turning and carpentry. Only during the construction of the pyramids of Khafre, Khufu and Mikerin in Gizeh was such a countless number of workers used.
Three thousand six hundred overseers supervised the work, and the overseers were commanded by Azariah, the son of Nathan, a cruel and active man, about whom there was a rumor that he never sleeps, devoured by the fire of an internal incurable illness. Nevertheless, the plans of the palace and temple, drawings of columns, oracle and copper sea, drawings of windows, decorations of walls and thrones were created by the architect Hiram-Abiy from Sidon, the son of a coppersmith from the Nafalim family.
Seven years later, in the month of Bule, the temple of the Lord was completed and thirteen years later the royal palace. For cedar logs from Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for pinewood, shittim and tarshish, for hewn and polished huge expensive stones, for purple, scarlet and fine linen embroidered with gold, for blue woolen fabrics, for ivory and red skins of rams, for iron, onyx and much marble, for precious stones, for gold chains, crowns, laces, tongs, nets, trays, lamps, flowers and lamps, gold hinges for doors and gold nails, weighing sixty shekels each , for gold-plated bowls and dishes, for carved and mosaic ornaments, images of lions, cherubs, oxen, palm trees and pineapples filled and carved in stone - Solomon gave the Tyrian king Hiram, the same name of the architect, twenty cities and villages in the land of Galilee, and Hiram found this an insignificant gift - with such unheard-of luxury the Temple of the Lord and the palace of Solomon and the small palace in Millo were built for the king’s wife, the beautiful Astiz, the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh Sussakim. The mahogany tree, which later was used for railings and staircases of galleries, musical instruments and for bindings for sacred books, it was brought as a gift to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, the wise and beautiful Balkis, along with such a quantity of fragrant incense, fragrant oils and precious perfumes that had never yet been seen in Israel.
The king's wealth grew every year. Three times a year his ships returned to the harbor: the Tarshish, sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Hiram, sailing in the Black Sea. They brought ivory, monkeys, peacocks and antelopes from Africa; richly decorated chariots from Egypt, live tigers and lions, as well as animal skins and furs from Mesopotamia, snow-white horses from Kuva, Parvaim gold sand worth six hundred and sixty talents per year, red, black and sandalwood from the country of Ophir, colorful Assur and Kalakh carpets with amazing drawings - friendly gifts from King Tiglath-Pileazar, artistic mosaics from Nineveh, Nimrud and Sargon; wonderful patterned fabrics from Khatuar; gold-plated cups from Tyre; from Sidon - colored glass, and from Punt, near Bab-el-Mandeb, those rare incense - spikenard, aloes, cane, cinnamon, saffron, amber, musk, stacti, halvan, myrrh and frankincense, due to the possession of which the Egyptian pharaohs fought bloody wars more than once.
In the days of Solomon, silver became as valuable as a simple stone, and mahogany was no more expensive than the simple syquimores that grow in the lowlands.
The king built stone baths lined with porphyry, marble ponds and cool fountains, ordering water to be drawn from mountain springs that flowed into the Kidron stream, and around the palace he planted gardens and groves and planted a vineyard in Baal-Hamon.
Solomon had forty thousand stalls for mules and chariot horses, and twelve thousand for cavalry; barley and straw were brought daily from the provinces for the horses. Ten fattened oxen and twenty oxen from pasture, thirty chickens of wheat flour and sixty other things, one hundred baht of various wines, three hundred sheep, not counting fattened poultry, deer, chamois and saigas - all this through the hands of twelve guards went daily to Solomon’s table, and also to the table of his court, retinue and guard. Sixty warriors, from among the five hundred strongest and bravest in the entire army, kept guard in shifts in the inner chambers of the palace. Solomon ordered five hundred shields covered with gold plates to be made for his bodyguards.
Whatever the king’s eyes desired, he did not refuse them and did not forbid his heart any joy. The king had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, not counting slaves and dancers. And Solomon enchanted them all with his love, because God gave him such an inexhaustible power of passion that ordinary people did not have. He loved the white-faced, black-eyed, red-lipped Hittite women for their bright but instant beauty, which blooms just as early and charmingly and fades just as quickly, like a daffodil flower; dark, tall, fiery Philistine women with coarse curly hair, wearing golden ringing wristbands on their hands, gold hoops on their shoulders, and on both ankles wide bracelets connected by a thin chain; gentle, small, flexible Ammorite women, built without reproach - their loyalty and submission in love became a proverb; women from Assyria who lengthened their eyes with paint and etched blue stars on their foreheads and cheeks; educated, cheerful and witty daughters of Sidon, who knew how to sing well, dance, and also play harps, lutes and flutes to the accompaniment of a tambourine; yellow-skinned Egyptian women, tireless in love and crazy in jealousy; voluptuous Babylonian women, whose whole body under their clothes was smooth as marble, because they destroyed the hair on it with a special paste; the maidens of Bactria, who painted their hair and nails fiery red and wore shalwars; silent, shy Moabite women whose luxurious breasts were cool on the hottest summer nights; careless and wasteful Ammonite women with fiery hair and a body so white that it glowed in the darkness; fragile blue-eyed women with flaxen hair and a delicate scent of skin, who were brought from the north, through Baalbek, and whose language was incomprehensible to everyone living in Palestine. Moreover, the king loved many daughters of Judah and Israel.
He also shared a bed with Balkis-Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, who surpassed all women in the world in beauty, wisdom, wealth and variety of art in passion; and with Abishaga the Shunammite, who warmed the old age of King David, with this affectionate, quiet beauty, because of whom Solomon put his elder brother Adonijah to death at the hand of Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada.
And with a poor girl from the vineyard, named Shulamith, whom alone of all women the king loved with all his heart.
Solomon made himself a carrying bed from the best cedar wood, with silver pillars, with golden elbows in the form of lying lions, and with a tent made of purple Tyrian fabric. Inside, the entire tent was decorated with gold embroidery and precious stones - loving gifts from the wives and virgins of Jerusalem. And when the slender black slaves carried Solomon in the days of great festivals among the people, truly the king was beautiful, like the lily of the Valley of Sharon!
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Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin
Shulamith
Place me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm: love is strong like death, jealousy is cruel like death: its arrows are arrows of fire.
Song of Songs
I
King Solomon had not yet reached middle age - forty-five years - and the fame of his wisdom and beauty, the splendor of his life and the splendor of his court had spread far beyond the borders of Palestine. In Assyria and Phenicia, in Upper and Lower Egypt, from ancient Tabriz to Yemen and from Ismar to Persepolis, on the Black Sea coast and on the Mediterranean islands, they pronounced his name with surprise, because there was no one like him among the kings in all his days.
In the year 480 after the departure of Israel, in the fourth year of his reign, in the month of Ziph, the king undertook the construction of the great temple of the Lord on Mount Moriah and the construction of a palace in Jerusalem. Eighty thousand stonemasons and seventy thousand porters worked continuously in the mountains and on the outskirts of the city, and ten thousand woodcutters out of thirty-eight thousand went in shifts to Lebanon, where they spent a whole month in such hard work that after it they rested for two months. Thousands of people tied felled trees into rafts, and hundreds of sailors floated them by sea to Jaffa, where they were trimmed by the Tyrians, skilled in turning and carpentry. Only during the construction of the pyramids of Khafre, Khufu and Mikerin in Gizeh was such a countless number of workers used.
Three thousand six hundred overseers supervised the work, and the overseers were commanded by Azariah, the son of Nathan, a cruel and active man, about whom there was a rumor that he never sleeps, devoured by the fire of an internal incurable illness. Nevertheless, the plans of the palace and temple, drawings of columns, oracle and copper sea, drawings of windows, decorations of walls and thrones were created by the architect Hiram-Abiy from Sidon, the son of a coppersmith from the Nafalim family.
Seven years later, in the month of Bule, the temple of the Lord was completed and thirteen years later the royal palace. For cedar logs from Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for pinewood, shittim and tarshish, for hewn and polished huge expensive stones, for purple, scarlet and fine linen embroidered with gold, for blue woolen fabrics, for ivory and red ramskin. , for iron, onyx and much marble, for precious stones, for gold chains, crowns, cords, tongs, nets, trays, lamps, flowers and lamps, gold hinges for doors and gold nails weighing sixty shekels each, for gold-plated bowls and dishes, for carved and mosaic ornaments, images of lions, cherubs, oxen, palm trees and pineapples filled and carved in stone - Solomon gave the Tyrian king Hiram, the same name of the architect, twenty cities and villages in the land of Galilee, and Hiram found this gift insignificant - with such unheard-of luxury, the temple of the Lord and the palace of Solomon and the small palace in Millo were built for the king’s wife, the beautiful Astis, the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh Sussakim. Mahogany, which was later used for railings and staircases of galleries, for musical instruments and for bindings for sacred books, was brought as a gift to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, the wise and beautiful Balkis, along with as many fragrant incense, fragrant oils and precious perfumes as have not yet been seen in Israel.
The king's wealth grew every year. Three times a year his ships returned to the harbor: the Tarshish, sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Hiram, sailing in the Black Sea. They brought ivory, monkeys, peacocks and antelopes from Africa; richly decorated chariots from Egypt, live tigers and lions, as well as animal skins and furs from Mesopotamia, snow-white horses from Kuva, Parvaim gold sand worth six hundred and sixty talents per year, red, black and sandalwood from the country of Ophir, colorful Assur and Kalakh carpets with amazing drawings - friendly gifts from King Tiglath-Pileazar, artistic mosaics from Nineveh, Nimrud and Sargon; wonderful patterned fabrics from Khatuar; gold-plated cups from Tyre; from Sidon - colored glass, and from Punt, near Bab-el-Mandeb, those rare incense - spikenard, aloes, cane, cinnamon, saffron, amber, musk, stacti, halvan, myrrh and frankincense, due to the possession of which the Egyptian pharaohs fought bloody wars more than once.
In the days of Solomon, silver became as valuable as a simple stone, and mahogany was no more expensive than the simple syquimores that grow in the lowlands.
The king built stone baths lined with porphyry, marble ponds and cool fountains, ordering water to be drawn from mountain springs that flowed into the Kidron stream, and around the palace he planted gardens and groves and planted a vineyard in Baal-Hamon.
Solomon had forty thousand stalls for mules and chariot horses, and twelve thousand for cavalry; barley and straw were brought daily from the provinces for the horses. Ten fattened oxen and twenty oxen from pasture, thirty chickens of wheat flour and sixty other things, one hundred baht of various wines, three hundred sheep, not counting fattened poultry, deer, chamois and saigas - all this through the hands of twelve guards went daily to Solomon’s table, and also to the table of his court, retinue and guard. Sixty warriors, from among the five hundred strongest and bravest in the entire army, kept guard in shifts in the inner chambers of the palace. Solomon ordered five hundred shields covered with gold plates to be made for his bodyguards.
II
Whatever the king’s eyes desired, he did not refuse them and did not forbid his heart any joy. The king had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, not counting slaves and dancers. And Solomon enchanted them all with his love, because God gave him such an inexhaustible power of passion that ordinary people did not have. He loved the white-faced, black-eyed, red-lipped Hittite women for their bright but instant beauty, which blooms just as early and charmingly and fades just as quickly, like a daffodil flower; dark, tall, fiery Philistine women with coarse curly hair, wearing golden ringing wristbands on their hands, gold hoops on their shoulders, and on both ankles wide bracelets connected by a thin chain; gentle, small, flexible Ammorite women, built without reproach - their loyalty and submission in love became a proverb; women from Assyria who lengthened their eyes with paint and etched blue stars on their foreheads and cheeks; educated, cheerful and witty daughters of Sidon, who knew how to sing well, dance, and also play harps, lutes and flutes to the accompaniment of a tambourine; yellow-skinned Egyptian women, tireless in love and crazy in jealousy; voluptuous Babylonian women, whose whole body under their clothes was smooth as marble, because they destroyed the hair on it with a special paste; the maidens of Bactria, who painted their hair and nails fiery red and wore shalwars; silent, shy Moabite women whose luxurious breasts were cool on the hottest summer nights; careless and wasteful Ammonite women with fiery hair and a body so white that it glowed in the darkness; fragile blue-eyed women with flaxen hair and a delicate scent of skin, who were brought from the north, through Baalbek, and whose language was incomprehensible to everyone living in Palestine. Moreover, the king loved many daughters of Judah and Israel.
He also shared a bed with Balkis-Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, who surpassed all women in the world in beauty, wisdom, wealth and variety of art in passion; and with Abishaga the Shunammite, who warmed the old age of King David, with this affectionate, quiet beauty, because of whom Solomon put his elder brother Adonijah to death at the hand of Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada.
And with a poor girl from the vineyard, named Shulamith, whom alone of all women the king loved with all his heart.
Solomon made himself a carrying bed from the best cedar wood, with silver pillars, with golden elbows in the form of lying lions, and with a tent made of purple Tyrian fabric. Inside, the entire tent was decorated with gold embroidery and precious stones - loving gifts from the wives and virgins of Jerusalem. And when the slender black slaves carried Solomon in the days of great festivals among the people, truly the king was beautiful, like the lily of the Valley of Sharon!
His face was pale, his lips were like a bright scarlet ribbon; wavy hair, black and blue, and in it - the adornment of wisdom - glistened gray hair, like the silver threads of mountain streams falling from the heights of the dark cliffs of Aermon; Gray hair also sparkled in his black beard, curled, according to the custom of the Assyrian kings, in regular small rows.
The king’s eyes were dark, like the darkest agate, like the sky on a moonless summer night, and his eyelashes, opening like arrows up and down, looked like black rays around black stars. And there was not a person in the universe who could withstand Solomon's gaze without lowering his eyes. And the lightning of wrath in the eyes of the king threw people to the ground.
But there were moments of heartfelt joy when the king became intoxicated with love, or wine, or the sweetness of power, or he rejoiced at the wise and beautiful word, said by the way. Then his long eyelashes quietly dropped halfway, casting blue shadows on his bright face, and in the king’s eyes the warm lights of affectionate, gentle laughter lit up like sparks in black diamonds; and those who saw this smile were ready to give body and soul for it - it was so indescribably beautiful. Just the name of King Solomon, spoken out loud, stirred a woman’s heart, like the aroma of spilled myrrh, reminiscent of nights of love.
The king's hands were tender, white, warm and beautiful, like a woman's, but they contained such an excess of vitality that by placing his palms on the crown of the sick, the king healed headaches, convulsions, black melancholy and demonic possession. On the index finger of his left hand Solomon wore a gem made of a blood-red asterix, which emitted six pearl-colored rays. This ring was many hundreds of years old, and on the reverse side of its stone there was an inscription carved in the language of an ancient, vanished people: “Everything passes.”
And so great was the power of Solomon’s soul that even animals obeyed it: lions and tigers crawled at the king’s feet, and rubbed their muzzles on his knees, and licked his hands with their harsh tongues when he entered their premises. And he, who found joy in his heart in the sparkling tints of precious stones, in the aroma of Egyptian incense resins, in the gentle touch of light fabrics, in sweet music, in the delicate taste of red sparkling wine playing in a chased Ninuan chalice - he also loved to stroke the harsh manes of lions, the velvet backs of black panthers and the tender paws of young spotted leopards, loved to listen to the roar of wild animals, see their strong and beautiful movements and feel the hot smell of their predatory breath.
This is how Jehoshaphat, son of Ahilud, the historian of his days, described King Solomon.
III
“Because you did not ask for a long life, did not ask for wealth, did not ask for the souls of your enemies, but asked for wisdom, then I do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and understanding heart, so that there was no one like you before you, and after you there will not arise one like you.”
This is what God said to Solomon, and through his word the king knew the composition of the world and the action of the elements, comprehended the beginning, end and middle of times, penetrated into the secret of the eternal wave-like and circular return of events; From the astronomers of Byblos, Acre, Sargon, Borsippa and Nineveh, he learned to monitor the changing positions of the stars and the annual circles. He also knew the nature of all animals and guessed the feelings of animals, understood the origin and direction of the winds, the various properties of plants and the power of medicinal herbs.
Thoughts in the human heart are deep water, but the wise king knew how to draw them out. In his words and voice, in his eyes, in his hand movements, he read the innermost secrets of souls as clearly as letters in an open book. And therefore, from all over Palestine, a great multitude of people came to him, asking for judgment, advice, help, resolution of a dispute, and also for a solution to incomprehensible omens and dreams. And people marveled at the depth and subtlety of Solomon’s answers.
Solomon composed three thousand parables and a thousand and five songs. He dictated them to two skillful and quick scribes, Elihofer and Ahijah, the sons of Ziba, and then compared what was written by both. He always clothed his thoughts in elegant expressions, because a word spoken skillfully is like a golden apple in a bowl of transparent sardonyx, and also because the words of the wise are sharp as needles, strong as driven nails, and their compilers are all from one shepherd. “The word is a spark in the movement of the heart,” this is what the king said. And the wisdom of Solomon was greater than the wisdom of all the sons of the East and all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Hilkola, and Dodra, the sons of Mahol. But he was already beginning to be burdened by the beauty of ordinary human wisdom, and it did not have the same value in his eyes. With a restless and inquisitive mind, he thirsted for that highest wisdom that the Lord had on his path before all his creatures from time immemorial, from the beginning, before the existence of the earth, that wisdom that was a great artist with him when he drew a circular line across the face of the abyss. And Solomon did not find her.
The king studied the teachings of the Chaldean and Nineveh magicians, the science of astrologers from Abydos, Sais and Memphis, the secrets of the Magi, Mystagogues, and Assyrian Epopts, and soothsayers from Bactra and Persepolis, and became convinced that their knowledge was human knowledge.
He also sought wisdom in the mysteries of ancient pagan beliefs and therefore visited temples and made sacrifices: the powerful Baal-Libanon, who was revered under the name Melkart, the god of creation and destruction, patron of navigation, in Tire and Sidon, was called Ammon in the oasis of Siwah, where his idol nodded his head, showing the way to the festive processions, Belom among the Chaldeans, Moloch among the Canaanites; He also worshiped his wife, the formidable and voluptuous Astarte, who in other temples had the names Ishtar, Isaar, Vaaltis, Asherah, Istar-Belit and Atargatis. He poured out oil and lit incense to Isis and Osiri-su of Egypt, brother and sister, who were united in marriage in their mother’s womb and conceived there the god Horus, and Derketo, the fish-shaped goddess of Tyre, and Anubis with the dog’s head, the god of embalming, and the Babylonian Oannes, and Dagon of the Philistines, and Ardenago of the Assyrians, and Utsab, the idol of Nineveh, and the gloomy Cybella, and Bel-Merodoch, the patron saint of Babylon - the god of the planet Jupiter, and the Chaldean Or - the god eternal flame, and the mysterious Omoroga - the foremother of the gods, whom Bel cut into two parts, creating heaven and earth from them, and people from her head; and the king also worshiped the goddess Atanais, in whose honor the girls of Phenicia, Lydia, Armenia and Persia gave their bodies to passers-by as a sacred sacrifice on the threshold of temples.
But the king found nothing in pagan rituals except drunkenness, night orgies, fornication, incest and unnatural passions, and in their dogmas he saw vanity and deception. But he did not forbid any of his subjects from making sacrifices to their beloved god, and even he himself built on the Mount of Olives a temple for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, at the request of the beautiful, thoughtful Ellaan, a Moabite woman who was then the king’s beloved wife. There was only one thing Solomon did not tolerate and pursued with death - child sacrifice.
And he saw in his searches that the fate of the sons of men and the fate of animals is the same: as they die, so these die, and everyone has the same breath, and man has no advantage over cattle. And the king understood that in much wisdom there is much sorrow, and whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow. He also learned that even when laughing, sometimes the heart hurts and the end of joy is sadness. And one morning for the first time he dictated to Elihofer and Ahijah:
“All is vanity of vanities and vexation of spirit,” says Ecclesiastes.
But then the king did not yet know that God would soon send him such tender and fiery, devoted and beautiful love, which alone is more valuable than wealth, glory and wisdom, which is more valuable than life itself, because it does not even value life and is not afraid of death.
IV
The king had a vineyard in Baal-Hamon, on the southern slope of Watn el-Hawa, west of the temple of Moloch; The king loved to retire there during hours of great reflection. Pomegranate trees, olives and wild apple trees, interspersed with cedars and cypresses, bordered it on three sides of the mountain, while on the fourth it was fenced off from the road by a high stone wall. And the other vineyards that lay around also belonged to Solomon; he rented them out to the watchmen for a thousand pieces of silver each.
Only at dawn did the luxurious feast end in the palace, which was given by the king of Israel in honor of the ambassadors of the king of Assyria, the glorious Tiglath-Pileazar. Despite his fatigue, Solomon could not sleep that morning. Neither wine nor strong drink clouded the strong Assyrian heads or loosened their cunning tongues. But the insightful mind of the wise king had already gotten ahead of their plans and was already knitting, in turn, a thin political network with which he would weave these important people with arrogant eyes and flattering speech. Solomon will be able to maintain the necessary friendship with the ruler of Assyria and at the same time, for the sake of eternal friendship with Hiram of Tire, will save his kingdom from plunder, which with its innumerable riches, hidden in the basements under narrow streets with cramped houses, has long attracted the greedy gaze of the eastern rulers.
And so at dawn Solomon ordered himself to be carried to Mount Watn el-Haw, left the stretcher far on the road and now sits alone on a simple wooden bench, at the top of the vineyard, under the canopy of trees that still harbored the dewy cool of the night in their branches. The king wears a simple white cloak, fastened on the right shoulder and on the left side with two Egyptian agraphs made of green gold, in the shape of curled crocodiles - a symbol of the god Sebah. The king's hands lie motionless on his knees, and his eyes, shaded by deep thought, without blinking, are directed to the east, towards Dead Sea- to where the sun rises in the flames of dawn from behind the round peak of Anaze.
The morning wind blows from the east and carries the aroma of flowering grapes - the delicate aroma of mignonette and boiled wine. Dark cypress trees sway their thin tops importantly and pour out their resinous breath. Silver-green olive leaves chatter hurriedly.
But Solomon gets up and listens. A sweet female voice, clear and pure, like this dewy morning, is singing somewhere nearby, behind the trees. A simple and gentle motif flows, flows like a ringing stream in the mountains, repeating the same five or six notes. And his simple, elegant charm evokes a quiet smile of tenderness in the eyes of the king.
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King Solomon had not yet reached middle age - forty-five years - and the fame of his wisdom and beauty, the splendor of his life and the splendor of his court had spread far beyond the borders of Palestine. In Assyria and Phenicia, in Upper and Lower Egypt, from ancient Tabriz to Yemen and from Ismar to Persepolis, on the Black Sea coast and on the Mediterranean islands, they pronounced his name with surprise, because there was no one like him among the kings in all his days.
In the year 480 after the departure of Israel, in the fourth year of his reign, in the month of Ziph, the king undertook the construction of the great temple of the Lord on Mount Moriah and the construction of a palace in Jerusalem. Eighty thousand stonemasons and seventy thousand porters worked continuously in the mountains and on the outskirts of the city, and ten thousand woodcutters out of thirty-eight thousand went in shifts to Lebanon, where they spent a whole month in such hard work that after it they rested for two months. Thousands of people tied felled trees into rafts, and hundreds of sailors floated them by sea to Jaffa, where they were trimmed by the Tyrians, skilled in turning and carpentry. Only during the construction of the pyramids of Khafre, Khufu and Mikerin in Gizeh was such a countless number of workers used.
Three thousand six hundred overseers supervised the work, and the overseers were commanded by Azariah, the son of Nathan, a cruel and active man, about whom there was a rumor that he never sleeps, devoured by the fire of an internal incurable illness. Nevertheless, the plans of the palace and temple, drawings of columns, oracle and copper sea, drawings of windows, decorations of walls and thrones were created by the architect Hiram-Abiy from Sidon, the son of a coppersmith from the Nafalim family.
Seven years later, in the month of Bule, the temple of the Lord was completed and thirteen years later the royal palace. For cedar logs from Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for pinewood, shittim and tarshish, for hewn and polished huge expensive stones, for purple, scarlet and fine linen embroidered with gold, for blue woolen fabrics, for ivory and red ramskin. , for iron, onyx and much marble, for precious stones, for gold chains, crowns, cords, tongs, nets, trays, lamps, flowers and lamps, gold hinges for doors and gold nails weighing sixty shekels each, for gold-plated bowls and dishes, for carved and mosaic ornaments, images of lions, cherubs, oxen, palm trees and pineapples filled and carved in stone - Solomon gave the Tyrian king Hiram, the same name of the architect, twenty cities and villages in the land of Galilee, and Hiram found this gift insignificant - with such unheard-of luxury, the temple of the Lord and the palace of Solomon and the small palace in Millo were built for the king’s wife, the beautiful Astis, the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh Sussakim. Mahogany, which was later used for railings and staircases of galleries, for musical instruments and for bindings for sacred books, was brought as a gift to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, the wise and beautiful Balkis, along with as many fragrant incense, fragrant oils and precious perfumes as have not yet been seen in Israel.
The king's wealth grew every year. Three times a year his ships returned to the harbor: the Tarshish, sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Hiram, sailing in the Black Sea. They brought ivory, monkeys, peacocks and antelopes from Africa; richly decorated chariots from Egypt, live tigers and lions, as well as animal skins and furs from Mesopotamia, snow-white horses from Kuva, Parvaim gold sand worth six hundred and sixty talents per year, red, black and sandalwood from the country of Ophir, colorful Assur and Kalakh carpets with amazing drawings - friendly gifts from King Tiglath-Pileazar, artistic mosaics from Nineveh, Nimrud and Sargon; wonderful patterned fabrics from Khatuar; gold-plated cups from Tyre; from Sidon - colored glass, and from Punt, near Bab-el-Mandeb, those rare incense - spikenard, aloes, cane, cinnamon, saffron, amber, musk, stacti, halvan, myrrh and frankincense, due to the possession of which the Egyptian pharaohs fought bloody wars more than once.
In the days of Solomon, silver became as valuable as a simple stone, and mahogany was no more expensive than the simple syquimores that grow in the lowlands.
The king built stone baths lined with porphyry, marble ponds and cool fountains, ordering water to be drawn from mountain springs that flowed into the Kidron stream, and around the palace he planted gardens and groves and planted a vineyard in Baal-Hamon.
Solomon had forty thousand stalls for mules and chariot horses, and twelve thousand for cavalry; barley and straw were brought daily from the provinces for the horses. Ten fattened oxen and twenty oxen from pasture, thirty chickens of wheat flour and sixty other things, one hundred baht of various wines, three hundred sheep, not counting fattened poultry, deer, chamois and saigas - all this through the hands of twelve guards went daily to Solomon’s table, and also to the table of his court, retinue and guard. Sixty warriors, from among the five hundred strongest and bravest in the entire army, kept guard in shifts in the inner chambers of the palace. Solomon ordered five hundred shields covered with gold plates to be made for his bodyguards.
Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin
Shulamith
Place me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm: love is strong like death, jealousy is cruel like death: its arrows are arrows of fire.
Song of Songs
King Solomon had not yet reached middle age - forty-five years - and the fame of his wisdom and beauty, the splendor of his life and the splendor of his court had spread far beyond the borders of Palestine. In Assyria and Phenicia, in Upper and Lower Egypt, from ancient Tabriz to Yemen and from Ismar to Persepolis, on the Black Sea coast and on the Mediterranean islands, they pronounced his name with surprise, because there was no one like him among the kings in all his days.
In the year 480 after the departure of Israel, in the fourth year of his reign, in the month of Ziph, the king undertook the construction of the great temple of the Lord on Mount Moriah and the construction of a palace in Jerusalem. Eighty thousand stonemasons and seventy thousand porters worked continuously in the mountains and on the outskirts of the city, and ten thousand woodcutters out of thirty-eight thousand went in shifts to Lebanon, where they spent a whole month in such hard work that after it they rested for two months. Thousands of people tied felled trees into rafts, and hundreds of sailors floated them by sea to Jaffa, where they were trimmed by the Tyrians, skilled in turning and carpentry. Only during the construction of the pyramids of Khafre, Khufu and Mikerin in Gizeh was such a countless number of workers used.
Three thousand six hundred overseers supervised the work, and the overseers were commanded by Azariah, the son of Nathan, a cruel and active man, about whom there was a rumor that he never sleeps, devoured by the fire of an internal incurable illness. Nevertheless, the plans of the palace and temple, drawings of columns, oracle and copper sea, drawings of windows, decorations of walls and thrones were created by the architect Hiram-Abiy from Sidon, the son of a coppersmith from the Nafalim family.
Seven years later, in the month of Bule, the temple of the Lord was completed and thirteen years later the royal palace. For cedar logs from Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for pinewood, shittim and tarshish, for hewn and polished huge expensive stones, for purple, scarlet and fine linen embroidered with gold, for blue woolen fabrics, for ivory and red ramskin. , for iron, onyx and much marble, for precious stones, for gold chains, crowns, cords, tongs, nets, trays, lamps, flowers and lamps, gold hinges for doors and gold nails weighing sixty shekels each, for gold-plated bowls and dishes, for carved and mosaic ornaments, images of lions, cherubs, oxen, palm trees and pineapples filled and carved in stone - Solomon gave the Tyrian king Hiram, the same name of the architect, twenty cities and villages in the land of Galilee, and Hiram found this gift insignificant - with such unheard-of luxury, the temple of the Lord and the palace of Solomon and the small palace in Millo were built for the king’s wife, the beautiful Astis, the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh Sussakim. Mahogany, which was later used for railings and staircases of galleries, for musical instruments and for bindings for sacred books, was brought as a gift to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, the wise and beautiful Balkis, along with as many fragrant incense, fragrant oils and precious perfumes as have not yet been seen in Israel.
The king's wealth grew every year. Three times a year his ships returned to the harbor: the Tarshish, sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Hiram, sailing in the Black Sea. They brought ivory, monkeys, peacocks and antelopes from Africa; richly decorated chariots from Egypt, live tigers and lions, as well as animal skins and furs from Mesopotamia, snow-white horses from Kuva, Parvaim gold sand worth six hundred and sixty talents per year, red, black and sandalwood from the country of Ophir, colorful Assur and Kalakh carpets with amazing drawings - friendly gifts from King Tiglath-Pileazar, artistic mosaics from Nineveh, Nimrud and Sargon; wonderful patterned fabrics from Khatuar; gold-plated cups from Tyre; from Sidon - colored glass, and from Punt, near Bab-el-Mandeb, those rare incense - spikenard, aloes, cane, cinnamon, saffron, amber, musk, stacti, halvan, myrrh and frankincense, due to the possession of which the Egyptian pharaohs fought bloody wars more than once.
In the days of Solomon, silver became as valuable as a simple stone, and mahogany was no more expensive than the simple syquimores that grow in the lowlands.
The king built stone baths lined with porphyry, marble ponds and cool fountains, ordering water to be drawn from mountain springs that flowed into the Kidron stream, and around the palace he planted gardens and groves and planted a vineyard in Baal-Hamon.
Solomon had forty thousand stalls for mules and chariot horses, and twelve thousand for cavalry; barley and straw were brought daily from the provinces for the horses. Ten fattened oxen and twenty oxen from pasture, thirty chickens of wheat flour and sixty other things, one hundred baht of various wines, three hundred sheep, not counting fattened poultry, deer, chamois and saigas - all this through the hands of twelve guards went daily to Solomon’s table, and also to the table of his court, retinue and guard. Sixty warriors, from among the five hundred strongest and bravest in the entire army, kept guard in shifts in the inner chambers of the palace. Solomon ordered five hundred shields covered with gold plates to be made for his bodyguards.
Whatever the king’s eyes desired, he did not refuse them and did not forbid his heart any joy. The king had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, not counting slaves and dancers. And Solomon enchanted them all with his love, because God gave him such an inexhaustible power of passion that ordinary people did not have. He loved the white-faced, black-eyed, red-lipped Hittite women for their bright but instant beauty, which blooms just as early and charmingly and fades just as quickly, like a daffodil flower; dark, tall, fiery Philistine women with coarse curly hair, wearing golden ringing wristbands on their hands, gold hoops on their shoulders, and on both ankles wide bracelets connected by a thin chain; gentle, small, flexible Ammorite women, built without reproach - their loyalty and submission in love became a proverb; women from Assyria who lengthened their eyes with paint and etched blue stars on their foreheads and cheeks; educated, cheerful and witty daughters of Sidon, who knew how to sing well, dance, and also play harps, lutes and flutes to the accompaniment of a tambourine; yellow-skinned Egyptian women, tireless in love and crazy in jealousy; voluptuous Babylonian women, whose whole body under their clothes was smooth as marble, because they destroyed the hair on it with a special paste; the maidens of Bactria, who painted their hair and nails fiery red and wore shalwars; silent, shy Moabite women whose luxurious breasts were cool on the hottest summer nights; careless and wasteful Ammonite women with fiery hair and a body so white that it glowed in the darkness; fragile blue-eyed women with flaxen hair and a delicate scent of skin, who were brought from the north, through Baalbek, and whose language was incomprehensible to everyone living in Palestine. Moreover, the king loved many daughters of Judah and Israel.
He also shared a bed with Balkis-Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, who surpassed all women in the world in beauty, wisdom, wealth and variety of art in passion; and with Abishaga the Shunammite, who warmed the old age of King David, with this affectionate, quiet beauty, because of whom Solomon put his elder brother Adonijah to death at the hand of Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada.
And with a poor girl from the vineyard, named Shulamith, whom alone of all women the king loved with all his heart.
Solomon made himself a carrying bed from the best cedar wood, with silver pillars, with golden elbows in the form of lying lions, and with a tent made of purple Tyrian fabric. Inside, the entire tent was decorated with gold embroidery and precious stones - loving gifts from the wives and virgins of Jerusalem. And when the slender black slaves carried Solomon in the days of great festivals among the people, truly the king was beautiful, like the lily of the Valley of Sharon!
His face was pale, his lips were like a bright scarlet ribbon; wavy hair, black and blue, and in it - the adornment of wisdom - glistened gray hair, like the silver threads of mountain streams falling from the heights of the dark cliffs of Aermon; Gray hair also sparkled in his black beard, curled, according to the custom of the Assyrian kings, in regular small rows.
The king’s eyes were dark, like the darkest agate, like the sky on a moonless summer night, and his eyelashes, opening like arrows up and down, looked like black rays around black stars. And there was not a person in the universe who could withstand Solomon's gaze without lowering his eyes. And the lightning of wrath in the eyes of the king threw people to the ground.
But there were moments of heartfelt joy when the king was intoxicated with love, or wine, or the sweetness of power, or he rejoiced at a wise and beautiful word spoken at the right time. Then his long eyelashes quietly dropped halfway, casting blue shadows on his bright face, and in the king’s eyes the warm lights of affectionate, gentle laughter lit up like sparks in black diamonds; and those who saw this smile were ready to give body and soul for it - it was so indescribably beautiful. Just the name of King Solomon, spoken out loud, stirred a woman’s heart, like the aroma of spilled myrrh, reminiscent of nights of love.
The king's hands were tender, white, warm and beautiful, like a woman's, but they contained such an excess of vitality that by placing his palms on the crown of the sick, the king healed headaches, convulsions, black melancholy and demonic possession. On the index finger of his left hand Solomon wore a gem made of a blood-red asterix, which emitted six pearl-colored rays. This ring was many hundreds of years old, and on the reverse side of its stone there was an inscription carved in the language of an ancient, vanished people: “Everything passes.”
And so great was the power of Solomon’s soul that even animals obeyed it: lions and tigers crawled at the king’s feet, and rubbed their muzzles on his knees, and licked his hands with their harsh tongues when he entered their premises. And he, who found joy in his heart in the sparkling tints of precious stones, in the aroma of Egyptian incense resins, in the gentle touch of light fabrics, in sweet music, in the delicate taste of red sparkling wine playing in a chased Ninuan chalice - he also loved to stroke the harsh manes of lions, the velvet backs of black panthers and the tender paws of young spotted leopards, loved to listen to the roar of wild animals, see their strong and beautiful movements and feel the hot smell of their predatory breath.
This is how Jehoshaphat, son of Ahilud, the historian of his days, described King Solomon.
“Because you did not ask for a long life, did not ask for wealth, did not ask for the souls of your enemies, but asked for wisdom, then I do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and understanding heart, so that there was no one like you before you, and after you there will not arise one like you.”
This is what God said to Solomon, and through his word the king knew the composition of the world and the action of the elements, comprehended the beginning, end and middle of times, penetrated into the secret of the eternal wave-like and circular return of events; From the astronomers of Byblos, Acre, Sargon, Borsippa and Nineveh, he learned to monitor the changing positions of the stars and the annual circles. He also knew the nature of all animals and guessed the feelings of animals, understood the origin and direction of the winds, the various properties of plants and the power of medicinal herbs.
Thoughts in the human heart are deep water, but the wise king knew how to draw them out. In his words and voice, in his eyes, in his hand movements, he read the innermost secrets of souls as clearly as letters in an open book. And therefore, from all over Palestine, a great multitude of people came to him, asking for judgment, advice, help, resolution of a dispute, and also for a solution to incomprehensible omens and dreams. And people marveled at the depth and subtlety of Solomon’s answers.
Solomon composed three thousand parables and a thousand and five songs. He dictated them to two skillful and quick scribes, Elihofer and Ahijah, the sons of Ziba, and then compared what was written by both. He always clothed his thoughts in elegant expressions, because a word spoken skillfully is like a golden apple in a bowl of transparent sardonyx, and also because the words of the wise are sharp as needles, strong as driven nails, and their compilers are all from one shepherd. “The word is a spark in the movement of the heart,” this is what the king said. And the wisdom of Solomon was greater than the wisdom of all the sons of the East and all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Hilkola, and Dodra, the sons of Mahol. But he was already beginning to be burdened by the beauty of ordinary human wisdom, and it did not have the same value in his eyes. With a restless and inquisitive mind, he thirsted for that highest wisdom that the Lord had on his path before all his creatures from time immemorial, from the beginning, before the existence of the earth, that wisdom that was a great artist with him when he drew a circular line across the face of the abyss. And Solomon did not find her.
The king studied the teachings of the Chaldean and Nineveh magicians, the science of astrologers from Abydos, Sais and Memphis, the secrets of the Magi, Mystagogues, and Assyrian Epopts, and soothsayers from Bactra and Persepolis, and became convinced that their knowledge was human knowledge.
He also sought wisdom in the mysteries of ancient pagan beliefs and therefore visited temples and made sacrifices: the powerful Baal-Libanon, who was revered under the name Melkart, the god of creation and destruction, patron of navigation, in Tire and Sidon, was called Ammon in the oasis of Siwah, where his idol nodded his head, showing the way to the festive processions, Belom among the Chaldeans, Moloch among the Canaanites; He also worshiped his wife, the formidable and voluptuous Astarte, who in other temples had the names Ishtar, Isaar, Vaaltis, Asherah, Istar-Belit and Atargatis. He poured out oil and lit incense to Isis and Osiri-su of Egypt, brother and sister, who were united in marriage in their mother’s womb and conceived there the god Horus, and Derketo, the fish-shaped goddess of Tyre, and Anubis with the dog’s head, the god of embalming, and the Babylonian Oannes, and Dagon of the Philistines, and Ardenago of the Assyrians, and Utsab, the idol of Nineveh, and the gloomy Cybella, and Bel-Merodoch, the patron saint of Babylon - the god of the planet Jupiter, and the Chaldean Or - the god of eternal fire, and the mysterious Omorog - the foremother of the gods, whom Bel cut into two parts, creating heaven and earth from them, and people from the head; and the king also worshiped the goddess Atanais, in whose honor the girls of Phenicia, Lydia, Armenia and Persia gave their bodies to passers-by as a sacred sacrifice on the threshold of temples.
But the king found nothing in pagan rituals except drunkenness, night orgies, fornication, incest and unnatural passions, and in their dogmas he saw vanity and deception. But he did not forbid any of his subjects from making sacrifices to their beloved god, and even he himself built on the Mount of Olives a temple for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, at the request of the beautiful, thoughtful Ellaan, a Moabite woman who was then the king’s beloved wife. There was only one thing Solomon did not tolerate and pursued with death - child sacrifice.
And he saw in his searches that the fate of the sons of men and the fate of animals is the same: as they die, so these die, and everyone has the same breath, and man has no advantage over cattle. And the king understood that in much wisdom there is much sorrow, and whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow. He also learned that even when laughing, sometimes the heart hurts and the end of joy is sadness. And one morning for the first time he dictated to Elihofer and Ahijah:
“All is vanity of vanities and vexation of spirit,” says Ecclesiastes.
But then the king did not yet know that God would soon send him such tender and fiery, devoted and beautiful love, which alone is more valuable than wealth, glory and wisdom, which is more valuable than life itself, because it does not even value life and is not afraid of death.
The king had a vineyard in Baal-Hamon, on the southern slope of Watn el-Hawa, west of the temple of Moloch; The king loved to retire there during hours of great reflection. Pomegranate trees, olives and wild apple trees, interspersed with cedars and cypresses, bordered it on three sides of the mountain, while on the fourth it was fenced off from the road by a high stone wall. And the other vineyards that lay around also belonged to Solomon; he rented them out to the watchmen for a thousand pieces of silver each.
Only at dawn did the luxurious feast end in the palace, which was given by the king of Israel in honor of the ambassadors of the king of Assyria, the glorious Tiglath-Pileazar. Despite his fatigue, Solomon could not sleep that morning. Neither wine nor strong drink clouded the strong Assyrian heads or loosened their cunning tongues. But the insightful mind of the wise king had already forestalled their plans and was already knitting, in turn, a thin political network with which he would entwine these important people with arrogant eyes and flattering speech. Solomon will be able to maintain the necessary friendship with the ruler of Assyria and at the same time, for the sake of eternal friendship with Hiram of Tire, will save his kingdom from plunder, which with its innumerable riches, hidden in the basements under narrow streets with cramped houses, has long attracted the greedy gaze of the eastern rulers.
And so at dawn Solomon ordered himself to be carried to Mount Watn el-Haw, left the stretcher far on the road and now sits alone on a simple wooden bench, at the top of the vineyard, under the canopy of trees that still harbored the dewy cool of the night in their branches. The king wears a simple white cloak, fastened on the right shoulder and on the left side with two Egyptian agraphs made of green gold, in the shape of curled crocodiles - a symbol of the god Sebah. The king’s hands lie motionless on his knees, and his eyes, shaded by deep thought, without blinking, are directed to the east, towards the Dead Sea - where the sun rises in the flames of dawn from behind the round peak of Anaze.
The morning wind blows from the east and carries the aroma of flowering grapes - the delicate aroma of mignonette and boiled wine. Dark cypress trees sway their thin tops importantly and pour out their resinous breath. Silver-green olive leaves chatter hurriedly.
But Solomon gets up and listens. A sweet female voice, clear and pure, like this dewy morning, is singing somewhere nearby, behind the trees. A simple and gentle motif flows, flows like a ringing stream in the mountains, repeating the same five or six notes. And his simple, elegant charm evokes a quiet smile of tenderness in the eyes of the king.
In front of him, behind a low wall roughly built of large yellow stones, a vineyard stretches upward. A girl in a light blue dress walks between the rows of vines, bends over something below and straightens up again and sings. Her red hair burns in the sun.
The day breathed with coolness,
The shadows of the night are fleeing.
Come back soon, my dear,
Be light as a chamois
Like a young deer among mountain gorges...
So she sings, tying up the vines, and slowly goes down, closer and closer to the stone wall, behind which the king stands. She is alone - no one sees or hears her; the smell of blooming grapes, the joyful freshness of the morning and the hot blood in her heart intoxicate her, and then the words of a naive song are instantly born on her lips and carried away by the wind, forgotten forever:
Catch us foxes and fox cubs,
They spoil our vineyards
And our vineyards are in bloom.
So she reaches the very wall and, without noticing the king, turns back and walks, easily climbing the mountain, along the neighboring row of vines. Now the song sounds louder:
Run, my beloved,
Be like a chamois
Or a young deer
On the balsamic mountains.
But suddenly she becomes silent and bends down to the ground so much that she cannot be seen behind the vineyard.
- Girl, show me your face, let me hear your voice.
She quickly straightens up and turns to face the king. A strong wind breaks at that second and flutters her light dress and suddenly clings tightly around her body and between her legs. And the king for a moment, until she stands with her back to the wind, sees all of her under her clothes, like naked, tall and slender, in strong blossoming thirteen years old; he sees her small, round, strong breasts and the eminence of her nipples, from which the matter radiates apart like rays, and her round, bowl-like, girlish belly, and the deep line that divides her legs from bottom to top and there diverges in two, to the convex hips.
She comes closer and looks at the king with awe and admiration. Her dark and bright face is inexpressibly beautiful. Heavy, thick dark red hair, into which she stuck two scarlet poppy flowers, covers her shoulders with countless elastic curls, and runs down her back, and flames, pierced by the rays of the sun, like golden purple. A homemade necklace made of some red dry berries touchingly and innocently wraps twice around her dark, tall, thin neck.
– I didn’t notice you! - she says tenderly, and her voice sounds like the singing of a flute. -Where did you come from?
– You sang so well, girl!
She lowers her eyes bashfully and blushes herself, but a secret smile trembles under her long eyelashes and in the corners of her lips.
– You sang about your sweetheart. He is light, like a chamois, like a young mountain deer. After all, he is very handsome, your dear girl, isn’t it?
She laughs so loudly and musically, as if silver hail is falling on a golden plate.
- I don’t have a sweetheart. It's just a song. I haven't had a sweetheart yet...
They are silent for a minute and look at each other deeply, without a smile... The birds call to each other loudly among the trees. The girl's chest often sways under the shabby linen.
“I don’t believe you, beauty.” You are so Beautiful...
- You're laughing at me. Look how black I am...
She raises her small dark arms up, and the wide sleeves slide easily down to her shoulders, exposing her elbows, which have such a thin and round girlish pattern.
And she says plaintively:
“My brothers were angry with me and put me in charge of the vineyard, and look how the sun scorched me!”
- Oh no, the sun has made you even more beautiful, most beautiful of women! So you laughed, and your teeth were like white twin lambs emerging from the bathhouse, and there was no blemish on any of them. Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate under your curls. Your red lips are a delight to look at. And your hair... Do you know what your hair looks like? Have you seen the flock of sheep coming down from Gilead in the evening? It covers the entire mountain, from top to bottom, and from the light of dawn and from the dust it appears as red and as wavy as your curls. Your eyes are as deep as the two lakes of Heshbon at the gates of Bathrabbim. Oh, how beautiful you are! Your neck is straight and slender, like the Tower of David!..
-Like the Tower of David! - she repeats in ecstasy.
- Yes, yes, the most beautiful of women. A thousand shields hang on the tower of David, and all these are the shields of defeated commanders. So I hang my shield on your tower...
- Oh, talk, talk more...
“And when you turned back to my call, and the wind blew, I saw both of your breasts under your clothes and thought: here are two small chamois grazing between the lilies.” Your figure was like a palm tree and your breasts like bunches of grapes.
The girl screams weakly, covers her face with her palms and her chest with her elbows, and blushes so much that even her ears and neck turn purple.
“And I saw your thighs.” They are slender, like a precious vase - the work of a skilled artist. Take your hands away, girl. Show me your face.
She obediently lowers her hands down. A thick golden radiance pours from Solomon’s eyes, and enchants her, and turns her head, and flows with a sweet, warm shiver over the skin of her body.
- Tell me, who are you? - she says slowly, with bewilderment. “I’ve never seen anything like you.”
- I am a shepherd, my beauty. I tend wonderful flocks of white lambs on the mountains, where the green grass is full of daffodils. Won't you come to me, to my pasture?
But she quietly shakes her head:
– Do you really think that I will believe this? Your face is not roughened by the wind or burned by the sun, and your hands are white. You are wearing an expensive tunic, and one clasp on it is worth the annual fee that my brothers pay for our vineyard to Adoniram, the royal collector. You came from there, from behind the wall... Are you, right, one of the people close to the king? It seems to me that I saw you once on the day of a great festival, I even remember that I ran after your chariot.
- You guessed right, girl. It's hard to hide from you. And really, why do you need to be a wanderer around the shepherds’ flocks? Yes, I am one of the royal retinue, I am the king's chief cook. And you saw me when I rode in Aminodab’s chariot on the day of Easter. But why are you standing far from me? Come closer, my sister! Sit here on the stone of the wall and tell me something about yourself. Tell me your name?
“Sulamith,” she says.
- Tell me quickly, where do you live? “I’ll come to you tonight,” he says quickly.
Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin
Shulamith
Place me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm: love is strong like death, jealousy is cruel like death: its arrows are arrows of fire.
Song of Songs
King Solomon had not yet reached middle age - forty-five years - and the fame of his wisdom and beauty, the splendor of his life and the splendor of his court had spread far beyond the borders of Palestine. In Assyria and Phenicia, in Upper and Lower Egypt, from ancient Tabriz to Yemen and from Ismar to Persepolis, on the Black Sea coast and on the Mediterranean islands, they pronounced his name with surprise, because there was no one like him among the kings in all his days.
In the year 480 after the departure of Israel, in the fourth year of his reign, in the month of Ziph, the king undertook the construction of the great temple of the Lord on Mount Moriah and the construction of a palace in Jerusalem. Eighty thousand stonemasons and seventy thousand porters worked continuously in the mountains and on the outskirts of the city, and ten thousand woodcutters out of thirty-eight thousand went in shifts to Lebanon, where they spent a whole month in such hard work that after it they rested for two months. Thousands of people tied felled trees into rafts, and hundreds of sailors floated them by sea to Jaffa, where they were trimmed by the Tyrians, skilled in turning and carpentry. Only during the construction of the pyramids of Khafre, Khufu and Mikerin in Gizeh was such a countless number of workers used.
Three thousand six hundred overseers supervised the work, and the overseers were commanded by Azariah, the son of Nathan, a cruel and active man, about whom there was a rumor that he never sleeps, devoured by the fire of an internal incurable illness. Nevertheless, the plans of the palace and temple, drawings of columns, oracle and copper sea, drawings of windows, decorations of walls and thrones were created by the architect Hiram-Abiy from Sidon, the son of a coppersmith from the Nafalim family.
Seven years later, in the month of Bule, the temple of the Lord was completed and thirteen years later the royal palace. For cedar logs from Lebanon, for cypress and olive boards, for pinewood, shittim and tarshish, for hewn and polished huge expensive stones, for purple, scarlet and fine linen embroidered with gold, for blue woolen fabrics, for ivory and red ramskin. , for iron, onyx and much marble, for precious stones, for gold chains, crowns, cords, tongs, nets, trays, lamps, flowers and lamps, gold hinges for doors and gold nails weighing sixty shekels each, for gold-plated bowls and dishes, for carved and mosaic ornaments, images of lions, cherubs, oxen, palm trees and pineapples filled and carved in stone - Solomon gave the Tyrian king Hiram, the same name of the architect, twenty cities and villages in the land of Galilee, and Hiram found this gift insignificant - with such unheard-of luxury, the temple of the Lord and the palace of Solomon and the small palace in Millo were built for the king’s wife, the beautiful Astis, the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh Sussakim. Mahogany, which was later used for railings and staircases of galleries, for musical instruments and for bindings for sacred books, was brought as a gift to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba, the wise and beautiful Balkis, along with as many fragrant incense, fragrant oils and precious perfumes as have not yet been seen in Israel.
The king's wealth grew every year. Three times a year his ships returned to the harbor: the Tarshish, sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Hiram, sailing in the Black Sea. They brought ivory, monkeys, peacocks and antelopes from Africa; richly decorated chariots from Egypt, live tigers and lions, as well as animal skins and furs from Mesopotamia, snow-white horses from Kuva, Parvaim gold sand worth six hundred and sixty talents per year, red, black and sandalwood from the country of Ophir, colorful Assur and Kalakh carpets with amazing drawings - friendly gifts from King Tiglath-Pileazar, artistic mosaics from Nineveh, Nimrud and Sargon; wonderful patterned fabrics from Khatuar; gold-plated cups from Tyre; from Sidon - colored glass, and from Punt, near Bab-el-Mandeb, those rare incense - spikenard, aloes, cane, cinnamon, saffron, amber, musk, stacti, halvan, myrrh and frankincense, due to the possession of which the Egyptian pharaohs fought bloody wars more than once.
In the days of Solomon, silver became as valuable as a simple stone, and mahogany was no more expensive than the simple syquimores that grow in the lowlands.
The king built stone baths lined with porphyry, marble ponds and cool fountains, ordering water to be drawn from mountain springs that flowed into the Kidron stream, and around the palace he planted gardens and groves and planted a vineyard in Baal-Hamon.
Solomon had forty thousand stalls for mules and chariot horses, and twelve thousand for cavalry; barley and straw were brought daily from the provinces for the horses. Ten fattened oxen and twenty oxen from pasture, thirty chickens of wheat flour and sixty other things, one hundred baht of various wines, three hundred sheep, not counting fattened poultry, deer, chamois and saigas - all this through the hands of twelve guards went daily to Solomon’s table, and also to the table of his court, retinue and guard. Sixty warriors, from among the five hundred strongest and bravest in the entire army, kept guard in shifts in the inner chambers of the palace. Solomon ordered five hundred shields covered with gold plates to be made for his bodyguards.
Whatever the king’s eyes desired, he did not refuse them and did not forbid his heart any joy. The king had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, not counting slaves and dancers. And Solomon enchanted them all with his love, because God gave him such an inexhaustible power of passion that ordinary people did not have. He loved the white-faced, black-eyed, red-lipped Hittite women for their bright but instant beauty, which blooms just as early and charmingly and fades just as quickly, like a daffodil flower; dark, tall, fiery Philistine women with coarse curly hair, wearing golden ringing wristbands on their hands, gold hoops on their shoulders, and on both ankles wide bracelets connected by a thin chain; gentle, small, flexible Ammorite women, built without reproach - their loyalty and submission in love became a proverb; women from Assyria who lengthened their eyes with paint and etched blue stars on their foreheads and cheeks; educated, cheerful and witty daughters of Sidon, who knew how to sing well, dance, and also play harps, lutes and flutes to the accompaniment of a tambourine; yellow-skinned Egyptian women, tireless in love and crazy in jealousy; voluptuous Babylonian women, whose whole body under their clothes was smooth as marble, because they destroyed the hair on it with a special paste; the maidens of Bactria, who painted their hair and nails fiery red and wore shalwars; silent, shy Moabite women whose luxurious breasts were cool on the hottest summer nights; careless and wasteful Ammonite women with fiery hair and a body so white that it glowed in the darkness; fragile blue-eyed women with flaxen hair and a delicate scent of skin, who were brought from the north, through Baalbek, and whose language was incomprehensible to everyone living in Palestine. Moreover, the king loved many daughters of Judah and Israel.
He also shared a bed with Balkis-Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, who surpassed all women in the world in beauty, wisdom, wealth and variety of art in passion; and with Abishaga the Shunammite, who warmed the old age of King David, with this affectionate, quiet beauty, because of whom Solomon betrayed