Summary – Prolog, Chapters One, Two, and Three:
In the Book’s Prolog, the evolution of the geography of the Ancient Near East is described in great geophysical detail – an opening that pays homage to the tradition of James Michener’s epic prolog historical novel, Hawaii.
In Chapter One, the Egyptian noble, Neferhotep, grandson of Pharaoh Merikare, his Canaanite wife, Tirzah, and their twelve year old daughter, Daliya, arrive at the riverine port of Ur1. In Chapter Two, the family settles in and ten years later Daliya marries Terah, a wealthy landsman from Harran. Daliya gives birth to Abu’ram. In Chapter Three, the patriarch Neferhotep dies and Terah gathers his extended family together and moves to Harran, the settlement in which Terah was born and raised.
Chapter Four: “The Visitors”
These are the generations of Pharaoh Merikare, king of the Two Lands. Merikare begat Khetyem, and other sons and daughters. And Khetyem lived forty years and begat Neferhotep. And Khetyem died, being ninety years old.
Now Neferhotep was a man mighty in wisdom and in the ways of the sea. He learned the craft of ships from the mariners of Biblos and Tyre, and with their counsel, he built three vessels of cedar and bronze to sail the waters from the Red Sea, round the horn of Arabia, into the waters of the East, and back again.
After some years, Neferhotep left the sea to sojourn on the coast of Jaffa for twenty years, to oversee the possessions of his father, Khetyem. And there he took to wife Tirzah, a woman from Jaffa, and she bore him a daughter, whom he named Daliyah.
But the house of Pharaoh was troubled, and the princes of the land conspired in secret against Pharaoh. Thus, Neferhotep fearing for his family returned to the sea and took with him Tirzah, his wife, and Daliyah, his daughter, and came to dwell in Ur of the Akkadians, seeking rest from the storm.
Now these are the generations of Terah the Akkadian. Terah begat Nahor and Haran; and Haran begat Lot. And Terah took Daliya, daughter of Neferhotep, to wife, and she bore him a son, and he called his name in thhe Akkadian tongue, Abu’ram, “Great Father.”
And Haran died before the face of his father Terah, in the land of his kindred, in Ur of the Akkadians. And Abu’ram and Nahor took wives: the name of Abu’ram’s wife was Sarai, and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah.
And it came to pass that Terah arose and took Abu’ram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, and Iscah the wife of Lot, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of Abu’ram his son; and they went forth together from Ur of the Akkadians, to go into the land of Canaan. But when they came unto Harran, they decided to sojourn there, in the land where Terah was born.
And the days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Harran.
For three years, peace held. The business prospered, though Terah aged quickly. He moved less, spoke less. His hands shook. When he fell ill, it was a sudden illness. The fever came like an unexpected wind—quick and brief. Just a gust and then calm. He died in Abu’ram’s arms, having spoken only three words that morning: “Do not delay.”
They buried him near the edge of town, on a rise with a view of the hills. Daliyah stood aside Abu’ram at his grave. She spoke no words. There were none.
That night, the dreams began
–~–
For almost a year, the dreams continued. Off and on. Sometimes daily, but more often two or three times a week, Abuʿram was visited by them. Like most dreams, they faded upon waking. Regret, anxiety, and uncertainty were their only residue—understanding and clarity remained elusive.
His mother, Daliya, and his wife, Sarai, were worried and sympathetic, though of little help. Mattan was more dismissive, yet nodded knowingly.
“Perhaps Nanna is displeased with you,” he once remarked. “Probably because you stopped gilding Ur’s temple coffers. Terah’s return to Harran had done them no favors.”
Abuʿram, a native-born Akkadian, had grown up in Ur under the shadow of the great Ziggurat of Nanna, the moon god. He believed in Nanna, but more from tradition than conviction. His rituals were dutiful, performative, not devout—especially those involving public offerings. Like his grandfather, Neferhotep, before him, Abuʿram’s worship was calculated, political, meant to ensure favor with the priests rather than with the divine.
Neferhotep had been a devout follower of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld—a place reserved for the righteous, whose hearts were weighed after death. To enter Osiris’s realm was not a right, but a reward for those who lived justly.
Abuʿram’s grandmother, Tirzah, and his mother, Daliya, both hailing from Canaan, had adopted Neferhotep’s belief. Daliya often remarked that Osiris was likely the Egyptian version of El, the great Canaanite storm god. Though neither she nor her mother participated in Neferhotep’s Egyptian rituals, each wore amulets of Osiris tucked discreetly in the folds of their robes.
Osiris made sense to Abuʿram. He was a god who offered salvation for the kind, the compassionate, and the just. Osiris appealed to Abu’ram. Nevertheless, he remained skeptical of the divine realm—but gave Osiris credit because his grandfather had lived as though kindness, compassion, and justice truly mattered. Under the Akkadian pantheon, mortals were subject only to the whims of fate and the gods.
However, to say he was pious, much less devout, would be a stretch. On the whole, the religious demands of Akkadian life in Ur held little interest for him. As a son in one of the wealthiest families of Ur, he was free to follow his interests and impulses with little worry or consequence. In essence, his religious life was based on nothing more than a “go along to get along” faith.
He was, however, captivated by his grandfather, a strong yet distant man of few words. Neferhotep, for his part, had only one child, Abu’ram’s mother, Daliya. Abu’ram served as a reminder of Neferhotep’s youth in Egypt. Abu’ram, growing up in the presence of the old Egyptian, came to relish his stories. Told in Akkadian, not his native language, Neferhotep spoke Akkadian, a rough, guttural language, using the sing-song meter of his native Egyptian tongue. He told Abu’ram of the advice given by his father just before sending Neferhotep to Byblos,
“Ina ēkallī māt Miṣri atah pīḫu, ina tâmtim tēpuš šarrūtu,” he said, “’ In the courts of Egypt you will forever be a pawn, but across the great water you may become a king.’”
“So it came to pass,” said Neferhotep, “that in the days when my father, Khetyem son of Pharaoh Merikare, king of the two lands, saw that the princes of the court grew restless and the whispers against Pharaoh and his courtiers moved through the palace, he said to his wife, “Let us send Neferhotep, our son, to my holdings in the lands to the North and East, where the ships of Tyre move over the great sea, and the princes of Byblos deal in cedar and gold. Our son is bold and quick of mind, and can extend our reach within Canaan and beyond. The palace,” remarked Khetyem, “holds no future for Neferhotep.”
So Khetyem sent Neferhotep with a blessing from the god Osiris, but not of the priests, for their favor had grown thin in those days. Thus, Neferhotep was sent by the river to Memphis, and from Memphis he crossed the marshes by way of Pelusium, and there found harbor among the sea-folk.
“I was not yet a man,” he said to a rapt Abu’ram, “when the barque first dipped its prow into the Great Sea. The smell of the shorelines was pungent but not foul, and the salt of the water stung my face. Though I should have wept, knowing I would never return or see my father again, I exulted. The sea was my fate, and I relished its stench.”
“So we sailed north with the wind behind us and the sun to our backs. How strange it was not to see the land. It was on the sea that I learned what it was like to be untethered to all that I had known. I had been set free. While I was surely bound to the wind and the tides, these we could overcome with sail and stars. Ours was a freedom known to but a few, and I could not wait to be a part of this life.
“At Byblos,” his grandfather continued, “the kings wore beards like lions and gave gifts with one hand while counting with the other.”
With this, he smiled slyly. “In Tyre, I saw ships with hulls curved like crescent moons, and sails red as blood. They taught me to see the sea not as a border, but as a road. Moreover, I learned to build vessels that could turn into the wind, and not flee from it.”
Abu’ram asked, “Did you not long for home?”
Neferhotep answered, “There are homes of blood and homes of choice. My father gave me both: blood to remember who I was, and the choice to become who I must be. Had I remained in the house of Khetyem, I might not have lived to speak to you.”
–~–
The hope that the dreams would soon disappear never materialized. The next morning, after another restless night, Sarai stood at the doorway, arms crossed.
“You cannot go on like this,” she said.
Abuʿram rubbed his face. “They are dreams. Vague. Empty. I forget them by dawn.”
“Yet they leave you shaken.”
He said nothing.
“You should speak to a priest.”
“I might just as well speak to the wind,” he muttered.
But Sarai was insistent, and before the midday heat, Abuʿram found himself climbing the stone steps of the moon temple, where polished alabaster caught the light so that as he ascended, he shielded his eyes. Two temple guards, faces painted and motionless, allowed him through without a word.
Inside, cool darkness. Incense curled from shallow bowls. Oil lamps cast dancing shadows on the walls—figures of Nanna, the moon god, seated above the stars.
A priest approached. He was older, with thin lips and robes too fine for a man who claimed poverty on behalf of the gods.
Abuʿram bowed slightly—enough for courtesy, not devotion.
“I seek… an interpretation,” he said.
The priest’s tone was measured, professional. “Nanna grants dreams to guide the worthy. You have offered at the altar?”
“How do you not recognize me? My tribute is greater than most others by twofold.” Abuʿram paused, then said, “This is not about tribute.”
The priest blinked slowly. “Describe what you saw.”
“I remember nothing clearly. I dreamt I was dreaming, a dream of a dream. No one speaks. There is no voice, only memories. Not like anything I have known. No images. No symbols. I awake, I am haunted by the hills to the South. A land I have never known, nor care to know.”
The priest looked at him with polite boredom.
“Then your ‘dream’ is likely not from the divine realm. And the hills of which you speak are far, far to the South.”
The priest paused, adjusted his belt, and said, “Your anxieties arise because you know that Nanna’s providence cannot be found across the great rivers.”
“And know that Nanna speaks aloud, not within the vagaries of a dream or human imagination. Dreams are of your making, Abu’ram, not Nanna’s. We’re your dreams of Nanna’s making, there are no ambiguities.”
He gestured to Abu’ram, and the gesture was clear. He had been dismissed.
But Abu’ram stepped forward. Well into the priest’s private sphere. The priest backed away but understood that the man before him required more. At this, the priest’s brows drew together.
“There are spirits in the lower realms who imitate divine speech,” said the priest. “Sometimes dreams are tricks of demons. Or madness.” He turned, then, signaling the end of the audience. Without looking back, he said, “If the dreams persist, return with an offering. Nanna is a god of time. He reveals what he wills, when he wills. Until then, keep the prescribed rituals. Do not stray from the rites.”
Abuʿram snorted in disgust and turned back to the entrance. When he stepped back into the daylight, Daliya had joined Sarai at the entrance when Abu’ram emerged into the sunlight.
“You went to a priest?” she asked.
Looking to his wife he said, “Sarai insisted.”
“And the priest?”
Abuʿram shook his head. “He said to offer more tribute. And wait.”
It was Daliya’s turn: she snorted. “They always say that.”
She put a hand on his shoulder.
“Your grandfather once told me that the gods of Ur speak only in riddles, because they have nothing true to say.”
The dreams persisted for another month, then nothing. The rains passed. The summer winds had calmed, and Abu’ram was almost at peace. He had come to think that the priest may have been right after all.
But then, late one evening—on a night when the moon god Nanna was absent—Abu’ram stood alone again on the rise above his father’s grave. He treasured these summer nights when the sky was clear and the stars, more numerous than grains of sand on a beach, flooded the plains with light. In Harran, all fires were quenched, for the people feared that without Nanna’s gaze, misfortune might find them.
In those days, the priests taught that Nanna withdrew from the sky each month to sit among the gods in counsel—or to pass through the underworld, judging the spirits of the dead. Most believed that when tribute had not met expectations, Nanna turned his face from men, allowing other spirits to move among them—lesser ones, vengeful, lawless, without pity. Thus, each month on such nights, the people of Harran lit no fires, offered no prayers, and kept to their homes.
Abu’ram was undeterred by Nanna’s absence. This night, standing before his father’s grave, he marveled at the heavens. He tried to count the stars and smiled when, as always, he lost track of what he counted. But in the midst of these contemplations, he noticed three men—strangers, unrecognized—walking along the trail that led up the hill on which he stood. They did not appear armed, save for walking staves. And the path led to nowhere, save to him.
They were coming for him.
Abu’ram turned aside and swept the fold of his robe over his shoulder, exposing his sword’s hilt. The three could now see him above them, hand poised at his side. They neither stepped aside nor slowed their advance.
“Ušēšibū ša atta ēpušū!” barked Abu’ram in his native Akkadian. Stop where you are!
They continued, not pausing. They were within twenty paces.
Abu’ram stepped forward, assuming a fighter’s stance. This time he called out in the tongue of his mother’s people—the Canaanites, the early speech of the hill country:
“ʿImdû!” he commanded. “Stand still!”
Still, they came. But Abu’ram now could see that they were not aggressive. They closed the distance by half and then bowed their heads and laid their staves on the ground—a gesture of submission.
“We would speak with you,” said one of the men, “Abu’ram, son of Terah, great-grandson of Pharaoh Merikare. Sheath your sword, cover its hilt, and sit with us for a while.”
Mattan’s voice echoed in his head: “Guard your posture. Do not assume peace in the presence of strangers.”
“I will not sit, my friends,” said Abuʿram. “Please take no offense, but there are many who would take advantage of me, and you are strangers. I will keep my distance.”
“So be it,” said the man. “We will stand also.”
They leaned on their staves, struggling to rise. Only then did Abu’ram see that they were very old—perhaps older than any he had ever met. He felt a pang of shame.
“Let us return to my tents,” he offered. “You would do well with some food and rest.”
“No,” they said in unison.
Their leader continued, “Your kindness is welcome, but we have neither the time nor the inclination. We have far to travel this night. Let us speak now.” The man closest to him then asked, “Why are you still here in Harran?”
“This is my father’s land,” said Abuʿram. “When he passed, I became the owner of all that he possessed. But who are you to ask me such things?”
“We are nothing but your Lord’s messengers.”
“You do not understand,” snapped Abuʿram. “I have no lord. I am the lord of the land upon which you stand. No one but I holds sway here. And I grow tired of your impertinence. You do not know me well enough to speak so boldly.”
“We know everything about you, Abuʿram, lately of Ur, now of Harran. We know you are childless, even though having married Sarai, your half-sister, years ago. Given this, how can you call yourself Abuʿram—‘Exalted Father’—when you have no son to continue your name? You are no more than a lord of sheep and goats and dung-filled pastures. Not of people. Not of nations.”
“That is enough!” he shouted. “Leave my land! I will have nothing more to do with you.”
Abuʿram stepped around them and strode down the hill, his face burning with rage. Their words had exposed a truth long buried, a sorrow he could neither name nor ignore. A truth that even his mother, Daliya—the one closest to him—had never spoken aloud.
Sarai was asleep when he arrived home, so he went to Mattan’s tent, a short walk away. Mattan was sitting on a footstool with two shepherds; in front of them, a cold, dark fire pit filled with unburnt patties.
“You, too, Mattan,” he said, pointing to the darkened pit.
“It is what it is, my lord. It would not be wise to be the only lit fire in Harran on this night. Better we not offend these people, much less their god.”
Abu’ram said nothing.
“What brings you to my tent, Abu’ram?” Mattan nodded to his two companions. They understood the gesture and left Mattan’s side, after bowing to Abu’ram.
“I have just come from an encounter with three men. Old men. They could barely walk. I was on the rise overlooking my father’s grave.”
“It is very late, my lord,” said Mattan, interrupting Abu’ram, “how long ago was this encounter?”
“Not long,” said Abu’ram. “I came straight here after seeing that Sarai was asleep. Given their age and slowness, they may be at, or close to, the gates of the city by this time.” He thought for a moment before continuing. “They talked of things only known to us. How they knew of these matters is concerning.”
“Shall I catch up with them? Bring them to you?”
“Do not bring them to me this night. Bring them to the Shepherd’s tents. Even this late, our shepherds will have food, drink, and space to rest. I would speak with them in the morning.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Mattan. In a matter of moments, he roused four guards, each one slipping a short sword through their belt, three of whom fetched donkeys from the tether line—swift and sure-footed even in the dark.
“They will be at the gates or just beyond,” Mattan said. “They will not have gone far.”
Mattan’s men moved quickly, their steps confident even in the moonless dark. Three of the guards led their donkeys by the reins, careful not to raise dust or noise. The trail leading down from the rise was narrow but clear, and the guards fanned out as they searched.
They found nothing.
No discarded staves. No sign of old men moving slow.
The guards at the city gates had seen no one since the sun had set. No one had passed going up or coming down.
By dawn, Mattan returned, weary and concerned. His face said more than his words.
“We searched beyond the trail, into the wadi, and toward the road to Urfa. There was no one.” The guards at the gate had seen no travelers since sunset.” He hesitated. “If these men left, they left no trace. Even the shepherds in the surrounding hills saw nothing.” Mattan shook his head. “These three could not have taken the path to your father’s grave site without passing the gates without being noticed by the guards. I cannot conceive how they got to you. You could have been in great danger.”
Abuʿram said nothing. He turned toward the rise where they had stood, the place where the strangers had spoken his name and a truth he had refused to acknowledge.
Had they even been men?