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Sep. 22nd, 2008 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyTo mark Pagan Pride Day, I thought I'd share with you the results of my research into sacred prostitution in the Ancient Near East.
There wasn't any.
No, seriously. In the past couple of decades, scholarship has eroded the long unquestioned belief that there were priestess-prostitutes in Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Greece, until there's pretty much nothing left. Herodotus started the whole thing by claiming that all Babylonian women had to shag a stranger as a fund-raiser for the love goddess. Looks like that was just one of a bunch of tales about those whacky non-Greek barbarians which Herodotus repeated. He also said the Babylonians had no doctors and sold brides at auction, which is rubbish. No evidence has turned up for any of it.
Nonetheless, for a long time scholars translated nearly every Mesopotamian term for a priestess as "harlot", etc, whatever the word actually meant. A good example is naditum, which literally means "woman who lies fallow" - a naditum was not allowed to bear children, and lived in a women-only sanctuary. Basically, she was a kind of nun, and yet for years the term was translated as "hierodule" or "sacred prostitute".
Something similar seems to have happened with the term for another kind of priestess, the Canaanite qedesha (male, qadesh), and Mesopotamian qadishtum (the word literally means "sacred" - same root as kaddish). qedeshot and qadeshim are associated with prostitutes in a few places in the Bible, most clearly in the story of Tamar, who disguises herself as a zonah (harlot); Judah buys her services, promising to send her a kid as additional payment. later, Judah's servant tries to find her and asks the locals if they've seen the qedesha... and that's about it for the evidence that a qedesha was a whore1. In fact, earlier Bible translations didn't render qadesh and qedesha as "sodomite" and "harlot". But later editions translate the words as "whores", "male shrine prostitutes" etc.
Nothing in the cuneiform sources from Canaan or Mesopotamia supports the idea of sacred prostitution. In the Canaanite city of Ugarit, a qadesh was a type of high-ranking priest - there's no mention of his having anything do with sex. Similarly, there's no evidence that sex was part of the job of the Babylonian qadishtum. Moreover, there are mentions of dire results for men who boink a priestess - including losing his voice and having a "scaly penis"!
The one exception is the "sacred marriage", a ritual from one period in Sumerian history in which the king and a priestess, representing the goddess Inanna, had sex. It isn't as exciting as it might sound. It took place just once a year, and since the queen could be a priestess, it didn't even have to be extramarital. Later, the whole thing was replaced by simply putting the statues of god and goddess into a garden together overnight.
The idea of "sacred prostitution" was a lascivious fantasy about sexy foreigners which became received wisdom, in turn giving modern writers licence to indulge in their own fantasies. (There's a corker in Nancy Qualls-Corbett's The sacred prostitute: eternal aspect of the feminine in which a "world-weary" man is quite mercilessly pampered.) IMHO, modern writers looking for a sex-positive setting might do better to look at the real, historical Mesopotamia. It wasn't a free-for-all orgy, nor a feminist utopia - but prostitutes were neither criminals nor sinners. What could contrast more with our own culture's attitudes to women and sex?
(I'll post a more detailed version of this over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ikhet_sekhmet when I get the chance, including all my sources - the two most important are Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World, edited by Daraone and McClure, and In the Wake of the Goddesses by Frymer-Kensky.)
__
1 My favourite explanation is that the servant is embarrassed and pretends he's offering the kid to a priestess for sacrifice. :) That's not just fancy - there's a mention of "sacrificing with qadeshot" in Hosea 4:14.
There wasn't any.
No, seriously. In the past couple of decades, scholarship has eroded the long unquestioned belief that there were priestess-prostitutes in Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Greece, until there's pretty much nothing left. Herodotus started the whole thing by claiming that all Babylonian women had to shag a stranger as a fund-raiser for the love goddess. Looks like that was just one of a bunch of tales about those whacky non-Greek barbarians which Herodotus repeated. He also said the Babylonians had no doctors and sold brides at auction, which is rubbish. No evidence has turned up for any of it.
Nonetheless, for a long time scholars translated nearly every Mesopotamian term for a priestess as "harlot", etc, whatever the word actually meant. A good example is naditum, which literally means "woman who lies fallow" - a naditum was not allowed to bear children, and lived in a women-only sanctuary. Basically, she was a kind of nun, and yet for years the term was translated as "hierodule" or "sacred prostitute".
Something similar seems to have happened with the term for another kind of priestess, the Canaanite qedesha (male, qadesh), and Mesopotamian qadishtum (the word literally means "sacred" - same root as kaddish). qedeshot and qadeshim are associated with prostitutes in a few places in the Bible, most clearly in the story of Tamar, who disguises herself as a zonah (harlot); Judah buys her services, promising to send her a kid as additional payment. later, Judah's servant tries to find her and asks the locals if they've seen the qedesha... and that's about it for the evidence that a qedesha was a whore1. In fact, earlier Bible translations didn't render qadesh and qedesha as "sodomite" and "harlot". But later editions translate the words as "whores", "male shrine prostitutes" etc.
Nothing in the cuneiform sources from Canaan or Mesopotamia supports the idea of sacred prostitution. In the Canaanite city of Ugarit, a qadesh was a type of high-ranking priest - there's no mention of his having anything do with sex. Similarly, there's no evidence that sex was part of the job of the Babylonian qadishtum. Moreover, there are mentions of dire results for men who boink a priestess - including losing his voice and having a "scaly penis"!
The one exception is the "sacred marriage", a ritual from one period in Sumerian history in which the king and a priestess, representing the goddess Inanna, had sex. It isn't as exciting as it might sound. It took place just once a year, and since the queen could be a priestess, it didn't even have to be extramarital. Later, the whole thing was replaced by simply putting the statues of god and goddess into a garden together overnight.
The idea of "sacred prostitution" was a lascivious fantasy about sexy foreigners which became received wisdom, in turn giving modern writers licence to indulge in their own fantasies. (There's a corker in Nancy Qualls-Corbett's The sacred prostitute: eternal aspect of the feminine in which a "world-weary" man is quite mercilessly pampered.) IMHO, modern writers looking for a sex-positive setting might do better to look at the real, historical Mesopotamia. It wasn't a free-for-all orgy, nor a feminist utopia - but prostitutes were neither criminals nor sinners. What could contrast more with our own culture's attitudes to women and sex?
(I'll post a more detailed version of this over at
ikhet_sekhmet when I get the chance, including all my sources - the two most important are Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World, edited by Daraone and McClure, and In the Wake of the Goddesses by Frymer-Kensky.)__
1 My favourite explanation is that the servant is embarrassed and pretends he's offering the kid to a priestess for sacrifice. :) That's not just fancy - there's a mention of "sacrificing with qadeshot" in Hosea 4:14.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 10:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 07:35 pm (UTC)But on the subject of harlots... I swear to goddess that I found this brand of lipshine (http://www.harlotte.com.au) in a Barbie kid's fun pack or similar.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-22 10:58 pm (UTC)Just goes to show, those Ancient greeks will say anything.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-03 01:27 pm (UTC)