 |
| Goddess or temple prostitute? These ivory furniture inlays have been called both in the past and illustrate the flaws of hanging on to out of date ideas. South Syrian style ivory, 8th century. Image © Metropolitan Museum (57.80.11). |
Catchy title eh?
It is always a challenge to create a caption that captures
what I wish to say AND that will be searchable in Google. But this one was no challenge, because
‘Mesopotamian sacred prostitution’ will get hits. Too many hits actually, to an array of
dubious sites, ludicrous when you consider it is largely a myth created by a
few not unbiased ancient writers and then reinforced by James George Frazer in
1911.
Yet this is a myth that is not supported by any
archaeological evidence from Mesopotamia for the period from say 3000 BCE to
the conquest of Alexander in 320 BCE, it is instead largely argued from
information written between about 700 BCE and 200 CE.
And the most important influence on this myth today is a
paragraph from Herodotus.
 |
| Herodotus Histories, Chapter I:199 |
Herodotus (484-425 BCE) - Historia
Herodotus was a cultural ‘historian’ from Halicarnassus, a
Greek settlement in south western Anatolia during Persian rule, however on the
basis of what little is known about him, he is believed to have travelled
widely and ultimately settled in Athens in Greece.
The Histories ('Historia' actually means - to learn from inquiry) was written in the mid 5th century BCE and is a concoction of travel guides, history and tall tales all gleefully thrown together in a narrative ostensibly designed as a
political history of the ancient eastern Mediterranean. Herodotus is therefore variously dubbed ‘the
father of history’ or the ‘father of lies’ for obvious reasons, depending on
your inclination.
The topic here, Herodotus’ critique of Babylonian sexual
morals, is contemporary with the invasion of Greece, when the Persian empire
was a major player on the Near Eastern stage, and was pushing relentlessly in
directions that the Greeks in the Aegean found highly problematic.
Here’s your
first issue, the Near Eastern empire was a major political and military threat
at that time, this will have coloured his approach somewhat.
So what did
Herodotus write about sacred prostitution in Babylon?
‘The foulest Babylonian custom is that which
compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite
and have intercourse with a male foreigner at least once in her life ….. most
sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads;
there is a great multitude of women coming and going; passages marked by line
run every way through the crowd, by which the men pass and make their
choice. Once a woman has taken
her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast
money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while
he casts the money, he must say, ‘I invite you in the name of Mylitta’. It does not matter what sum the money is; the
woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act
made sacred. So she follows the first
man who casts it and rejects no one.
After their intercourse, having discharged her sacred duty to the
goddess, she goes away to her home; and thereafter there is no bribe however
great that will get her. So then women that are fair and tall
are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot
fulfil the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four.’ ... Histories
1.199.
Herodotus
opens his anecdote with phrasing that emphasises his lack of impartiality; αἴσχιστος τῶν
νόμων … I would
translate it … ‘(the) most shameful of customs’, which is btw pretty rich coming from
a male resident of an ancient culture with an
appalling track record for the treatment of women and slaves.
Anyway, this is the earliest and most influential piece of
evidence on the topic of sacred prostitution, and in it Herodotus states that
Babylonian women of the 5th century BCE were forced to have sex, not with strangers
btw, but with foreign men, at the temple of Aphrodite (poss. Ishtar or Nanaya) in Babylon once in their
lifetime.
There is incidentally no written evidence of this custom
from Babylon itself. But Herodotus
cannot take all the blame for this farce, as other classical scholars took his
example and passed it on.
 |
A 19th century western fantasy largely
based on Herodotus and Biblical models
with a healthy dash of Neo-Assyrian palace for tone. ‘Babylonian
marriage market’,
Edwin Long 1875. Image Wikipedia.
|
Strabo (63 BCE-23 CE) - Geographica
The writer Strabo while hailing from the Black Sea region
lived most of his life in Rome in the early empire. In his Geography he largely repeats
Herodotus’ account, but he also adds an interesting variation on cult practices
in Egypt. Apparently the Egyptians of
the 1st century consecrated young unmarried socialites at the
temple of Amen for the purposes of consorting with strangers.
‘to Zeus (Amen) who is held in the highest honour, they
dedicate a maiden of greatest beauty and most illustrious family and she
prostitutes herself, and cohabits with whatever men she wishes, until the
natural cleansing of her body takes place; and after her cleansing she is
given in marriage to a man; but before she is married, after the time of
her prostitution, a rite of mourning is celebrated for her.’ ... Geography 17.1.46
His snippet about Babylon is brief and basically rehashes
Herodotus’ anecdote.
‘There is a custom for all Babylonian women to have
intercourse with foreigners. These repair to a temple of Aphrodite accompanied
by many attendants and a crowd. Each woman has a cord placed around her
head. A man approaches a woman and
places in her lap as much silver as he thinks worthy; he then leads her away
from the sacred grove and has intercourse with her. The silver is considered to be consecrated to
Aphrodite.’ … Geography 16.1.20
So Strabo brings nothing new to the table about Babylonian customs and throws in a completely unsubstantiated claim about Roman period
Egypt, which incidentally has never had any influence on Egyptology, but the
slur on Babylon has stuck.
 |
Greco-Roman
period figurine of a Near Eastern naked goddess, most likely Nanaya, goddess of love,
who was associated with the moon in this period. Image © Louvre (AO 20131).
|
Lucian of Samosota (120-180 CE) – De Dea Syria
Lucian is much later than the previous gentlemen, having
been alive and kicking in the 3rd century of the Roman Empire well after all
the cool kids, like Julius Caesar, Augustus or Nero. He was a Roman citizen from Commagene, a
small state in what is now south eastern Anatolia, however, he
was well travelled and spent much of his life in various parts of the empire.
The Syrian
Goddess is considered to be a critique of the cult practices of the temple of
the chief goddess (Atargatis) at Hierapolis (‘Holy City’), in northern
Syria during the Roman era, however, among all the anecdotes relating to this
temple he makes no mention of ‘sacred prostitution’, rather his brief quotable
quote is about Byblos in what is now Lebanon.
Here is your first problem, he wasn’t a fan, rather Lucian
of Samosota was a satirist, which makes his critique biased, perhaps in a
humorous way, I am not entirely sure.
And he was also not writing in any period we would associate with a
major Mesopotamian ancient culture – in fact he was 700 years later than
Neo-Assyria or Neo-Babylonia and 2000+ years later than the Sumerians.
Therefore anything he does say contributes nothing to what
we know about Sumerian or Akkadian cult practices, it might, I repeat
might, bear some relation to Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian - but only if their
sources backed this up. In fact it is
still disputed whether his book provides evidence of Levantine cult in
Roman occupied late antiquity.
 |
| Still from the silent film Intolerance, a Babylon slave market, based on the Edwin Long painting. |
What did Lucian write?
The Syrian Goddess - De Dea Syria
In the city of Byblos in the Levant at the temple
of the Byblian Aphrodite secret rites were performed annually for Adonis,
her dying and reborn lover. These rites were introduced to Byblos , not from Assyria, but from the city of the sun (Heliopolis) in Egypt by the Phoenicians. As a part of
the rituals mourners shaved their heads like the Egyptians did for the god
Apis.
‘Of the women who shrink from this and do not wish to shave
(their heads), these must stand alone over a day in the agora and consort with
foreigners. Then the payment is given as an offering to Aphrodite.’ ... De dea Syria 6
So let’s take this at face value: In around 150 CE at a temple to ‘Aphrodite’ women were reputedly punished for
not observing local religious rituals by having sex with foreign men. Assuming this practice is correctly reported,
it is neither taking place in Mesopotamia, nor is this prostitution per se. They, like the women of Herodotus and Strabo,
are not having sex in a professional capacity, here it is a local form of
punishment. I suspect it is not even
part-time prostitution.
And incidentally at no point do the authors
use the terms ‘sacred prostitution’, nor do they use any ancient terms for
prostitutes, like pornai, or sacred servants - hierodouloi.
Next
Now your obvious question ought to be, how are these
libellous anecdotes from one Greek and two Roman period writers so influential on
this topic?
The answer is firmly placed in western 19th century
scholarship where much of what was understood about the ancient Near East was
based on classical Greek and Roman texts and on the Christian Bible (another biased source). Basically
because we had little else then.
In around 1850 for example the western world had just
discovered the ruins of Neo-Assyrian palaces in Iraq and had little original archaeological
evidence to go on (they were too busy looting the sites for giant lamassu), so
these much later written texts dominated their interpretation, and just to be
clear, their own cultural values did too.
 |
| A nice example for not trusting secondary sources. |
The evidence from Mesopotamia
There currently isn’t any evidence that sacred prostitution
was practiced within Mesopotamian sanctuaries in the 3rd and 2nd
millennia. At a stretch it could be
argued that ritual based sexual activities may have occurred at some time at
certain temples over a 3000 year period, but this is based on a given measure
of what that phrase might mean, and in western scholarship this assumption is
often based on texts describing the hieros gamos, the ‘sacred marriage’.
The hieros gamos also comes courtesy of Herodotus, but James
George Frazer subsequently reinforced this idea in his book, The Golden Bough,
in the early 1900s. In Book II he cites another passage from Herodotus for Babylon, and Strabo for Egypt
(above) to argue the universality of this ‘barbarous’ religious practice, and
its comparison to the rites of Diana at Nemi in Roman Italy.
I might add he paraphrases the originals freely and
inserts manipulative touches like ‘might have no intercourse with no mortal
man’ to both Herodotus and to Strabo.
However, his work was enormously influential until the late 20th century,
when anthropologists began getting pickier about actual evidence. Do not get me started on how racist and western colonialist his writing is.
It is no service to the democratic spread of information in this day
that Frazer’s book has never been out of publication and is still more
accessible to the public than up to date research on ancient Mesopotamian
cult.
 |
| eewwww |
Hieros gamos: sacred marriage at the Esagila of
Marduk
‘In the last tower there is a great shrine; and in it stands
a great and well-covered couch, and a golden table nearby. But no image has
been set up in the shrine, nor does any human creature lie there for the night,
except one native woman, chosen from all women by the god, as the Chaldaeans
say, who are priests of this god. These
same Chaldaeans say (though I do not believe them) that the god himself is
accustomed to visit the shrine and rest on the couch, as in Thebes of Egypt, as
the Egyptians say.’ ... Herodotus - Histories 1.181.5-182.1
God and priestess
First of all Herodotus’ description here is misleading,
as this ‘native woman’ was not a passive vulnerable individual. Instead she will have been a powerful figure, the high priestess of the Babylonian
state god Marduk, who was literally married to her master and who will have
performed the appropriate annual and daily religious rituals with his earthly
manifestation, the statue in his shrine.
These women were usually the daughters of kings and very high status, their royal daddy will have chosen them.
 | |
| Calcite disk of Enheduanna, high priestess and wife of the moon god Nanna at Ur in the Akkadian period, ca 2350 BCE. University of Pennsylvania Museum (U 6612). Image Wikipedia. |
In ancient
Egypt and Mesopotamia the god was believed to reside in their statue in the
holy of holies of a sanctuary and this ‘living divine image’ would be daily washed,
fed, dressed and anointed with oils.
When a god travelled to another city, or went to war it was in fact
their statue carried before the army, or in procession at festivals, no doubt it was this
figure that a high priest or high priestess ritually married.
And note I also said high priest, as important goddesses married their high priests, who were often kings. Mesopotamian gods were equal opportunity employers, but you never hear anyone suggesting these sacred husbands of a goddess were male prostitutes.
And note I also said high priest, as important goddesses married their high priests, who were often kings. Mesopotamian gods were equal opportunity employers, but you never hear anyone suggesting these sacred husbands of a goddess were male prostitutes.
Priest king and goddess
In the Neo-Babylonian period (early 1st millennium BCE) there
are also royal records that recount that the Babylonian king as representive of the god
Marduk ritually consorted with the goddess Ishtar during the 10th day of
the New Year Akitu festival. This 'goddess' will
also most likely have been her most senior priestess, if this ritual was
ever actually performed between real people.
Because ,beyond the quite extensive research that is available of the
complex rituals associated with cult statues, evidence for the hieros gamos
from Mesopotamia itself is predominantly textual and consists of religious
myths, the festival ritual and royal rhetoric, none of these may be assumed to
be historically accurate sources.
All of these; cult ritual, religious myth, royal protocol may be considered culturally specific and also potentially rhetoric rather than fact. But more to the point, they have nothing to do with prostitution.
All of these; cult ritual, religious myth, royal protocol may be considered culturally specific and also potentially rhetoric rather than fact. But more to the point, they have nothing to do with prostitution.
 |
| Translation from ORACC - Q005644 - Sargon I 2001. |
Archaeological evidence
Yet if you go to any light or medium-weight article on the topic of sacred
prostitution they will cobble together bits of quotes from
those texts I have cited above by Frazer, Herodotus, Strabo, and Lucian, often
misquoting them btw, because they used Google, and then to prop up this
evidence they will cite the myth of the hieros gamos as proof that sacred
prostitution was practiced in Mesopotamia.
Sacred marriage ≠ sacred prostitution, get a grip.
To prove the already rather weak point they invariably throw
in some images of the goddess of kingship and sensual desire, Ishtar (with or without clothes), or her
symbols, with the timely addition of some Old Babylonian erotic plaques
that show couples having intercourse, or some plaques of nude or semi nude female figures.
 |
Erotic plaques from Babylon (left) and the Ishtar temple at Assur
(right). Mid and Late Bronze Age.
Images © Pergamon Museum, Berlin (VA
Bab 03576 & VA Ass 04244).
|
However, none of these examples contribute anything to the
rationale that sacred prostitution existed, they are just fluffy padding. Images of intercourse or nudity are not
evidence of prostitution or promiscuity.
Sex and nudity ≠ prostitution
Metal, clay
and faience votive plaques of naked female figures, male and female sexual
organs and erotic plaques were left as offerings at cult centres of gods and
goddesses from the 3rd to the end of the 1st millennia in Mesopotamia. They will also have been kept at
household shrines, or carried as apotropaic amulets. Some were probably worn as jewellery.
 |
| Clay mould made naked female figurines from Susa. Middle Elamite, Late Bronze Age. Image © British Museum (91825). |
Because
they are small, portable, easily reproduced and often made from less costly
materials they are considered to be representative of popular belief and cult
across the ancient Near East. The clay naked female plaques for example cannot be argued to be
goddesses of any description due to their having no specific divine attributes, however, that
they are fertility figures is also a simplistic rationale.
Naked ≠
baby making
This
assumption too is somewhat out of date, instead the naked figurines have been argued to be physical expressions of female sexual desire, sensuality and physical
attractiveness, something that has incidentally not been a topic of interest to
researchers before the end of last century. In fact, it took way to long for some bright spark to suggest they might actually be designed to express female values about their own sexuality.
Therefore, post as many nude figurines or erotic images as you like,
these objects provide no support to an argument for the
existence of sacred prostitution in Mesopotamia in antiquity, or even mundane prostitution,
unless you are, let’s call it, struggling with your own demons, or from a
culture that has issues with its own sexuality, or both.
And if that is the case, you may want to avert your eyes now.
 |
| Faience votive genitalia from Babylon. That's right, the Mesopotamians did not just offer gods female genitalia in temples, penises were also de rigueur. Late Bronze Age. Image © Pergamon museum Berlin: (VA Bab 01630.001-3). |
Mesopotamian sacred prostitution
To wind up, there is little or no ‘on the ground’ evidence
for this practice, if you exclude the late anecdotes from a few biased classical
Greek and Roman writers and take the images of half dressed women or erotica out of the
equation.
However, ‘sacred prostitution’ is a highly
suitable topic for this blog, for I am not just interested in
artistic licence within art history or the media, or the charmless
fantasising of modern history fraudsters, I am also interested in the use of
artistic licence with language. In this case we are viewing down-the-line licence; from
cuneiform to biblical Hebrew across to ancient Greek, Latin and finally to
modern English.
And once in English a gleeful enthusiasm for salacious
synonyms.
So by artistic licence here I actually mean ethno-centric and subjective
misrepresentation. Often based on the
translations of texts. Very rarely do
disparate languages actually have direct crossovers for their words,
particularly for cultural ideas, and just to be clear ‘prostitution’ is a
culturally specific idea. So is brothel, or priest, or even marriage.
This is without even dealing with the use of hyperbolic
English wording in early translations and contemporary media to quite
literally ‘sex up’ the topic; like ‘shocking’, ‘disgusted’, ‘eyebrow raising’,
‘virgin’, ‘harlot’, or ‘promiscuous’ (see Ancient Origins below).
In fact, it is particularly impressive how many obsolete and old fashioned terms for common prostitute get dusted off on these occasions; classics like harlot, strumpet or doxy that otherwise rarely see the light of day.
In fact, it is particularly impressive how many obsolete and old fashioned terms for common prostitute get dusted off on these occasions; classics like harlot, strumpet or doxy that otherwise rarely see the light of day.
 |
| Norman Yoffee 2004. |
And, I would add, these are words that bear little or no relationship
to the terms they are translating, like harimtu (‘separate one’), qadishtu (‘consecrated’), qadshu (‘holy
one’), kezertu (‘one of curled hair’) or naditu (‘childless one’).
Terms that are now thought to indicate ancient religious roles for women that were independent of marriage and childbearing, roles that were often associated with different activities and rank at sanctuaries and temple complexes, will have evolved over time and whose exact sacral nature is still disputed within academia.
Terms that are now thought to indicate ancient religious roles for women that were independent of marriage and childbearing, roles that were often associated with different activities and rank at sanctuaries and temple complexes, will have evolved over time and whose exact sacral nature is still disputed within academia.
These women's sexual activities within these roles are a matter of debate.
As one brief example, the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, princess Enheduanna, the world's earliest female poet, was naditu priestess of the sky god An and high priestess (and wife) of the moon god Nanna. In terms of social status she was ranked somewhere just below her father, the king. It would be a stretch to make her fit into Herodotus and Frazer’s model of Mesopotamian promiscuity, languishing on a couch like a harem concubine at the top of a ziggurat.
As one brief example, the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, princess Enheduanna, the world's earliest female poet, was naditu priestess of the sky god An and high priestess (and wife) of the moon god Nanna. In terms of social status she was ranked somewhere just below her father, the king. It would be a stretch to make her fit into Herodotus and Frazer’s model of Mesopotamian promiscuity, languishing on a couch like a harem concubine at the top of a ziggurat.
Yet these terms, including naditu, are often still translated as ‘harlot’, ‘strumpet,’ or
‘prostitute’ in contemporary lexica and publications. Presumably because the writers feel an irrational need to vary their vocabulary.
 |
| Source Online Etymological Dictionary. |
‘Tis a pity she’s a whore’
So lets just look at this term ‘sacred prostitution’ that
ultimately stems from 19th century classical scholarship, a field that was
almost entirely consistent of quite pasty European men from well-to-do Victorian families, who no doubt had very particular ideas of what the
words prostitution and harlot entailed.
Think of say any novel by Charles Dickens...
Then try to squeeze the goddess who led armies into battle
and assigned kingship in Mesopotamia into the phrase ‘the harlot Ishtar’
(harimtu Ishtar).
Now you have done this, let’s go back to the English word
‘prostitution’.
This word has no value range for any type of religious
activity in English. You can plonk the
word ‘sacred’ or ‘temple’ on to the front of it, but the basic value
determinedly remains. The word points
the reader unconsciously or consciously in a specific derogatory and socially
negative direction.
You can dress it up any way you like. It is a term for a recognised profession that
provides sexual intercourse of some description for a given fee.
 |
| Source Online Etymological Dictionary. |
This value in English is subjective and irrelevant to the sexual values and
religious practices of another culture, ancient or modern. Before 700 BCE no Near Eastern culture had a
monetary based economy, not Egypt, not Sumer, nor Akkad, nor Amorite Babylon, none of them used money, instead the king and
state controlled the movement of people, food and goods.
It is therefore still a matter of debate whether independent
commercial activity occurred in Mesopotamia before 1200 BCE, so it would be
interesting to know how it was possible to run a tavern that provided sexual services as a sideline, unless these were state affiliated, or is this how the running
of sanctuaries and temples were imagined?
And if so this will have borne little relationship to the model that the English words inn, brothel and prostitution evoke.
And if so this will have borne little relationship to the model that the English words inn, brothel and prostitution evoke.
 |
| Norman Yoffee 2004, 126. |
However, the issue here is not the existence or
non-existence of prostitution in Mesopotamia, in fact I don't actually care. Rather it is the determined perpetuation of the myth of sacred or temple prostitution that grinds my gears.
Sexual intercourse or ritual marriage performed by
individuals consecrated to a god as part of religious ritual at sanctuaries and
temples bear absolutely no relationship to commerce, assuming that these ever
occurred in ancient Mesopotamia, which incidentally we cannot prove at present.
So kindly put Herodotus and your puritanical values aside
when you study ancient cultures, and watch your damn language (if you must
write about it).
Andrea
Sinclair
2020
On the Net
JH. Stuckey 2005. at Matrifocus. ‘Sacred Prostitutes’
http://www.matrifocus.com/SAM05/spotlight.htm
http://www.matrifocus.com/SAM05/spotlight.htm
Not overly up to
date, but Stuckey does a reasonable job of tackling this myth, while bearing in
mind she is influenced by the now discredited myth of a great mother goddess.
Sumerian Shakespeare has written 8 blog articles on this topic, lowlights being:
2018. ‘Babylonian Temple Prostitutes’
http://sumerianshakespeare.com/999701/1064401.html
2019: ‘Babylonian Prostitutes’
http://sumerianshakespeare.com/999701/1072501.html
SS applies his customary one-eyed approach and argues
that clay plaques from 2nd millennium Mesopotamia show temple
prostitutes, due to their posture (cupping their breasts),
panties (lol, panties were invented when?), and semi-nudity
(gasp). His version of Herodotus is
‘creative’, and his outrage at H for suggesting his beloved Babylonians were immoral
is predictable, but inconsistent, because he totally buys the sacred prostition myth. He applies ill-informed reasoning and uses absolutist
language with a healthy dash of modern sex worker terms. His glee at having identified these figures as prostitutes in 2019 is somewhat tempered by the knowledge that Henry Frankfort got in ahead of him 80 years earlier (1939).
Ancient Origins 2016. ‘Lost in Translation?
Understandings and Misunderstandings about the Ancient Practice of “Sacred
Prostitution”’
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history/lost-translation-understandings-and-misunderstandings-about-ancient-practice-sacred-021006
Ancient Origins run with a smutty approach, the
writer simultaneously dismisses academic critics of the myth and
misrepresents their numbers (‘a fraction’), while gleefully pretending the
article is impartial. The source for much of their information appears to be a book by neo-pagan
Barbara G. Walker from 1983, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and
Secrets. Her statements about the
etymology of ‘harlot’ and Ishtar are complete fiction. These errors are perpetuated in later
alternative scene publications citing her book, and in this AO piece (not citing
her).
 |
| http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/akklove/ |
Academics who reject or question the myth of sacred prostitution in
Mesopotamia:
D. Arnaud, J. Assante, S.L. Budin, N. Brisch, J. DeGrado, J.G. Westernholz, M.
van de Mieroop, B. Menzel.
But don't trust me, read some of these:
References
Asher-Greve, J. and D. Sweeney 2006. ‘On Nakedness, Nudity
and Gender in Egyptian and Mesopotamian Art. In Images and Gender, OBO 220.
Assante, J. 1999. ‛The
kar.kid/harimtu; Prostitute or Single Woman?’ Ugarit-Forschungen 30.
Assante, J. 2007. ‛What
Makes a ‘Prostitute’ a Prostitute? Modern Definitions and Ancient Meanings.’
In Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World.
Assante, J. 2009. ‘Bad
Girls and Kinky Boys: The Modern Prostituting of Ishtar, her Clergy and her
Cults.’ In Tempelprostitution im Altertum.
Bahrani, Z. 2001. Women of Babylon: Gender and
Representation in Mesopotamia.
Beard, M. and J. Henderson 2002. With this Body I Thee Worship: Sacred
Prostitution in Antiquity.
Benzel, K. 2013. ‘Ornaments of Interaction: Jewelry in the Late Bronze Age.’ In Cultures in Contact from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean in the Second Millennium.
Benzel, K. 2013. ‘Ornaments of Interaction: Jewelry in the Late Bronze Age.’ In Cultures in Contact from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean in the Second Millennium.
Budin, S.L. 2008. The
Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity.
Budin, S.L. 2022, ‛Sisters are doing it for themselves’, podcast for Peopling the Past
blog at
https://peoplingthepast.com/2022/06/14/podcast-season-3-episode-3-stephanie-budin/?fbclid=IwAR3GYNH4guB1tRMRRQ2rZ3gdVadjKb4u4hgXqZYl8SeF-tp1_5QJDpCI6Qo
Budin, S.L. 2026. Sex and Sexuality in the Ancient Near East. Cambridge University Press.
Brisch, N. 2021. ‘Samhat: Deconstructing Temple Prostitution One Woman at a Time.’ In Powerful Women in the Ancient World.
Cornelius, S. 2004. ‘A Preliminary Typology for the Female
Plaque Figurines and their Value for the Religion of Ancient Palestine and
Jordan’. JNSL 30.
DeGrado, J. 2018. ‛The
qdesha in Hosea 4:14: Putting the (Myth of the) Sacred Prostitute to Bed.’ Vetus Testamentum.
Harbeck, J. @Sesquiotic, 2020, ‛Little Dears’ at Strong Language blog: A blog about swearing - https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2020/07/22/little-dears/
Harbeck, J. @Sesquiotic, 2020, ‛Little Dears’ at Strong Language blog: A blog about swearing - https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2020/07/22/little-dears/
May, NN. 2022. ‛Women in Cult in 1st Millennium BCE Mesopotamia’. In The Mummy under the Bed: Essays on Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East.
Pongratz-Leisten, B.
2008. ‘Sacred Marriage and the Transfer of Divine Knowledge: Alliances between
the Gods and the King in Ancient Mesopotamia.’
In Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human
Sexual Metaphor from Sumer
to Early Christianity.
Stol, M. 2016. Women
in the Ancient Near East.
Westenholz, JG. 1989. ‛Tamar, Qedeša, Qadištu and Sacred Prostitution’. Harvard Theological
Revue.
Weingarten, J. 2013-4. ‘Sex Play in Ancient Canaan’ (I-III). Zenobia: Empress of the East.
Weingarten, J. 2013-4. ‘Sex Play in Ancient Canaan’ (I-III). Zenobia: Empress of the East.
http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2013/12/sex-play-in-ancient-canaan.html
http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2013/12/sex-play-in-ancient-canaan-part-ii.html
http://judithweingarten.blogspot.com/2014/01/sex-play-in-ancient-canaan-part-iii.html
Yoffee, N. 2004. ‘Imagining Sex in an Early State.’ In Myths of the Archaic State.
The long dead classicists are available at Perseus Digital
Library - Tufts
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collection?collection=Perseus:collection:Greco-Roman
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/collection?collection=Perseus:collection:Greco-Roman
Herodotus - Histories Book II
Lucian - The Syrian Goddess (only in Greek)
Strabo - Geography Book I
