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The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger once in her life. Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to mingle with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and stand there with a great retinue of attendants. But 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” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). 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 the 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.
“The temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it employed more than a thousand hetairas,whom both men and women had given to the goddess. Many people visisted the town on account of them, and thus these hetairas contributed to the riches of the town
In 464 BCE, a man named Xenophon, a citizen of Corinth who was an acclaimed runner and winner of pentathlon at the Olympic Games, dedicated one hundred young girls to the temple of the goddess as a sign of thanksgiving.
In Hinduism, a devadasi (Sanskrit: servant of deva or devi (god)) is a girl “married” to a deity and dedicated to worship and service of the deity or a temple for the rest of her life. Originally, in addition to taking care of the temple and performing rituals, these women learned and practiced Sadir (Bharatanatya), Odissi and other classical Indian artistic traditions and enjoyed a high social status as dance and music were essential part of temple worship.
During British rule in the Indian subcontinent, kings who were the patrons of temples and temple arts became powerless. As a result, devadasis were left without their traditional means of support and patronage.
This simple word, 'devadasi' says Dr. I.S. Gilada, one of India's most prominent AIDS activists and an honorary secretary of the Indian Health Organization, "is a label which condemns 5,000 to 10,000 girls every year into a life of sexual servitude (concubinage) and subsequently into prostitution.
Durgamma walks up to the temple where a priest puts a glittering string of red and white beads strung on saffron colored thread around her neck. No groom, however, comes to meet this bride. Instead Durgamma is wed to the temple goddess, and her life will be spent as a devadasi, a temple prostitute.
References to devadasis, which literally means "god's servants," are found in Hindu scriptures dating back 4,000 years. Then, devadasis cleaned the temples, kept the temple bells, and performed ritual dances to appease the gods and goddesses. The earliest devadasis were virgins who pledged to remain celibate, but over the years the state began supporting devadasis, and the girls became mistresses to the kings.
An "improbable percentage of the population [of Mesopotamia and Syria-Canaan] must have been either secular or religious prostitutes of some sort," wrote Beatrice Brooks in 1941 She was drawing conclusions from the writings of predominantly male scholars who accepted without question the concept of "sacred, cult, or temple prostitutes." Female temple functionaries, they maintained, regularly engaged in sexual intercourse in return for a payment to their temples.
Female devotees of Inanna/Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of sexuality and love, were "immediately" suspect of such behavior
Tragically," says one contemporary scholar, "scholarship suffered from scholars being unable to imagine any cultic role for women in antiquity that did not involve sexual intercourse"
It's a very tragic story really, and one that continues to this day as seen, the general solution tends to be remove all aspects of Goddess worship from greater society, but were does the real scandal lie....?
It's a very tragic story really, and one that continues to this day as seen, the general solution tends to be remove all aspects of Goddess worship from greater society, but were does the real scandal lie....?
By the time of the Greeks, Temples of Ishtar and Aphrodite were nothing but mystical themed. knocking shops were the girls could be bought for a few copper coins, there was nothing sacred about any of this, nor was there any mythological premise for how this was the way it was meant to be...quite the opposite.
Artemis (variants Arktemis, Arktemisa) is most likely related to Greek árktos ‘bear’ (from PIE *h₂ŕ̥tḱos), supported by the bear cult that the goddess had in Attica (Brauronia) and the Neolithic remains at the Arkoudiotissa Cave, as well as the story about Callisto, which was originally about Artemis (Arcadian epithet kallisto).[9]
This cult was a survival of very old totemic and shamanistic rituals and formed part of a larger bear cult found further afield in other Indo-European cultures (e.g., Gaulish Artio). It is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshiped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, Britomartis. While connection with Anatolian names has been suggested
Artemis_Etymology
t's a very tragic story really, and one that continues to this day as seen, the general solution tends to be remove all aspects of Goddess worship from greater society, but were does the real scandal lie....?
(Now) Lady Ishtar espieth the beauty of Gilgamish: (saith she),
“Gilgamish, come, be a bridegroom, to me of the fruit (of thy body)
Grant me largesse: (for) my husband shalt be and I’ll be thy consort.
10.O, but I’ll furnish a chariot for thee, (all) azure and golden,
Golden its wheel, and its yoke precious stones 3, each day to be harness’d
Unto great mules: (O), enter our house with the fragrance of cedar.
15.(So) when thou enterest into our house shall threshold and dais
Kiss thy feet, (and) beneath thee do homage kings, princes, and rulers,
Bringing thee yield of the mountains and plains as a tribute: thy she-goats
Bring forth in plenty, thy ewes shall bear twins, thy asses 4 attaining
20.(Each) to the size of a mule, (and) thy steeds 4 in thy chariot winning
Fame for their gallop: [thy mules 4] in the yoke shall ne’er have a rival.”
________________________________
[Gilgamish] open’d his mouth in reply, Lady Ishtar [to answer]:
“Aye, but what must I give] thee, (if (?)) I should take thee in marriage?
25.[I must provide thee with oil] for (thy) body, and clothing: (aye, also)
[Give thee (thy)] bread and (thy) victual: (sooth), must be sustenance [ample]
Meet for divinity—[I, (too), must give thee (thy) drink] fit for royalty.
30.. . . . I shall be bound, . . . let us amass (?), . . . clothe with a garment.
[What, then, will be my advantage, supposing) I take thee in marriage?
[Thou’rt but a ruin which giveth no shelter (?) to man] from the weather,
Thou’rt but a back door [not] giving resistance to blast or to windstorm,
p. 33
35.Thou’rt but a palace which dasheth the heroes [within it to pieces],
Thou’rt but a pitfall (which letteth) its covering [give way (all treach’rous)],
Thou art but pitch which [defileth] the man who doth carry it with him,
Thou’rt but a bottle which [leaketh] on him who doth carry it with him,
Thou art but limestone which [letteth] stone ramparts [fall crumbling in ruin].
40.Thou’rt but chalcedony [failing to guard (?)] 1 in an enemy’s country,
Thou’rt but a sandal which causeth its owner [to trip (by the wayside)].
Who was ever [thy] husband [thou faithfully lovedst] for all time?
Who hath been ever thy lord who hath gain’d [over thee the advantage?
Come, and I will unfold thee [the endless tale] of thy husbands.
The Epic of Gilgamesh - Reginald Campbell Thompson Translation
For a certain period, the "Sacred Marriage" was an important fertility ritual in Mesopotamia (Frayne 1985:6). As a result of the king's participation, whatever form it took, he became Inanna's consort, sharing "her invaluable fertility power and potency" (Kramer 1969:57), as well as, to some extent, her divinity and that of her bridegroom Dumuzi. Unfortunately, no text tells us what happened in the temple's ritual bedroom, not even whether the participants were human beings or statues (Hooks 1985:29). However, in a persuasive article, Douglas Frayne argues that, at least in early times, the participants were human: the king and the Nin.Dindir/entu (Frayne 1985:14).
In the "Sacred Marriage" material, the female participant is always called Inanna (Sefati 1998:305), so her human identity is obscured. That is not surprising, for I suspect that, during the ritual, the only female present was Inanna. What I am suggesting is that the Nin.Dindir/entu was a medium. Through talent and training, she went into a trance and allowed Inanna to take over her body. Then the goddess could actually be present during the ritual. To a greater or lesser degree, the king could similarly have embodied the god Dumuzi.
"Sacred Prostitutes"
...It would be a great New Year's celebration indeed: instead of the Sacred Marriage being carried out as it had in the years of her memory, between the En who was Inanna's high priest and the Shamhatu who was the voice of the goddess on earth, young Gilgamesh would take the Ensi's crown in place of his long-dead father Lugalbanda. Tonight the Shamhatu, his mother, would step down from her place to become Rimsat-Ninsun, the Old Woman of Erech, and a maiden would be chosen from among the temple-women to bear the might of the goddess. And at the end of the New Year's Feast, Gilgamesh would become En, as well as Ensi, and he would go in to the new Shamhatu, dedicating his life as an offering to be taken at Inanna's pleasure even as he took the goddess' maidenhead anew, as his father Lugalbanda and his grandfather Dumuzi had done before him.
Stephen Grundy, Gilgamesh, pp1,2