"In the Ancient Near East along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers there were many shrines and temples or “houses of heaven” dedicated to various deities. According to the Ancient Greek historian and story-teller Herodotus, as he wrote in The Histories,[2] the ancient Mesopotamians practiced temple prostitution:[3]
I find certain ancient cultural/religious rituals quite perplexing. I understand how fertility and the need to facilitate it/abundance may have been important in the ancient times, but how does a woman acquire a duty to a goddess, and especially in such a manner? What exactly was the purpose of such temples? I’ve been trying to approach it from several directions, but none of them make much sense. Most of the descriptions of such ‘sex temples’ do not seem to be any different than that of an average brothel, except for a patron goddess being attached to it. It could be that a temple prostitute was an embodiment of a goddess and through her the man could obtain some divine blessing, but what? The impotence-fertility would be the most logical reason, but still it doesn’t make sense to me, unless in/fertility was considered a divine right/blessing/curse. Why wouldn’t such a man instead choose to go to a regular local doctor who probably had practical experience and could prescribe time-tested remedies. And does this mean fertility was thought to be dependent on the male? If so, then why a female fertility deity and not a male one? Alternatively, if it so happened that a woman was suspected of being infertile, what would she do to cure it? What was going through the ancients’ minds when they did this?
Religious rituals are just a manifestation of power. So the people in power wanted to get laid. Then they hearkened up images of goddesses and told people they’d go to hell or whatever to trick them into giving up that ass. It’s so much more simple than people want to believe.
Just like half of Americans voluntarily live with less resources and freedom than they could have if they chose otherwise. They think the meek will inherit the earth. They think it’s a sin to do this or that. Just like now women are told to love honor and obey their husbands.
I with there was some really complex problem here that we could sort out to change things, but no matter how you mock up the facade, people are animals and they all want the same things, and they’ll use whatever justification to get those things and that’s just about it.
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I disagree. Was killing their first-born child, or prime bull also because they had a “thing” for killing bulls, or male children? Rather than power, these rituals, and religion itself, is a representation of weakness.
The crop for the year might be good, or it might be bad. Rituals take away some incertitude by pleasing a deity responsible for the outcome of X. Don’t ask then who is pleased here on earth, but whom they thought would be pleased in the spiritual realm. The common tread in what is offered to a deity is the harshness of the offering- how much it cost to someone here on earth. What is fine is hard, rare, or beautiful. I think that the humiliation was probably seen by all as enough to ensure the transaction value of the ritual. To offer oneself to a perfect stranger is not easy. Today promiscuity is nothing but an after=thought, but in ancient times virginity, purity, was the bargaining chip for a father trying to marry his daughter…as well as her inheritance. So in my opinion, putting the pussy out-there was not easy, and so they thought it would be appreciated by their gods, just as they appreciated the uneasy choice of killing the finest bull, or the first-born child.
Here’s an example of modern-day temple prostitution still practiced in India. This film concentrates mostly on still-remaining low-class religious prostitution, since, as the film claims, the British colonial law effectively eliminated the ‘elite’ traditional sacred prostitution (because of it’s high public/political visibility) - as it was offensive to Victorian way of life. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that the practice (whether high-class or low-class), although degraded women by still using them as sex objects, also tended to elevate the woman’s social/economic status. I’m thinking that the source of this practice is the possible fact that women in ancient Babylonia (or elsewhere for that matter) also had very little power or social status, whether as a wife or otherwise.
The purpose of elevating prostitution to such a high level may have been to use religion as a means to acquire more power and influence in a society where normally one would not be able to. So, women, in a way, were power-tripping through this, too. Considering women’s status in such society, I wouldn’t be surprised that women themselves (especially in sex-work industry) came up with this idea. The difference here is that an Indian devadasi, being married to a diety, could never marry a man, and if Babylonian women were dedicated to the goddess that is not affiliated with marriage, how would they still been able to get married off (since the two seem to be incompatible).
You may know the joke of how atheism just goes one god further than monotheism. Well, likewise, absolute monogamy just goes one person less far than absolute chastity. Both anger Aphrodite. Aphrodite has great destructive as well as great (pro)creative power. If you are absolutely chaste or monogamous, you (implicitly) defy Aphrodite and thereby suggest that you’re more powerful than she. This hubris was what destroyed Hippolytus. You cannot honour Artemis or Hera alone; you must also honour the other true gods. If you don’t, you’ll learn why they are revered as gods the hard way!
How about, it was done to prevent inbreeding and promote outbreeding. If you notice the money was a token. A poor man could breed with a highborn, although she quite likely took contraceptives, where a poor woman might not.
Or it was about humility for the women. Or both. It could have been a rape preventative.
I’m all for it, in Greece it was the priestesses of Aphrodite who did the high class prostitution mostly in large cities like Athens and Sparta and your commoners had to make do with whatever skanky hos they could get hold of. Society is healthier when it pulls in it’s own instinctive direction. the crime associated with prostitution would be reduced if it was regulated too.
Prostitution is not specifically mentioned, except for few sources (like this one), but it is quite possible that these involved prostitution, which, of course, would depend to what degree prostitution was widespread and accepted in these ancient cultures to begin with. I wonder what influence these practices had, if any, in facilitating the change to monotheistic religions (such as Islam or Christianity). [In both Bible and Koran, the pagans are accused of debauchery and immorality]
I’ve noticed that pagan elements tend to survive and persist by being morphed and incorporated into folklore or other cultural/religious symbolism (something, for example, you see a lot in Islam, if you look into it). It’s possible that harems could be remnants of such pagan cultural practices.
This video is mostly about the worship of god Baal/Zeus/Jupiter, but the narrator does mention temple prostitution (in Baalbek temple-12:45-17:00), which he explains these behaviors as ancient people’s desperate acts (in dire situations, such as natural disasters) in order to control/influence nature/gods through ‘sympathetic magic’.
Btw, the Baalbek temple complex itself is quite impressive:
