Harlot or Holy Woman?: A Study of Hebrew Qedešah 9781646020201

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Harlot or Holy Woman?

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

Phyllis A. Bird In Collaboration with Anna Glenn

Eisenbrauns   |  University Park, Pennsylvania

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Bird, Phyllis A. (Phyllis Ann), 1934– author. | Glenn, Anna, author. Title: Harlot or holy woman? : a study of Hebrew qedešah / Phyllis A. Bird ; in collaboration with Anna Glenn. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : Eisenbrauns, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “A study of the Hebrew term qedešah, meaning “consecrated woman,” but translated “prostitute” or “sacred prostitute” in English Bibles. Offers an alternative explanation suggesting a wider participation for women in Israel’s early cultic practice”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019027371 | ISBN 9781575069814 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Kedeshah (The Hebrew word) | Bible. Genesis XXXVIII, 21–22— Comparative studies. | Bible. Deuteronomy XXIII, 18—Comparative studies. | Prostitution—Religious aspects. | Women in the Bible. | Women—Middle East— Religious life. | Sex in the Bible. | Middle Eastern literature—Relation to the Old Testament. | Middle East—Civilization—To 622. | Middle East—Social life and customs. Classification: LCC PJ4819.K43 B57 2019 | DDC 892.4/099287—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027371 Copyright © 2019 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 Eisenbrauns is an imprint of The Pennsylvania State University Press. The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-​free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

vii xi

Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2.  Sacred Prostitution as Interpretive Construct 33 Chapter 3.  Sir James George Frazer and the Concept of Sacred Prostitution 69 Chapter 4.  Classical Sources in Constructions of Sacred Prostitution 105 Chapter 5.  New Sources from the Ancient Near East 209 Chapter 6.  Qedešah in the Hebrew Bible 359 Appendix A.  Synopsis of Classical Sources in Constructions of Sacred Prostitution 413 Appendix B.  Synopsis of qadištu​/nu.gig Texts 421 Appendix C.  Nu-​gig in Early Sumerian Texts 433 Bibliography Index of Sources

455 481

v

Preface and Acknowledgments

This study has been long in the making and in publication. The basic arguments of Chapters 2 and 3 were laid out in 1998 in a paper titled “Sacred Prostitution: Modern Coinage and Conception,” and presented at the 2000 IOSOT Congress in Cape Town under the title “ ‘Sacred Prostitution’: In Search of Origins.” The first draft of Chapter 1 was completed in July of that year, reaching its “final” in October 2002. And a foundational study for the exegetical arguments of Chapter 6 was presented at the 1995 IOSOT Congress in Cambridge.1 But other projects intervened, in particular studies on Old Testament theology,2 theological anthropology,3 and women’s religious lives in ancient Israel.4 Nevertheless, Chapter 2 was completed 1.  “The End of the Male Cult Prostitute: A Literary-​Historical and Sociological Analysis of Hebrew qādēš/qĕdēšīm,” in Congress Volume: Cambridge, 1995 (ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 66; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 33–80. Earlier attention was given to the critical text of Hos 4:14 in the article “ ‘To Play the Harlot’: An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor,” in Gender and Difference (ed. Peggy L. Day; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 75–94, although the focus in that article was on the language of “whoring” (z-​n-​h), and my analysis of the literary history of the periscope changed as I worked on the present volume. 2.  An invitation to contribute to the “Biblische Theologie” colloquium of the Gerhard von Rad centennial symposium (Heidelberg, 2001) provided the stimulus for “Old Testament Theology and the God of the Fathers: Reflections on Biblical Theology from a North American Feminist Perspective,” published in Altes Testament und Moderne, Vol 14: Biblische Theologie (ed. B. Janowski, M. Welker, and P. Hanson; Münster/London: LIT, 2005), 69–107. 3.  Exemplified in “Theological Anthropology in the Hebrew Bible,” in Companion to the Hebrew Bible (ed. L. G. Perdue; Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) 258–75. 4.  Seen in “The Place of Women in the Israelite Cultus” (in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross [ed. P. D. Miller et al.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987] 397–419; reprinted in Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997] 81–102); “Women’s Religion in Ancient Israel” (in Women’s Earliest Records: From Ancient Egypt and Western Asia [ed. Barbara Lesko; Brown University Judaic Studies 166; Scholars Press, 1989] 283–98); and “Israelite Religion and the Faith of Israel’s Daughters: Reflections on Gender and Religious Definition” (in The Bible and the Politics of Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Norman vii

viii

Preface and Acknowledgments

in 2003 and Chapter 3 in 2006. The texts from classical antiquity that had been the focus of my Cape Town paper were examined more closely and contextually in Chapter 4, reaching their final form in 2009. And the exegetical treatment of the biblical texts, the foundation of the study from the beginning, was updated in Chapter 6, completed in 2010. What remained “preliminary” was the analysis of the Akkadian qadištu texts (Chapter 5, section I), which I had recognized as critical when I began to focus my research on women’s religious lives in 1987. A sabbatical as Research Associate in the Women Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School in 1989–90 provided me the opportunity to examine the qadištu citations of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary with the help of Kathryn Slanski, graduate assistant at the time in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. Slanski’s aid was indispensable in helping me locate texts, providing preliminary translations of untranslated portions, and introducing me to the Sumerian in which the Old Babylonian legal and economic texts were written.5 A further contribution of the program was acquaintanceship with Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Research Associate in 1987–88, who supplied me with a prepublication draft of her article, “Tamar, qĕdēšā, qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia.”6 Completing the study of the Akkadian qadištu texts proved difficult after I returned to teaching at Garrett-​Evangelical Theological Seminary, as I had no colleagues trained in Akkadian and could find no Assyriologist willing to read my work. But using available translations, though dated and partial, I was able to arrive at a picture of the qadištu in ancient Mesopotamia, in a variety of contexts over a millennium of time, that forms the essential content of Chapter 5, section I. With the Ugaritic material of Chapter 5, section II completing the study, a “final” draft was submitted to Eisenbrauns editor Jim Eisenbrauns in late fall of 2011, with the assurance of an initial response within a month. A year passed with the manuscript unread, a victim of staff changes at the press. Discouraged, I considered salvaging the work by creating a shorter, more popular edition for a general audience with a different publisher. But the unique contribution of this study was the presentation, for the first time, of all of the relevant extrabiblical texts, in their contexts—not just selections and snippets. I wanted to make the full breadth of the evidence available, to scholars versed in the ancient languages, and to readers without such expertise. With the encouragement of my K. Gottwald on His Sixty-Fifth Birthday [ed. D. Jobling et al.; Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 1991] 97–108; 311–17; reprinted in Bird, Missing Persons, 103–20). 5.  She also helped me explore Sumerian nu-​gig, which provided the logogram for Akkadian qadištu and designated a class of women attached to certain temples in ancient Sumer. I was further aided in this inquiry by Professor Piotr Steinkeller, who graciously read and commented on my first attempts to interpret the distinct uses of the term as applied to human and divine subjects. 6.  Published in HTR 82 (1989) 245–65.



Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Princeton colleague Katharine Sakenfeld I tried once again to find an Assyriologist willing to bring the Akkadian (and Sumerian) texts into uniform style and update them with references to the latest editions. And this time I succeeded, through the mediation of Sakenfeld’s Hopkins teaching assistant who pointed me to a fellow Hopkins student, Anna Glenn. Glenn’s collaboration has been indispensable in providing electronic copies of the texts in their latest editions and references to recent commentary as well as standardizing the presentation of the texts and the translations. Through the miracle of the internet we have “conversed” from Evanston, Baltimore, and Bern. And while the final interpretation of the texts remains my own, it has profited immeasurably from this interchange. Though the publication of the present volume was delayed somewhat by the acquisition of the Eisenbrauns publishing house by Penn State University Press7—I remain grateful to Jim Eisenbrauns for honoring his commitment to see my work published—I am hopeful, nevertheless, that the fruit of my labors over many years will at last be available to a wider audience. And I am grateful for the many colleagues who responded over those years with interest and encouragement to portions of the work presented in professional meetings and academic institutions. I look forward now to renewed engagement with a biblical figure who deserves to be known by her given name, qedešah.

7.  This latest delay has allowed me to insert references to Mayer Gruber’s commentary on Hosea (Hosea: A Textual Commentary [LHBOTS 653; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017]), which appeared after my manuscript was already with the publisher.

Abbreviations

ÄAT AB AbB ABD ABL ACW AfO AfOB ANCL ANET ANF AnOr AOAT AOS APOT AR ARCHIBAB ARM ARMT ArOr ARW

Ägypten und Altes Testament Anchor Bible Altbabylonische Briefe in Umschrift und Übersetzung The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by D. N. Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992 Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum. Edited by Robert Francis Harper Ancient Christian Writers Archiv für Orientforschung Archiv für Orientforschung: Beiheft Ante-Nicene Christian Library. Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Edinburgh Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969 Ante-Nicene Fathers Analecta orientalia Alter Orient und Altes Testament American Oriental Series The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English. Edited by R. H. Charles. Oxford: Clarendon, 1913 Archiv für Religionswissenschaft Archives Babyloniennes (XXe–XVIIe Sièclese av. J.-C.) Archives Royales de Mari Archives Royales de Mari, transcrite et traduite Archiv Orientální Archiv für Religionswissenschaft xi

xii Abbreviations

AS ASKT

ATD BAP BAR BBB BDB BE BEATAJ BEFAR BETL BICS BIN BiOr BKAT BN BSGRT BWL BZAW CAD CBQ CDLI CDLJ CEFR CIL CIS ConBOT CRAI CSCO

Assyriological Studies (University of Chicago) Akkadische und sumerische Keilschrifttexte nach den Originalen im Britischen Museum copiert und mit einleitenden zusamenstellungen sowie erklärenden Anmerkungen herausgegeben. Paul Haupt. Assyriologische Bibliothek 1. Leipzig, 1882 Das Alte Testament Deutsch Beiträge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht. Bruno Meissner. Assyriologische Bibliothek 11. Leipzig, 1893 Biblical Archaeology Review Bonner biblische Beiträge Brown, F., S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford, 1907 The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Series A: Cuneiform Texts Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums Bibliothèque des écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Babylonian Inscriptions in the Collection of James B. Nies, Yale University Bibliotheca Orientalis Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament Biblische Notizen Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum (Teubneriana) Babylonian Wisdom Literature. W. G. Lambert. Oxford, 1960 Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Edited by Martha T. Roth et al. 21 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago; Oriental Institute, 1956–2011 Catholic Biblical Quarterly Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative Cuneiform Digital Library Journal Collection de l’École française de Rome Corpus inscriptionum latinarum Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum Coniectanea biblica: Old Testament Series Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium.



CT CTA CTN CUSAS DBSup DCCLT DCH DDD DUL Emesal Voc. ETCSL FCB FOTL GAG GB GB IV/1

GCS Gesenius HAL

Abbreviations xiii

Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum Corpus des tablettes en cuneiforms alphabétiques découvertes à Ras Shamra-Ugarit de 1929 à 1939. Edited by A. Herdner. Mission de Ras Shamra 10. Paris, 1963 Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology Dictionnaire de la Bible: Supplément. Edited by L. Pirot and A. Robert. Paris, 1928– Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Texts, University of California, Berkeley, 2010 Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. Edited by David J. A. Clines. 8 vols. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 1993–2011 Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst. 2nd ed. Leiden: Brill, 1999 A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition. Gregorio del Olmo Lete and Joaquín Sanmartín. 2 vols. Trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson. Leiden, 2003 Lexical series dimmer = dingir = ilu, pub. Landsberger, MSL 4 3–44 The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Feminist Companion to the Bible Forms of the Old Testament Literature Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik. Wolfgang von Soden. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1952 The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Sir James G. Frazer. 3rd ed. 12 vols. London, 1911–15 The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Part IV: Adonis, Attis, Osiris: Studies in the History of Oriental Religion. Sir James G. Frazer. 3rd ed., rev. and enl. Vol. 1 (Adonis). London, 1914 Griechische christliche Schriftsteller der ersten [drei] Jahrhunderte Hebräisches und Aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte Testament. Wilhelm Gesenius. Edited by D. Rudolf Meyer and Herbert Donner. 5 vols. 18th ed. Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2009. Hebäisches und aramäisches Lexikon zum Alten Testament. Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stamm 3rd ed. Leiden: Brill, 1995, 2004. English translation: HALOT

xiv Abbreviations

HALOT

HG HKAT HR HSM HSS HTKAT HTR HUCA HUS ICC IDB ILS JAAR JAOS Jastrow JBL JCS JEOL JESHO JNES JSOTSup KAI KAR KTU

The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stamm. Translated and edited under the supervision of Mervyn E. J. Richardson. 4 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994–99 Hammurabi’s Gesetz. J. Kohler et al. Leipzig: Eduard Pfeiffer, 1904–23 Handkommentar zum Alten Testament History of Religions Harvard Semitic Monographs Harvard Semitic Studies Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament Harvard Theological Review Hebrew Union College Annual Handbook of Ugaritic Studies. Edited by Wilfred G. E. Watson and Nicolas Wyatt. Leiden: Brill, 1999 International Critical Commentary The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by G. A. Butt­ rick. 4 vols. Nashville, 1962 Islamic Law and Society Journal of the American Academy of Religion Journal of the American Oriental Society Jastrow, Marcus. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. 2 vols. 2nd ed. New York: Pardes, [1903] 1950 Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Cuneiform Studies Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Gezelschap (Genootschap) Ex oriente lux Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften. Herbert Donner and Wolfgang Röllig. 3 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1962–64 Keilschrifttexte aus Assur religiösen Inhalts. Edited by Erich Ebeling. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1919–23 Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit. Edited by M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín. AOAT 24/1 Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchen Verlag, 1976

Abbreviations xv

KTU2

LAPO LAS

LCL LH LHBOTS LKA LSJ MA MAL MB MHET MSL NA NABU NCB NIDB NJPS NOV

NPNF2 NRSV NTOA OA OB

2nd enlarged ed. of KTU: The Cuneiform Alphabetic Texts from Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani, and Other Places. Edited by M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartín. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1995 (= CTU) Littératures anciennes du Proche-Orient Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. Edited by Simo Parpola. Kevelaer: Butzon und Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Verlag des Erziehungsvereins, 1970–83 Loeb Classical Library Laws of Hammurapi The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies Literarische Leilschrifttexte aus Assur. Edited by Erich Ebeling. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1953 Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, and Henry Stuart Jones. A Greek–English Lexicon. 9th ed. with revised supplement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961 Middle Assyrian Middle Assyrian Laws Middle Babylonian Mesopotamian History and Environment: Texts Materialien zum sumerischen Lexikon. Edited by Benno Landsberger. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1937– Neo-Assyrian Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires New Century Bible Commentary The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by Katharine Doob Sakenfeld et al. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006–9 Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures: The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text Nova Vulgata, Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio. Sacrosanti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II, Ratione Habita, Iussu Pauli Pp. VI Recognita, Auctoritate Ioannis Pauli Pp. II Promulgata, Editio Typica Altera. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2008. BibleWorks 10 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2 New Revised Standard Version Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus Old Assyrian Old Babylonian

xvi Abbreviations

OB Proto-Lu OBO OCD ODCC OLA OLZ Or / OrNS OTL PBS PL PRU PSD PVGT PW RA RHR RlA RSV SAA SAACT SAAo SB SBABAT SBLDS SBLSCS SBLTT SC SDJOAP SJOT TCL TCS

Old Babylonian version of lexical series lu = ša, pub. M. Civil, MSL 12 25–84 Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 2nd ed. Edited by Nicholas G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970 The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. 2nd ed. Oxford, 1983 Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta Orientalische Literaturzeitung Orientalia (NS) Old Testament Library Publications of the Babylonian Section, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania Patrologia latina [= Patrologiae cursus completus: Series latina] Edited by J.-P. Migne. Series 1. 217 vols. Paris, 1844–64 Le palais royal d’Ugarit The Sumerian Dictionary of the University of Pennsylvania Museum Pseudepigrapha Veteris Testamenti Graece Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. A. F. Pauly. New edition by G. Wissowa and W. Kroll. 50 vols. in 84 parts. Stuttgart: Metzler and Druckenmüller, 1894–1980 Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale Revue de l’histoire des religions Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie Edited by Erich Ebeling et al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1928– Revised Standard Version State Archives of Assyria State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts State Archives of Assyria Online Standard Babylonian Stuttgarter Bibilische Aufsatzbände Altes Testament Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint and Cognate Series Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations Sources chrétiennes. Paris: Cerf, 1943– Studia et Documenta ad jura Orientis antiqui pertinentia Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Textes cunéiformes du Louvre Texts from Cuneiform Sources



TDOT

THAT ThWAT TRS UBL UF UT UZAP VAB VAS VTSup VUL WO WAW WIS

WVDOG WZKM YOS ZA ZAW

Abbreviations xvii

Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament. Edited by G. J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren. Translated by J. T. Willis, G. W. Bromiley, and D. E. Green. 8 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974–2006 Theologisches Handwörterbuch zum Alten Testament. Edited by Ernst Jenni, with assistance from Claus Westermann. 2 vols. Munich: Kaiser, 1971–76 Theolgisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament. Edited by G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringgren. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1970– Textes Religieux Sumériens de Louvre = TCL 15–16 Ugaritisch-Biblische Literatur Ugarit-Forschungen Ugaritic Textbook. Cyrus H. Gordon. Rome Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1965 Urkunden des altbabylonischen Zivil- und Prozessrechts. Moses Schorr. Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913 Vorderasiatische Bibliothek. Vol. 5 = Schorr, UZAP Vorderasiatische Schriftdenkmäler der königlichen Museum zu Berlin. Leipzig: Hinrichs. Vols. 7, 8 = Ungnad, 1909 Supplements to Vetus Testamentum Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem. Edited by R. Gryson. 4th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994. BibleWorks 10 Die Welt des Orients Writings from the Ancient World Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament. Edited by Carol Meyers. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000 Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes Yale Oriental Series, Texts Zeitschrift für Assyriologie Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

Chapter 1

Introduction

The genesis of this monograph lies in a study of women’s religious roles and experience in ancient Israel begun in the late 1980s. The paucity of biblical references to women as religious specialists draws attention to the few texts and terms that suggest cultic roles for women in ancient Israel. This study examines one of those terms, qedešah1 (‫) ְק ֵדׁשָ ה‬, a term whose etymology links it unambiguously to the realm of the sacred, but whose interpretive contexts point just as clearly to the realm of sexual activity, more specifically, prostitution. Interpretation in the modern era combined these clues in the translation “sacred (or cultic) prostitute,” an expression unattested in any ancient text. Behind it lies a conception of beliefs and practices in the ancient Near East that became widely accepted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and found its way into the standard literature of Old Testament2 introduction under the title of sacred prostitution or some variant expression.3 Assumptions concerning this institution, derived in part

1.  I use the simplified transliteration qedešah in narrative contexts to allow readers unfamiliar with Hebrew to follow the argument and see the connections with other terms from the same root. Other forms of the noun are represented in the same manner: fem. pl. qedešot; masc. sing. qadeš; masc. pl. qedešim. Technical transliterations are used in citing Hebrew text and follow the “academic style” of The SBL Handbook of Style (2nd ed.; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2014) 56–58. 2.  Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, critical scholarship on the Hebrew Bible identified its source documents almost exclusively by the traditional Christian designation, “Old Testament,” without necessarily involving faith claims. In this work, I follow the current scholarly convention of referring to these texts as the “Hebrew Bible” (HB), recognizing that this is not fully accurate as a description of the received text and that earlier or alternative forms of the Hebrew text may be preserved at times in Greek translations. 3.  A variety of expressions are used to describe sexual activity in cultic contexts or with religious associations, including sacral, cult[ic], or religious prostitution/harlotry, temple prostitution, and (in older works) hieroduleia. For convenience I use the expression sacred prostitution to encompass all of these variants. I italicize it to indicate that it represents usage that is not my own. I reject it as 1

2

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

from the very texts under consideration here, have exerted a profound influence on interpretation of the term. Thus it became necessary to chart the history of this concept that provided the interpretive lens through which women’s cultic activity in ancient Israel, and the ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamian world, has been seen in modern literature. A further expansion of the original focus was dictated by the occurrence in the Hebrew Bible (HB) of a masculine noun qadeš (pl. qedešim), whose meaning and relationship to the feminine noun had not received adequate literary or socio-historical consideration. It raised questions in particular concerning gender differentiation of cultic roles and led to the extension of the original conception of “sacred prostitution” to include “male cult prostitutes” engaging in sexual activity with unspecified females. Investigation of the masculine forms involved a distinct set of texts and literary-historical considerations and led to the conclusion that the masculine forms do not inform the meaning and use of the feminine forms. That study was published as a separate work,4 but the results, together with more recent assessments of those texts, are incorporated into the full exegetical study that concludes this work. The present study retains its original focus as a word study, beginning with an overview of the distribution of the target terms and their translation in ancient and modern versions. It then proceeds to a selective review of the history of interpretation of the term, with attention to modern theories and theorists and the popularization of their views.5 To assess these views, it undertakes a detailed literary-historical examination of the classical and patristic sources, on which they drew for their initial formulation. This is followed by consideration of new

misleading and fundamentally nonsensical. I also italicize it in quotations from other writers, to call attention to its use. As I show in Chapter 2, the expression has meant different things to different scholars in different periods and been applied to texts from different literary and historical contexts. In biblical scholarship of the past century, and popular biblical interpretation, it is used broadly to refer to sexual activity in the service of religion, with the targeted actors understood as a class of priestesses, or a specialized class of prostitutes, referred to as “sacred prostitutes” (an alternative view understands the female actors as lay women fulfilling a vow to a goddess of fertility). The occasion or aim is commonly understood as the promotion of fertility, with or without specific connection to a “fertility goddess.” The male actors are generally unspecified or viewed as priests of “foreign” (non-Israelite or non-Yahwistic) “fertility cults.” 4.  Phyllis A. Bird, “The End of the Male Cult Prostitute: A Literary-Historical and Sociological Analysis of Hebrew qādēš/qĕdēšîm,” in Congress Volume: Cambridge, 1995 (ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 66; Brill, 1997) 33–80. 5.  The literature with which this chapter interacts is the biblical scholarship of the latter half of the twentieth century, which continues to inform general opinion, commentary, and debate on the subject of sacred prostitution. Despite increasingly frequent disclaimers and critique of the concept or assumed institution, there is as yet no comprehensive treatment of the subject by a biblical scholar. See Chapter 4 for the subject as treated by classicists.

Introduction 3

sources from the ancient Near East and their impact on scholarly and popular conceptions, in particular cognate terms in Akkadian and Ugaritic and evidence for various classes of cult-identified women. With this groundwork, the study returns to the biblical texts, with a close exegetical analysis that attends to literary, socio-historical, and redactional features. It concludes with a summary of findings. Distribution of Terms in the Hebrew Bible The feminine noun qedešah (pl. qedešot) occurs five times in the Hebrew Bible: three times in Gen 38:21–22 and once each in Deut 23:18[17]6 and Hos 4:14. In Deut 23:18 qedešah is paired with the masculine noun qadeš, in fem.-masc. order. Further occurrences of the masculine noun, all plural (qedešim) or collective, are attested in 1 Kgs 14:24; 15:12; 22:47[46]; 2 Kgs 23:7; and the MT of Job 36:14. The reversal of the normal order for gendered pairs in Deut 23:18 suggests that the feminine form defines the class. The fact that all other occurrences of the masculine nouns appear to be later, and possibly dependent upon this reference, reinforces the impression of the priority of the female institution or instantiation. Examination of the texts will therefore begin with the feminine forms. To aid comparison of texts and provide an overview of patterns of usage, all of the occurrences are cited below, with limited contexts. Gen 38: (15,) 21–22

ָ‫הּודה ַוּי ְַח ְׁשבֶ הָ ְלזֹונָה ִּכי ִכ ְּסתָ ה ּפָ נֶיה‬ ָ ְ‫ וַּיִ ְראֶ הָ י‬1‫‏‬5

(15) When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a prostitute (zonah), for she had covered her face. ‫ֹאמרּו‬ ְ ‫מר אַ ּיֵה הַ ְּק ֵדׁשָ ה ִהוא בָ עֵ ינַיִ ם עַ ל־הַ ָּד ֶרְך וַּי‬ ֹ ‫קמָ ּה לֵ א‬ ֹ ‫ וַּיִ ְׁשאַ ל אֶ ת־אַ נְ ׁשֵ י ְמ‬2‫ ‏‬1 ‫ל ֹא־הָ יְ תָ ה בָ זֶה ְק ֵדׁשָ ה‬

‫אתיהָ וְ גַם אַ נְ ׁשֵ י הַ ּמָ קֹום אָ ְמרּו ל ֹא־הָ יְ תָ ה בָ זֶה ְק ֵדׁשָ ה‬ ִ ָ‫הּודה וַּי ֹאמֶ ר ל ֹא ְמצ‬ ָ ְ‫‏ ַוּיָׁשָ ב אֶ ל־י‬22

(21) He asked the men of her place, “Where is the qedešah who was at Enaim by the road?” They said, “No qedešah has been here.” (22) So he returned to Judah, and said, “I have not found her; moreover the men of the place said, ‘No qedešah has been here.’ ”

6.  The numbering of verses in most English versions differs here from that of the MT and Jewish versions. In such cases, the numbering of the MT/TNK is given first, with that of other English versions following in square brackets.

4

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

Hos 4:147

‫ל־ּבנֹותֵ יכֶ ם ִּכי ִתזְ נֶינָה וְ עַ ל־ּכַ ּלֹותֵ יכֶ ם ִּכי ְתנָאַ ְפנָה ִּכי־הֵ ם ִעם־הַ ּזֹ נֹות‬ ְ ַ‫ ל ֹא־אֶ ְפקֹוד ע‬1‫‏‬4 ‫יְ פָ ֵרדּו וְ ִעם־הַ ְּק ֵדׁשֹות יְ זַּבֵ חּו‬

(14) I will not punish your daughters when they fornicate   Nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, For they (masc. pl.) go aside with prostitutes (zonot)   And sacrifice with qedešot. Deut 23:18–19[17–18]

‫ֹא־ת ְהיֶה ְק ֵדׁשָ ה ִמ ְּבנֹות יִ ְׂש ָראֵ ל וְ ל ֹא־יִ ְהיֶה קָ ֵדׁש ִמ ְּבנֵי יִ ְׂש ָראֵ ל‬ ִ ‫ ל‬1‫‏‬8

‫ּומ ִחיר ּכֶ לֶ ב ּבֵ ית יְ הוָה אֱֹלהֶ יָך ְלכָ ל־נ ֶֶדר ִּכי תֹועֲבַ ת‬ ְ ‫ ל ֹא־תָ ִביא אֶ ְתנַן זֹונָה‬1‫‏‬9

‫ַם־ׁשנֵיהֶ ם‬ ְ ‫יְ הוָה אֱֹלהֶ יָך ּג‬

(18[17]) There shall be no qedešah among the daughters of Israel,   and there shall be no qadeš among the sons of Israel. (19[18]) You shall not bring the fee of a prostitute (zonah) or the price of a dog into the house of YHWH your God for [payment of] any vow,   for both of them are an abomination to YHWH your God. 1 Kgs 14:24 (Rehoboam) (24) Also qadeš was in the land. 1 Kgs 15:12 (Asa) (12) He removed the qedešim from the land.

‫ וְ גַם־קָ ֵדׁש הָ יָה בָ אָ ֶרץ‬2‫ ‏‬4

‫ ַו‏ ַּיעֲבֵ ר הַ ְּק ֵד ִׁשים ִמן־הָ אָ ֶרץ‬1‫‏‬2

1 Kgs 2:47[46] (Jehoshaphat)

‫ וְ יֶתֶ ר הַ ּקָ ֵדׁש אֲׁשֶ ר נִ ְׁשאַ ר ִּבימֵ י אָ סָ א אָ ִביו ִּבעֵ ר ִמן־הָ אָ ֶרץ‬4‫ ‏‬7

(47[46]) Now the remnant of the qadeš, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he exterminated from the land. 2 Kgs 23:7 (Josiah)

‫ָׁשים א ְֹרגֹות ׁשָ ם ּבָ ִּתים‬ ִ ‫ וַּיִ ּתֹץ אֶ ת־ּבָ ּתֵ י הַ ְּק ֵד ִׁשים אֲׁשֶ ר ְּבבֵ ית יְ הוָה אֲׁשֶ ר הַ ּנ‬7‫‏‬ ‫לָ אֲׁשֵ ָרה‬

(7) He broke down the houses of the qedešim that were in the house of YHWH, where the women were weaving “houses” for (the) Asherah.

7.  The occurrence in Hos 4:14 is part of a larger unit (vv. 11–14) that evidences a complex history of growth, exhibited here in the shift from second to third person.

Introduction 5

Job 36:14

‫ ּתָ מֹת ּבַ ּנֹעַ ר נ ְַפׁשָ ם וְ חַ ּיָתָ ם ּבַ ְּק ֵד ִׁשים‬1‫‏‬4

(14)  (LXX) ἀποθάνοι τοίνυν ἐν νεότητι ἡ ψυχὴ αὐτῶν ἡ δὲ ζωὴ αὐτῶν τιτρωσκομένη ὑπὸ ἀγγέλων (14) Their vitality (nepeš) dies in (the) youth, and their life in/among (the) qĕdēšîm (LXX: anggēlōn “angels” [=qĕdōšîm]). Etymology The noun qādēš (masc.) / qĕdēšâ (fem.) is a qatil formation based on the common Semitic root q-d-š, whose meanings center in notions of holiness, sanctity, and consecration—as descriptive of persons, places, and objects related to a deity, or as a quality of the deity itself.8 In Biblical Hebrew, all other forms of the root exhibit this common sense of holiness, sanctity, or consecration and always pertain to the religious sphere.9 Thus we find ‫( ק ֶֹדׁש‬qōdeš) “sacredness, holiness; (pl.) consecrated things” (469 occurrences10); ‫( קָ דֹוׁש‬qādōš) “sacred, holy” (116×11);

8.  This attempt to provide a summary description of the sphere of meaning represented by words formed on the root q-d-š is intended simply as a backdrop for the contextual and comparative analysis that is essential to the determination of meaning. The definitive modern study of the root in its cognate and early Hebrew uses is that of Claude-Bernard Costecalde (Aux origines du sacré biblique [Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1986]), summarized in idem, “Sacré (et sainteté),” DBSup 10:1346–1415, and complemented by Henri S. Cazelles, “Sacré (et sainteté), Introduction,” 1342–46, and “II. Sacré et sainteté dans l’Ancien Testament; C. Le développement des notions de ‘sacré’ et de ‘sainteté’ dans l’Ancien Testament,” 1415–32. Cf. Hans-Peter Müller, “‫ קדׁש‬qdš heilig,” THAT 2:590–98, and Walter Kornfeld and Helmer Ringgren, “‫ קדׁש‬qdš,” ThWAT 6:1179–1204 (Kornfeld: 1179–88; 1201–3; Ringgren: 1188–1201; 1203–4). The definitions cited below are based on the standard lexicons of the past century (BDB 871–74, HAWilL 591–92), with one modification. In concurrence with Costecalde (DBSup 10:1361), I have omitted reference to a putative “root idea” of “separation” or “apartness” (discussed below). See now the treatment of the root and its derivatives in DCH 7:1993–2011, which recognizes a fundamentally positive conception of “holiness” and the “holy.” 9.  BDB 871–874; HAL 1003–8; cf. Costecalde and Cazelles, DBSup 10:1393–1432; Müller, THAT 2:591–608; Kornfeld and Ringgren, ThWAT 6:1185–1200. 10.  The number of occurrences, indicated in parentheses following each form, is from Costecalde, DBSup 10:1394 (based on Müller, THAT 2:593–94). The overwhelming predominance of ‫ק ֶֹדׁש‬ (qōdeš) among the various derivatives of the root in the HB attests a distinct theological development associated primarily with Priestly circles. Thus 70 occurrences are found in Exodus, 92 in Leviticus, 57 in Numbers, and 57 in Ezekiel—plus 45 occurrences in Psalms and 47 in 1–2 Chronicles. It is also the most widely distributed form of the root, missing only from Genesis, Judges, 2 Samuel, Hosea, Job, and Qohelet, in addition to the four books in which no derivative of the root appears (Nahum, Ruth, Canticles and, Esther). On the development in later HB and post-biblical texts, see Cazelles, DBSup 10:1415–32. 11.  The adjective ‫( קָ דֹוׁש‬qādôš) is the favored form of the root in Isaiah, where it occurs 38 times, in comparison to 23 occurrences of ‫( ק ֶֹדׁש‬qōdeš). Its other concentrations (20 occurrences in Leviticus,

6

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

‫( ִמ ְק ָּדׁש‬miqdāš) “sanctuary, holy place” (74×12); and the place names ‫( קֶ ֶדׁש‬qedeš)

and ‫( קָ ֵדׁש‬qādēš), indicating sites of sanctuaries. The verb appears in the Qal (11×) with the meaning “be holy, hallowed, consecrated”;13 Niphal (11×) “show oneself as holy, be honored or treated as holy” (always with God as subject); Piel (76×) “consecrate, dedicate, treat or observe as holy”; Pual (5×) “be consecrated, dedicated”; Hiphil (45×) “consecrate, devote, regard or treat as sacred”; and Hithpael (24×) “consecrate or purify oneself.”14 In light of this biblical usage, qādēš / qĕdēšâ should be understood as a substantivized adjective with the meaning “consecrated person (or thing),” “Geweihte(r).” Similar meanings and usage are attested for occurrences of the root q-d-š in the cognate languages (Akkadian, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Neo-Punic, Aramaic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic).15 According to Costecalde (DBSup 10:1362–92; summary 1391–92), extra-biblical uses occur exclusively in religious contexts and express ideas of consecration, dedication, or belonging to a deity. They describe ritual rather than moral acts or conditions. Of particular relevance for this study are the cognate nouns in Akkadian (qadištu) and Ugaritic (qdš) designating classes of persons dedicated to a deity or associated with cultic service. These are treated in detail in Chapter 5. A popular theory found in most older lexicons and commentaries posits a “root idea” of “separation” (“being set apart,” or “separating oneself ”—from the profane, impure, etc.) behind the various meanings and uses attested for words containing the root q-d-š. Although this notion has a long history in and 15 in Psalms) roughly parallel concentrations of the noun, though only one occurrence is attested in 1–2 Chronicles and 2 in Exodus (Costecalde, DBSup 10:985, 1394). 12.  Almost half of the occurrences of this noun are in Ezekiel (30), showing the distinctive interest and usage of that book, with 9 occurrences in Leviticus, 5 each in Numbers and Psalms, and 7 in 1–2 Chronicles (ibid.). 13.  DCH 7:190: “be holy, become holy, i.e. regarded as belonging to the deity, in a positive sense resulting in need for removal from ordinary use or pollution, or need for special treatment.” BDB (872) identifies the verb as denominative, while Kornfeld (ThWAT 6:1185) refers to it as a stative. 14.  Distribution of the verbal forms, in which the active notion of dedicating or consecrating (something or someone) to holy use predominates, is concentrated in the same books where the primary nominal and adjectival forms occur. Thus 22 occurrences of the Piel/Pual are found in Exodus, 15 in Leviticus, and 9 in Ezekiel. The Hiphil occurs 10 times in Leviticus (but only once in Exodus), 4 times in Numbers, and 13 times in 1–2 Chronicles; it is absent from Ezekiel. Hithpael use is concentrated in 1–2 Chronicles, with 13 of the total of 14 occurrences (11 in 2 Chronicles). 15.  Specialized developments are found in particular periods and sources, such as an identification with purity and purification in Babylonian usage of the eighth to sixth centuries BCE (Costecalde, DBSup 10:1366–68, 1392) and the perculiar theological emphasis and meanings found in late biblical usage (nn. 10–12 above and Cazelles, DBSup 10:1985). In view of the parallel developments in late Babylonian and biblical usage, the distribution of qedešah/qadeš in the HB deserves note; it does not occur in those books where specialized theological uses are concentrated (Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Psalms, and Chronicles). This suggests that it should be understood in terms of earlier religious practices and conceptions shared with the surrounding cultures.

Introduction 7

Jewish tradition16 and remains the dominant view of scholars today,17 it must be rejected, not only for its fallacious semantic reasoning, but because it finds no support in contextual analysis of Hebrew and cognate usage.18 Its persistence and appeal may be explained in part by the reinforcement it received from traditional Christian notions of holiness and sanctity/sanctification,19 which emphasized separation from the sphere of the profane as a condition for entering the sphere of the sacred.20 Modern biblical scholarship also played a role in the persistence 16.  The earliest reference appears to be in the midrash Sifra (Torat Kohanim), whose basic core is dated to the second half of the third century CE (Hermann Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash [trans. Markus Bockmuehl; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991] 287). It occurs in commentary on Lev 19:2, which interprets the biblical injunction “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” as follows: “‘You shall be holy’: You shall be separate” (The Mishnah: A New Translation [trans. Jacob Neusner; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988] 3:87). An expanded form of this statement, in commentary on the same passage, also appears in the homiletic midrash, Leviticus Rabbah, dating from the fifth century (Strack and Stemberger, Introduction, 316–17). The statement there reads as follows: kšm šnʾy prwš kk thw ʾtm prwšyn kšm šʾny qdwš kk thw qdwšym, “As I am separate (prwš), so you should be separate (prwšyn); as I am holy (qdwš), so you should be holy (qdwšym)” (Lev. Rab. 24.4, cited from Midrash Wayyikra Rabba (ed. Mordecai Margolioth [Margulies]; 2 vols.; New York: Bet ha-midrash le-rabanim ba-Ameriḳah ʻal-yede Ḳeren Mordekhai Ben Tsiyon (Makṣvil) Abbel, 1993] 556). Rashi (d. 1105) relates this notion of separation to prohibited sexual relations in his commentary on Lev 19:2: “‘You shall be holy’—[This means,] keep aloof (prwšym) from forbidden sexual relations and from sinful thoughts. [It is evident that this is the meaning of qdwšym thyw] because wherever you find [in the Torah] a command to fence yourself in against such relations, you also find mention of ‘holiness’” (M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi’s Commentary, translated into English and annotated [5 vols.; Jerusalem: Silbermann Family, by arrangement with Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1929]: Leviticus, 84). See further Eliezer Berkovits, Man and God: Studies in Biblical Theology (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1969), esp. Chapter 4, “The Concept of Holiness,” 141–223. 17.  See Costecalde, DBSup 10:1357–58 and the literature cited there. The theory provides the basis for Mayer Gruber’s proposal to distinguish the meanings of qedešah and qadeš according to different valences of the idea of separation: “set apart … for exaltation or degradation” (“Hebrew qĕdēšāh and her Canaanite and Akkadian Cognates,” UF 18 [1986] 148). Thus, he maintains, Hebrew qedešah denotes a prostitute, with no cultic functions, while Hebrew qadeš denotes a cult functionary with no associations with prostitution (133, 136, 148; see also idem, “The qādēš in the Book of Kings and in Other Sources,” Tarbiz 52 [1983] 167–76 [Hebrew]). See critique below, Chapter 6, p. 390 n. 122. 18.  James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961) 107– 60; Ringgren, ThWAT 6:1966, 1973; Costecalde, DBSup 10:1360–93; cf. HAL 1003; Kornfeld, ThWAT 6:1181, 1184. 19.  Note that English (as well as German, French, and Latin—the primary theological language of the Christian West) employs terms from a number of different roots (“holy,” “sacred,” “sanctity”/ “sanctuary”) to express the ideas conveyed by derivatives of q-d-š. See Costecalde, DBSup 10:1354–55. On the vocabulary of the Septuagint (which used terms from the base hagi- almost exclusively for HB derivatives of q-d-š) and its role in debates concerning the meaning of the Hebrew, see Costecalde, DBSup 10:1353–54; Barr, Semantics, 282–86. 20.  Costecalde (DBSup 10:1356–57). Applied to God, the notion of holiness as separateness became identified with the notion of transcendence, undergoing further development in the hands of systematic theologians and historians of religion. Thus contemporary understandings of holiness brought to the root q-d-š associations shaped by a variety of modern theories and theologies. Of these,

8

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

of the traditional etymology—in particular, the study of Wolf Wilhelm Friedrich Graf von Baudissin, who traced the meaning of the root to an “original” biliteral root q-d meaning “to cut.”21 Costecalde is not alone in criticizing Baudissin or the traditional etymology, but his definitive study of the root in its long history of extra-biblical use, as well as early biblical uses, attests an overwhelmingly positive sense of approaching or belonging to the divine—rather than a sense of distance or separation.22 Translation in Ancient and Modern Versions Although the etymology of qedešah is unambiguous, linking it to a common Semitic root conveying a sense of the sacred or holy, translations consistently render the term, in both masculine and feminine forms, with an expression for prostitute. Beginning in the 1920s, this is commonly supplemented with qualifiers such as “sacred,” “cult(ic),” or “temple,” but the notion of sexual service, interpreted as “prostitution,” remains the controlling idea. The standard translations are best displayed by focusing on Deut 23:18, since here the masculine and feminine forms appear side-by-side and in parallelism. The following list is based on Richard Henshaw’s compilation of translations, arranged in chronological order beginning with the Septuagint.23 Rudolf Otto’s idea of the holy as the “Wholly Other,” the mysterium tremendum, requires special note because of its widespread influence (Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational [trans. J. W. Harvey; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950]). It may be traced in the work of many theologians, but most notably Paul Tillich (see, e.g., his Systematic Theology, vol. 1 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961] 271–72 and passim). Berkovits (Man and God, 220–21; cf. 218–19) is particularly critical of Otto’s study—and theory—for its “complete neglect of all the numerous passages [in the HB] which mention the holiness of God (221)” and for drawing on passages in which the root q-d-š does not appear (e.g., passages that speak of the “fear” of God). 21. Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte (2 vols.; Leipzig: F. W. Grunow, 1898) 2:19–40. Costecalde (DBSup 10:1357) takes Baudissin’s “magisterial study” as representative of the various etymological approaches to the meaning of the term that dominated earlier scholarship. Baudis­sin’s theory is still cited by James Muilenburg (“Holiness,” IDB 2:617) and HAL (1003), though rejected by both. 22. Costecalde, Aux origines du sacré biblique, and DBSup 10:1361–1415. Costecalde is preceded in this critique and emphasis on the positive orientation of the root—at least as an attribute of deity—by Berkovits, who concludes his chapter on “The Concept of Holiness” with the following statement: “Rather than indicating transcendence, it [holiness] seems to be inseparable from the idea of immanence. Far from meaning inaccessibility, it reveals closeness and association. It is not the mysterium tremendum; if anything, it is its very opposite” (Man and God, 223). 23.  Richard Henshaw, Female and Male: The Cultic Personnel. The Bible and the Rest of the Ancient Near East (Princeton Theological Monographs 31; Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1994) 219, with corrections and expansions, including examples from BibleWorks 10 (2015).

Introduction 9

LXX: pornē (fem.) “prostitute” / porneuōn (mas.) “fornicator”24   telesphoros / teleskomenos “(mystery cult) initiates”25 Aquila: endiēllagmenē “female sodomite, lesbian” (lit. “changed [of sex]”)26 Jerome: meretrix / scortator270 Tg. Onq.: ʾttʾ . . . lgbr ʿbd “[a woman of the daughters of Israel shall not become] the wife of a slave man”28 / ysb ʾytʾ . . . ʾmʾ “[a man of the sons of Israel shall not] marry a slave woman.” Tg. Neof.: npqt br “prostitute” (lit. “woman who goes out [in] the street/outside”) / gbr npqt br “male prostitute” (“man who goes out [in] the street”) Tg. Ps.-J.: npqt brʾ “prostitute” / lʾ ytps . . . grmyh bznw “shall not desecrate . . . himself with fornication/prostitution.” Peshitta: znytʾ “prostitute” / mlwṭ (“cursed”?) Vulgate: meretrix (fem.) / scortator (masc.) Wycliffe: A: strumpet, B: houre Tyndale (1530): whore / whorekeper Luther (1534): Hure / Hurer Reina/Valera (1602; 1909): ramera / sodomítico KJV (1611): whore / sodomite Staatenvertaling (1637): hoer / schandjongen Douay (1752): whore / whoremonger Webster Bible (1833 and 1995): harlot / sodomite Young’s Literal Version (1862; 1898): whore / whoremonger American Standard Version (1901): prostitute / sodomite Elberfelder (1905): Buhlerin / Buhler Louis Segond (1910): prostituée / prostitué Leidse Vertaling (1912): hoer bij een temple / schandknaap  *(1994): gewijde (fem. and masc.)

24.  Masc. ptc.; only here in the LXX; also 1 Cor 6:8. 25.  Unique double translation. 26.  LSJ 559b cites LXX 3 Rgs 22:47 and Aquila Gen 38:21 as instances of the pass. of endiallassō, “alter,” giving “sodomite” as the definition for ho endiēllagmenos. Surprisingly, Aquila appears to use the term only for the female noun. John William Wevers (Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis [SBLSCS 35; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993] 642 n. 17), commenting on the occurrence in Gen 38:21, notes: “Aq expresses his disapproval by the rendering hē endiēllagmenē ‘female sodomite, lesbian’.” Henshaw (Female and Male, 219) mistakenly gives the masc. pl. “endiellagmenoi.” 27.  Henshaw (ibid.) offers here only “comm. ad Hoseam iii 1261: cadesim [transliteration], adding “which says this is used of viri exsecti libidine ‘excised men for (purposes of) lust,’ i.e., male prostitutes,” with the question: “But how can castrated men be prostitutes or lustful?” 28.  Henshaw (ibid.) adds: “This modification of meaning is found also in Ibn Ezra, Radak and others. It perhaps follows the subject matter of the preceding two verses.”

10

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

JPS (1917): harlot / sodomite The Chicago Bible (1927, 1939): temple prostitute (fem. and masc.) Moffat (1935): temple prostitute RSV (1952, 1953): cult prostitute (fem. and masc.) New World Translation (1961): temple prostitute JB (1956): prostituée sacrée,   English (1966): sacred prostitute (fem. and masc.)   Spanish (1967): prostituta sagrada / hieródulo New American Bible (1970): temple harlot (fem.)  / temple prostitute (masc.) NEB (1970): temple-prostitute/ “no Israelite man shall prostitute himself in this way” Good News Bible (1976): temple prostitute Nueva Biblia Española (Alonso Schökel, 1976): prostituta/os sagrada/os New American Standard Bible (1977; 1995, NASU): cult prostitute (fem. and masc.) Nouvelle Edition Genève (1979): prostituée / prostitué Einheitsübersetzung (1980): sakrale Prostitution (fem. and masc.) NIV (1978, 1984, 2011): shrine prostitute Revised Lutherbibel (1984): Tempeldirne / Tempelhurer NJB (1985): sacred prostitute New King James Version (1982): ritual harlot / perverted one REB (1989): temple prostitute (fem. and masc.) Reina-Valera Actualizada (1989): prostituta/o sagrada/o NRSV (1989): temple prostitute (fem. and masc.) Schocken Bible (Everett Fox, 1995): holy-prostitute (fem. and masc.) *Revidierte Elberfelder (1995): Geweihte / einen Geweihten CEV (1995): temple prostitutes (combining masc. and fem.) The two exceptions to the “prostitute” tradition, which is unbroken from the Vulgate on, appear only in the 1990s, with the 1994 revision of the Leidse Vertaling (Leiden Translation) and the 1995 revision of the Elberfelder translation, both rendering the Hebrew etymologically. Otherwise, the notable new feature, again pioneered by the Leiden translation (of 1912), is the identification of the prostitution as related to a temple or of a sacred or ritual nature. This qualification is virtually unanimous from the 1950s on. Commentaries designed for scholars and students with knowledge of Hebrew may use transliterations, while still maintaining the common interpretation. Of particular interest is the German Kedesche (fem.), where the transliteration has come into the general use.

Introduction 11

A Selective History of Interpretation: Introduction to Problems and Issues qedešah / qedešot

As noted above, the feminine form appears to define the class, and discussions of the masculine forms have generally taken the feminine as a point of reference. Therefore, I shall begin my inquiry into the history of interpretation with the feminine forms. Of the three passages in which the feminine noun occurs, the narrative of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) has traditionally been judged the earliest. Although the dating of Pentateuchal and prophetic texts is currently a matter of debate, both the Genesis and Hosea references appear to antedate the proscription in Deuteronomy, which introduces a masculine counterpart. Since there are no clear signs of dependence among the three texts, I shall begin with the narrative and prophetic texts, treating them in canonical order. The treatment of texts in this introduction is intended only to identify issues in the interpretation of the term that require more extended treatment before any final assessment can be made. Most of the issues of interpretation, at least of the feminine forms, are exhibited in the commentaries on Genesis 38, although identification with the cult of a female deity plays a prominent role in treatments of Hos 4:14. The Asherah/Ashtart associations are best dealt with in reference to the Hosea text, where contextual clues figure in the analysis. The absence of obvious religious polemic in the Genesis text is another reason for starting here. My overview of the history of interpretation will be confined to this text. It is selective, aimed only at identifying issues that must be addressed in any comprehensive treatment of the term. Gen 38:21–22

The narrative in which qedešah makes its first appearance in the Hebrew Bible (Gen 38:1–30) is viewed by most critics as an originally independent account incorporated into the present Jacob-Joseph narrative.29 Although there is less agreement on the date and process of incorporation or the role of later hands in 29.  Questions of sources and dating are treated in detail in the final chapter, with attention to the fracturing of the “consensus” that prevailed during most of the twentieth century. Most commentary of that period assumed a fairly early origin and incorporation of the account into the “J source, with older criticism seeing a Davidic apology in the Perez birth story which required a date (for J) shortly after the reign of David. John Emerton pushed the origins even further back, arguing that the story in oral form may be set as early as the eleventh century—and reflects a Canaanite point of view (“Judah and Tamar,” VT 29 [1979] 406–7). In contrast to the source-critical approach, Robert Alter emphasized the literary integration of this account into its narrative context (The Art of Biblical Narrative [New York: Basic Books, 1981] 3–22).

12

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

shaping the present text, there is substantial consensus that the account stems from a relatively early period in the history of the Southern tribes.30 Wherever one locates the final author, it is clear that he intends to describe a period prior to the Israelite state, when the ancestors of later Judah lived and intermarried with the original inhabitants of the land. Whether through archaizing design or authentic memory, the narrator captures the flavor and local color of this Canaanite31 milieu in his allusions to prevailing customs and institutions. The use of the term qedešah in the narrative is, I believe, one of those features that point to a Canaanite milieu. The account begins with the notice that Judah had separated from his brothers “at that time” and settled among the original inhabitants of the land (Adullamites and Canaanites, according to vv. 1, 2), with whom he has intermarried and from whom he has taken a wife for his eldest son. As the story unfolds, Judah has been lured into having sex with his daughter-in-law Tamar, whose disguise and position at the roadside have lead him to (mis)take her as a prostitute (‫ ַוּי ְַח ְׁשבֶ הָ ְלזֹונָה‬: “He took her to be a zonah,” v. 15).32 When he subsequently seeks to pay the price of her service and retrieve his pledged insignia, he does not return in person to the site of his tryst but sends “his friend the Adullamite” on the delicate mission (v. 20). Hirah, a native of the region, will know how to handle the matter.33 Unable to find her, Hirah inquires of “the men of her/the place”34: “Where is the qedešah that was at Enaim by the road?” They reply: “No qedešah has been here” (‫ל ֹא־הָ יְ תָ ה בָ זֶה‬ ‫( ) ְק ֵדׁשָ ה‬v. 21). Thereupon Hirah returns to Judah with the report: “I could not find her, and also the men of the place said, ‘No qedešah has been here’” (‫ל ֹא־הָ יְ תָ ה בָ זֶה‬ ‫( ) ְק ֵדׁשָ ה‬v. 22). The verbatim repetition of the men’s response and the threefold use of the term qedešah in the speech of the native inhabitants calls attention to the substitution of terms: the one whom Judah approached as a zonah is sought as a qedešah. How 30.  As an etiology of the settlement of Judahite clans among the Canaanites of the Shephelah, it conflicts with the normative account of migration into Egypt and settlement under Joshua, and was therefore judged to antedate the present Genesis–Joshua composition. 31.  While a variety of names for the aboriginal inhabitants of the land occupied by Israel are found in the HB, secondary literature has adopted the term “Canaanite,” attested in extra-biblical as well as biblical texts, as a collective term for the non-Israelite inhabitants of the land, often with polemical connotations. 32.  For my analysis of the story as a whole as a narrative in which a prostitute (or perceived prostitute) plays a key role in the plot, see Bird, “The Harlot as Heroine in Biblical Texts: Narrative Art and Social Presupposition,” Semeia 46 (1989) 119–39; reprinted in Bird, Missing Persons and Mistaken Identities: Women and Gender in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997) 197–218. 33.  In v. 12 Judah seems to be accompanied by Hirah on his journey to Timnah, although the action with Tamar involves only Judah. 34.  ‫( אַ נְ ׁשֵ י ְמ ֹקמָ ּה‬v. 21) / ‫( אַ נְ ׁשֵ י הַ ּמָ קֹום‬v. 22). While this may mean simply “townspeople” (so NRSV and TNK), such an inquiry would more likely be directed to the men of the town than to the inhabitants generally.

Introduction 13

is this interchange to be understood? Although qedešah is found only on the lips of the men of the region, Judah clearly understands the term as referring to the woman he regarded as a zonah.35 In the two other occurrences of qedešah the term is found in parallelism with zonah, indicating a close identification, if not equation, of the terms by the Hebrew authors. Thus the common interpretation has been that the qedešah is a special class of prostitute, or simply another name for a prostitute. The question this poses is that of origins: How did a Hebrew term that can only mean “consecrated (one)” come to designate a harlot? The earliest preserved interpretation is that of the Septuagint, which in this case simply translated qedešah as pornē, using the same term employed for zonah in v. 15, thereby erasing the distinction exhibited in the Hebrew text.36 The Vulgate followed this lead, though it varied the terms used for each of the three occurrences of qedešah. In questioning the men of the place Hirah refers simply to a “woman” (mulier) who was sitting at the parting [of the roads] (quae sedebat in bivio).”37 In reply the men declare that there was no “prostitute” there (non fuit in loco isto meretrix). Hirah reports their response to Judah using the somewhat coarser term scortum (“harlot,” “strumpet”):38 homines loci illius dixerunt mihi numquam ibi sedisse scortum.39 Targum Neofiti follows the pattern of the Septuagint in rendering both zonah and qedešah by the same Aramaic expression, npqt br (lit. “a woman who goes outside”),40 the standard term for “prostitute.” In contrast, however, Targums Onqelos and Pseudo-Jonathan distinguish the terms, using a cognate formation, mĕqaddaštāʾ (Pa. Pass. Ptc.): “the consecrated woman,” to translate the three occurrences of qedešah.

35.  The narrator in v. 20 simply refers to the object of Hirah’s search as “the woman” (‫)הָ ִאּׁשָ ה‬. 36.  On the variant in Aquila, and the double translation in Deut 23:18, see below, p. 15. 37.  For the source of the interpretation in bivio (cf. in bivio itineris, v. 14), see below. It would appear that the Vulgate understood the position of the woman, at the crossroad (in bivio), as indicative of her profession. Rashi also saw her position as the clue to her assumed identity (see below, p. 15 n. 49). 38.  A neuter noun meaning literally “a skin, hide” (Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary [Oxford: Clarendon, 1962] 1646). The masc. scortator is used for qadeš in Deut 23:17 of the Vulgate (where it is paired with meretrix). 39.  What does this change of term mean for the Vulgate translator? And why does Hirah intensify the negative with the addition of the emhphatic numquam (“by no means,” “never”) in reporting his failure and the townsmen’s response? Does this heightening of the negative mean to strengthen Hirah’s argument that Judah should give up the attempt to reclaim his losses? For a similar intensification of the men’s denial, cf. Jub. 41:14. 40.  On the association of prostitutes with “outside” areas, see Esther Marie Menn, Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis: Studies in Literary Form and Hermeneutics (Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 51; Leiden: Brill, 1997) 65 n. 97. Cf. Bird, Missing Persons, 200–201.

14

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

Testament of Judah

Differentiation of the terms is also reflected in one of the earliest commentaries on the passage, the Testament of Judah, a Hellenistic composition from the first century BCE or first century CE,41 which presents the patriarch’s moralizing reflections on his loss of kingship and honor through his relations with women. The focal point in this narrative of fall is a retelling of the biblical story of Genesis 38, restructured and recontextualized to serve as the primary object lesson of Judah’s testamentary exhortation to his descendants.42 While the author has altered some of the details of the biblical account—with major consequences for the overall structure and message—his retelling remains in close contact with the canonical text, especially the Septuagint. The Testament of Judah is unique among early interpretations of Genesis 38 in maintaining the distinction of terms used to refer to Tamar in vv. 15 and 21–22 of the Hebrew text. Tamar’s act of positioning herself by the city gate43 is described as “sitting in public for prostitution/fornication” (proskathezesthai en porneia, T. Jud. 12:2), while the inhabitants of the city are quoted as saying that there had been no “cult initiate” (teliskomenēn44) there (T. Jud. 12:9). The latter term corresponds roughly to the etymological sense of Hebrew qedešah.45 Teliskomenē (mid. ptc.) 41.  The work forms part of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, a composition whose date and provenience continue to be debated. See Menn’s summary of the arguments (Judah and Tamar, 110–12). Although the work is explicitly Christian in its present form, which dates from the second century CE, and is now generally acknowledged to have been composed in Greek, it appears to have arisen in Hellenistic Jewish circles some time in the second or first centuries BCE (111). Menn (112) characterizes the composition as “a creative synthesis of Hebraic and Hellenistic influences” showing unmistakable “dependence on traditions from the Hebrew Bible” as well as “reliance on early Jewish biblical exegesis and midrashic traditions in Hebrew and Aramaic.” 42.  See ibid., 107–213, for a detailed and illuminating analysis of the way in which the testament retold the story to address the serious legal and moral problems presented to ancient Jewish readers by the biblical text. The central problem for all interpreters was the patriarch’s relations with women prohibited by pentateuchal law, but discomfort was also registered over Tamar’s deception and enticement of her father- in-law, and Judah’s weakness in seeking the services of a prostitute (107–8). Menn highlights the differing ways that early interpreters attempted to deal with the problems through comparative studies of the approaches taken by Targum Neofiti (214–85) and Genesis Rabbah (286–354). As she demonstrates, a variety of means were used to alter or explain the offending features—in addition to complete suppression of the story, as in Josephus (108 n. 2). Thus, for example, in the Testament of Judah, Tamar is a “daughter of Aram” (and hence an acceptable partner) and also a virgin at the time of her encounter with Judah (whose Canaanite wife had prevented both Er and Onan from having intercourse with her). 43.  Her position is described differently in the several Greek variants and in the Versions. 44. MSS a e f read telōnoumenēn, an equivalent (teliskō = teleō [LS 1771–72]), which Robert Henry Charles (The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: Translated from the Editor’s Greek Text and Edited, with Introduction, Notes, and Indices [London: Black, 1908] 82 n. 9) judged less “idiomatic.” Cf. LXX Hos 4:14. 45.  This is noteworthy in view of the fact that one argument for the date of the composition is its use of the Septuagint (Howard C. Kee, “Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A New Translation and Introduction,” in OTP 1:777), a version that obliterated the distinction in the Hebrew.

Introduction 15

describes one who is dedicated or consecrated to a deity and is used especially of women, particularly of initiates into the mysteries.46 The same Greek term appears in LXX Deut 23:17 [MT 18], where a rare double rendering of the verse translates paired qedešah and qadeš first according to context (pornē, porneuōn) and then according to etymology (telesphoros, teliskomenos).47 An equivalent term, tetelesmenōn (pass. ptc. of teleō), is used for qĕdēšōt in Hos 4:14. Thus the other two occurrences of qedešah in the HB are recognized by the Septuagint as having a meaning distinct from zonah and related to cultic activity. What did the Greek translators understand by their choice of telesphoros / teliskomenos in Deut 23:17? And why did the author of the Testament of Judah choose teliskomenē to represent the speech of the local citizens (Gen 38:21) when the Septuagint here uses pornē?48 Do the Greek terms for initiates simply represent the authors’ attempts to find analogous terms for the etymologically interpreted Hebrew, or do they imply recognition of a more substantial identity—or continuity—of role, or even cult? Did the world of these Hellenistic interpreters know of an institution in which prostitution was associated with religious consecration—or did the translators believe that such an association was made by earlier inhabitants of the region? Modern interpreters have pointed to reports of “religious prostitution” in classical and patristic sources as a clue to understanding the interchange of terms in this text, a hypothesis I shall examine in detail in the course of this study. It must be noted, however, that the Testament of Judah points to marital custom, rather than cult, to “explain” Tamar’s action. When Tamar prepares herself for a sexual encounter with her father-in-law, she does not present herself as a common prostitute, but rather as a widow preparing for marriage, in accordance with “Amorite” custom: (1) . . . having adorned herself in bridal array (kosmētheisa kosmō nymphikō), she sat in the city of Enaim by the gate.49 (2) For it was a law (nomos) of 46.  LS 1772. On terminology for the mysteries, see Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987) 9–10. 47. Although teliskomenos is used for the masculine noun in Deut 23:17[18], the term that translates qedešah is comparable in meaning and use. 48.  If the author is drawing upon the Septuagint of Deut 23:17, as Menn (Judah and Tamar, 151) argues, why does he choose the term used there for the masculine noun, rather than the term used for qedešah? 49.  “She sat … gate”: ekathisen en Enan tē polei pros tēn pylēn. Cf. Kee (“Testaments,” 798): “she sat at the entrance of the inn in the city of Enam,” reading tou pandocheiou following pylēn with MSS c h i j (Charles’s α recension). Some manuscripts did not recognize a place name here, but read enanti or apenanti tē polei (“opposite the city”) in place of en Enan. The variations exhibited by the manuscripts reflect problems of interpreting the Hebrew ‫( ) ְּבפֶ תַ ח( עֵ ינַיִ ם‬Gen 38:14), which are also registered in the Versions and other midrashic compositions and continued to exercise interpreters in the later period. The full description of the place where Tamar sat in the MT of Gen 38:14 is:

16

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

the Amorites50 that she who was about to marry (gamousan)51 should sit publicly by the gate for seven days52 for fornication. (T. Jud. 12:1–2)53 While the manuscripts differ in describing the place where she sat and the class of women governed by the law, they are unanimous in describing Tamar’s appearance as that of a prospective bride. Yet they are also unanimous in describing the purpose of her action as prostitution.54 Thus the Testament of Judah amplified the Genesis account in two seemingly opposite directions. Although the act itself is understood as “prostitution” (with the requisite demand of a fee), it is now subordinated to another end—the marriage of an eligible woman.55 What holds the traditionally contrasted images of bride and harlot together is the alleged custom of prostitution as a pre-nuptial rite or obligation. This interpretive gloss is unique to the Testament of Judah, augmenting and extending in a quite unexpected direction the motif of seductive female beauty and ornamentation expressed here by the language of “adornment” (kosmētheisa

‫ל־ּד ֶרְך ִּת ְמנָתָ ה‬ ֶ ַ‫ ְּבפֶ תַ ח עֵ ינַיִ ם אֲׁשֶ ר ע‬. The Septuagint interprets ‫ ְּבפֶ תַ ח עֵ ינַיִ ם‬as the entrance (“gates”) to the city of Ainan (variously spelled): (14) pros tais pylais Ainan, hē estin en parodō Thamna; (21) en Ainan epi tēs hodou. Cf. Jub 41:9: “at the gate near the road to Timnah” (41:14 simplifies further: “[who was] here”). The Vulgate understood the expression as referring to a “cross-roads” or “parting of the ways,” translating (14) in bivio itineris, quod ducit Thamnam; (21) in bivio. This interpretation is shared with the Syriac: (14) bplšt ʾwrḥtʾ dbwrḥʾ; (21) bplšt ʾwrḥt (BHS ed.) and Targum Neofiti: (14) bpršwt ʾwrḥth dy ʿl ʾrḥ tmnth; (21) bpršwt ʾrḥth ʿl ʾrḥh. Targum Onqelos retains the Hebrew reference to “Enaim” or “eyes,” reading (14) bpršwt ʿynym dʿl ʾwrḥ tmnt; (21) bʿynym ʿl ʾrḥh. 50.  Cf. Herodotus, Hist. 1.199, where he describes the practice of women prostituting themselves to strangers at the temple of Aphrodite (Mylitta) as a “law/custom (nomos) of the Assyrians.” 51. MSS c h i j read chēreuousan (“a woman who was widowed”), followed by Kee (“Testaments,” 798) in his translation. This appears to represent a shaping of the tradition to fit the conditions of this account. 52.  “By the gate … days” (hepta hēmeras para tēn pylēn): lacking in MSS c h i j. 53.  The translation is Menn’s (Judah and Tamar, 150), based, with minor exceptions, on Marinus de Jonge, ed., The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: A Critical Edition of the Greek Text (PVTG 1, 2; Leiden: Brill, 1978) 62–63. 54.  Note, however, that the author has eliminated the term “prostitute (pornē)” as a characterization of Tamar, referring instead to “prostitution”—and confining the term to an explanatory clause, so that it does not describe Tamar directly. This reformulation also shifts the interpretive language of prostitution from Judah to the narrator, removing it from direct imputation to either of the main characters—although both are presented as acting in accord with this understanding. See Menn (Judah and Tamar, 151–55; cf. 148–49) on the effect of changes in the account on the motive and meaning of the encounter. 55.  This effort to remove stumbling blocks in the biblical account introduces new problems of interpretation. Does Tamar intend to marry Judah? Does the custom imply that the first taker is to become the woman’s spouse—or is excluded from marrying her (as appears to be the case in other traditions of pre-nuptial prostitution from the ancient world)? Must the woman remain open to propositions for the entire seven-day period, or only if she is unsuccessful in attracting offers? Was she free to reject an offer? Etc. [The author’s concern with respect to Tamar’s activity is to absolve her of the charge of deception and enticement of her father-in-law.]

Introduction 17

kosmō).56 Although the “cosmetic” interpretation of Hebrew ‫“( ו ִַּת ְתעַ ּלָ ף‬she enwrapped herself,” Gen 38:14) appears in a number of other translations and retellings of the account,57 the bridal identification is found nowhere else. What is one to make of this allusion to “Amorite” custom? And is it connected to the Testament’s employment of a cultic term to refer to the qedešah of Gen 38:22—when the Septuagint and other early interpreters use the common term for prostitute?58 The report of the custom, and Tamar’s preparation, gives no suggestion of cultic association or religious motivation, and initiation into the mysteries was not a bridal rite. But if Tamar’s action is understood in the light of Herodotus’s report on the Babylonian nomos requiring every woman to engage in prostitution once in her lifetime as an offering to Aphrodite,59 then it is conceivable that the author considered Tamar’s action to have been understood by the local population as making her “consecrated” (as the women of Babylon became “consecrated”60 by performing their service to the goddess) and hence akin to an initiate into a Greek mystery cult. The reference to “Amorite” custom invites questions about the meaning of this identification and its relationship to other ethnic designations used in this account. Does it indicate that Tamar acts in accordance with a custom of her homeland, described as Mesopotamia (T. Jud. 10:1), or her people, described as 56.  See Menn, Judah and Tamar, 153; cf. T. Jud. 12:3 (“her beauty deceived me through the fashion of adornment”); 13:3; 17:1. 57. LXX: ekallōpisato (“she beautified her face)”; Tg. Onq.: wʾytqnt (“she adorned herself)”; Jub. 41:9: wtšnyt (“she adorned herself).” On the motif of female beauty as an element accounting for Judah’s downfall, see Menn, Judah and Tamar, 138–39, 153. 58.  Cf., e.g., Jub. 41:10, 14–15 (zmwt) (see below). 59.  So Charles (Testaments, 81, note to 12:2) suggested comparison with the custom “practiced by the Assyrian women who offered their virginity to the goddess Mylitta when about to marry,” comparing Herod. 1.199. And although he translates “harlot” in 12:9, he provides the following explanatory note: “Here teliskomenēn (b g) is a rendering of qdšh = ‘temple prostitute’ consecrated to the worship of Astarte,” adding that “the period of this prostitution was in certain cases limited, as in ver. 2” (ibid., 82). Menn (Judah and Tamar, 151) also cites Herodotus, but points to inner-biblical influence as well, seeing a connection between the use of teliskomenēn in T. Jud.12:9 and the Septuagint’s second rendering of the prohibition of “consecrated women and men” in Deut 23:17 (18). “According to the Testament of Judah,” she concludes, “Tamar blatantly violates a pentateuchal law … and obeys instead the perverse law of the Amorites.” “Through this detail [reference to the Amorite law],” she says, “the author interprets Tamar’s status as a ‘consecrated woman’ (qdšh) in Gen 38:21 and 22 in light of the Mesopotamian custom described by Herodotus” (ibid.). Despite Charles’s specification of women “when about to marry,” this is not specified in Herodotus’s account. But it seems to be implied by the requirement that every woman perform this service once in her lifetime and by the note that “thereafter there is no bribe however great that will get her.” It is also suggested by Herodotus’s antithetical pairing of this account with the marital custom that he considers the Babylonians’ “best” custom. See treatment of Herodotus in Chapter 4 below. 60.  This rests on the interpretation of Herodotus’s ἀποσιωσαμένη τῇ θεῷ as “[after their intercourse] she has made herself holy in the goddess’s sight,” but this translation is disputed. See Chapter 4, p. 108 n. 13.

18

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

the lineage of “Aram” (10:1)—or does it describe practices of the local population, to which Tamar now conforms?61 If the latter, what distinction is intended vis-à-vis “Canaanite,” which appears as a general designation of the land and people of the area, including Judah’s “Adullamite” wife (10:2, 6; 11:1; 13:6; 17:1; cf. 8:1–3)? In an earlier episode recalling Judah’s wars with the “Canaanites” (T. Jud. 7:11; cf. 3:1), Judah and his brother Dan pretend to be “Amorites” and “as allies” gain entrance to the hostile city of Gaash (T. Jud. 7:2–3).62 There, at least, the author appears to distinguish the terms while recognizing a degree of kinship or common interest uniting the two non-Israelite peoples. Menn does not comment on the relationship between the terms, but she finds a link between the two episodes in a “repeated motif of Amorite impersonation.”63 In her analysis, the repetition of this motif suggests a connection between war and moral temptation: When Tamar acts in accordance with an Amorite custom, she aligns herself with Judah’s foreign enemies in war and with his Canaanite wife. But whereas Judah’s impersonation facilitates the invasion and conquest of a hostile city, here Tamar’s adoption of immoral Amorite ways accomplishes the enticement and defeat of the patriarch himself.64 Menn’s analysis illuminates the internal dynamics of the narrative in the two-fold use of the term “Amorite,” but her reference to “immoral Amorite ways” points to the differing connotations of the term in the two passages—and suggests a different source for the use in 12:2. The earlier use, in the account of the conquest of Gaash, is clearly grounded in biblical tradition concerning wars of Jacob and his sons in the region of Shechem, tradition that employed the term “Amorite” for the 61.  Menn’s interpretation seems to point in two directions at once: she understands the author as informed by “Mesopotamian” custom, but sees the intent of the elaboration as identification with a prohibition that surely targets local practice. She may rightly assume that the author regarded all “pagan” practice as essentially the same, or see the double orientation as a result of the author’s practice of incorporating traditions from different sources—without attempting to resolve the resulting tensions. See Menn’s comments on the variety of sources that the author drew upon, and her conclusion: “The resulting product is complex and even self-contradictory at times” (Judah and Tamar, 112). 62.  A variant read “I and Gad also proceeded to the Amorites and pretending to be their allies …” (Charles, Testaments, 76; cf. de Jonge, Testaments, 57). This suggests some uncertainty concerning the identity of the Amorites and their relationship to the Canaanites. For associations of the term “Amorite” in this episode, see Gen 48:22 and Charles, Testaments, 69–70; cf. Jub. 34:2–8 and Charles, Testaments, 102, 200–203. 63.  “Tamar’s conformity to the customs of Judah’s former enemies recalls the patriarch’s own impersonation of an Amorite in the wars with the indigenous kings.” Menn, Judah and Tamar, 152. 64.  Ibid. The reference to Judah’s Canaanite wife suggests that Menn understands “Amorite” as an inclusive term for the inhabitants of the land. The limited appearance of the term, however, allows her to isolate and correlate these two uses.

Introduction 19

native population (Gen 48:22).65 In contrst, the reference to “Amorite custom” in T. Jud. 12:2 has no biblical antecedent—and no midrashic parallel—in traditions relating to Judah and Tamar. It does have parallels elsewhere, however, that place it in another realm of discourse. Nomos Amorraiōn is immediately recognizable as the Greek equivalent of mišpaṭ hāʾĕmōrî,66 an expression used to describe the idolatrous and immoral practices of gentiles in the Talmud(?) and other post-biblical Hebrew and Aramaic literature.67 This usage develops the strong negative associations of the term “Amorite” already apparent in the expression ʿăwōn hāʾĕmōrî (“the iniquity of the Amorites”) in Gen 15:16, where it serves as a summary designation of the various ethnic groups enumerated in vv. 19–21. This reinforces the impression that the unique allusion to bridal custom in T. Jud. 12:2 represents an interpretive tradition concerned with pagan religion and morals that was brought to this text from other circles.68 Tracing the source of this tradition lies beyond the boundaries of the present discussion, but it points to a history of interpretation that has had a major impact on scholarship and popular opinion during the past century. Menn refers to this tradition in her appeal to Herodotus, identifying the Testament of Judah as an “early forerunner of the widespread view in biblical scholarship (until recently) that ritual prostitution was common in the ancient Near East.”69 But if the Testament is an early forerunner, it is not until relatively recent times (late nineteenth century) that the theory behind the assumed practice received elaboration. That development and the sources on which it drew are examined in Chapter 2. What is striking, in view of the attention to “sacred prostitution” in modern discussion is the relative dearth of evidence for this interpretation in 65.  This tradition is elaborated in other midrashic compositions, which also use the term “Amorite” for the opponents in the conflict. See n. 62 above. 66.  Although it appears here in the form of an independent clause (Nomos gar Amorraiōn / variants: Nomos gar ēn [tōn] Amorraiōn/Amorraiois [de Jonge, Testaments, 62–63]), it clearly reflects the familiar bound phrase. 67.  Jastrow (76) offers the following references: Aram. ʾmwrʾh: (in addition to translation of the corresponding Hebrew noun in the Targums) Prq ʾ-: the chapter treating of idolatrous practices (v. ʾmwry). Sabb. 67a (v. Tosef. Sabb. ch. VII, sq.); Heb. ʾmwry: “Emorite; Emorean.” Gen. R. s. 41 none among the nations are more obstinate than the Em.—Trnsf. Emorean, superstitious, heathen-like. drky hʾ: superstitious practices. Sabb. 67a, a. fr. Within the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the term “Cannanite” (rather than “Amorite”) appears to carry the asociations of sexual immorality—and idolatry. See Menn, Judah and Tamar, 147 n. 102: “The evil of the Canaanites is defined as their rapacious sexuality in T.L. 6:8–10 … The depiction of the Canaanites as sexual perverts is generalized to apply to all the gentiles in T.D. 5:5, where Dan associates them with abominations and lawless fornication.” 68.  Jarl Henning Ulrichsen, Die Grundschrift der Testamente der Zwölf Patriarchen: Eine Untersuchung zu Umfang, Inhalt und Eigenart der ursprünglichen Schrift (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia Religionum 10; Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1991) 332, identifies T. Jud. 12:2 as a gloss, calling it “deutlich parenthetisch.” He does not connect it with any of the redactional interpolations he identifies and finds it impossible to date. 69. Menn, Judah and Tamar, 151 n. 110.

20

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

commentary during the intervening centuries. The Testament of Judah remains alone among early interpretations in exposing the cultic association of the term used in vv. 21–22 of the Hebrew account—and in referring to a bridal custom.70 All other interpreters know only of a prostitute or a masquerade prostitute. Jubilees

The uniqueness of the Testament of Judah is underscored by comparison with the book of Jubilees, an early midrashic composition that shares many of the extra-biblical motifs appearing in the Testament, including some that occur in no other extant sources.71 Jubilees presents a retelling of the book of Genesis, which remains close to the biblical text in the Judah and Tamar account. Although the work is generally believed to have been composed in Hebrew (as early as the first half of the second century BCE72), the only surviving version of the entire work is in Ethiopic, which was translated from a no longer extant Greek version.73 It 70.  Menn (ibid., 151; 164–65) speculates that the novel interpretation of Tamar’s dress as a bridal costume may have been suggested by the Septuagint’s translation of Hebrew ‫“( כלה‬daughter-in-law,” Gen 38:11, 16, 24) with nymphē, a term that most commonly designates a “bride,” although it may refer to any married or marriageable young woman. But the Hebrew term, which is likewise used for a bride, or young wife, is clearly intended in the biblical account to describe Tamar’s relationship to Judah as a daughter-in-law—as Menn (30) herself observes in analyzing the Genesis narrative. This understanding is reinforced by the Hebrew pronominal suffixes—and the Greek possessive pronouns (hē nymphē autou/sou). The idea of influence from the Septuagint translation of Genesis 38 is also undermined by Menn’s linking of the bridal interpretation, as “Amorite” custom, to the prohibition of LXX Deut 23:17 (18)—which lacks any bridal associations. Moreover the Septuagint of Gen 38:21–22 recognizes no initiate. Thus the influence of the Greek translation is insufficient to account for the interpretation of Tamar’s act as a prenuptial rite. Menn also suggests that the veil of the biblical account may have prompted the bridal interpretation (151; cf. 73 n. 116, where she cites Gen 24:65 and 29:21–25 for evidence that “the veil was a component of bridal attire”). Note, however, that the veil has disappeared in the reinterpretation, together with any idea of concealment. In the final analysis it appears that the author of the Testament of Judah must have been familiar with both Hebrew and Greek versions of the Genesis account, as well as a tradition that interpreted Hebrew qedešah by reference to “Amorite” bridal custom. As elsewhere in the account, it is likely that the author drew on a variety of sources without attempting to reconcile the tensions that resulted from combining them. 71.  Menn (ibid., 164) identifies twelve similarities between the two works, including the specification of Tamar as the daughter of Aram, the revelation that Er never slept with Tamar because she was not a Canaanite like his mother, the portrayal of Judah’s sincere desire to give Tamar to Shelah in marriage, the Canaanite woman’s role in preventing Shelah from marrying Tamar, and Tamar’s beautification of herself before meeting Judah. In an earlier note (143 n. 89), she considers the possibility that the author of the Testament of Judah drew on Jubilees, but her more detailed comparison of the two works points to a “‘rewritten Bible’ similar to Jubilees”(164) as the source and/or the direct reliance of both on the Septuagint (164–65). 72.  According to James VanderKam, it was written between 170 and 150 BCE; see his Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977) v–vi; see further 214–85. 73.  On the history of the text, see ibid., 1–17. The critical edition of the text is that of VanderKam, trans. and ed., The Book of Jubilees: A Critical Text (2 vols.; CSCO, Scriptores Aethiopici 87–88; Louvain: Peeters, 1989).

Introduction 21

shares a number of features with the Septuagint where the latter differs from the Hebrew. Thus Hirah is Judah’s Adullamite “shepherd” rather than “friend”; Tamar “beautifies herself ” (somewhat incongruously after “putting on a veil”) rather than “enwraps herself ”; and the conversation concerning the missing woman refers to a prostitute, not an initiate. The first two features are also shared with the Testament of Judah, but not the third. Both compositions, however, have altered or embellished the biblical account of the disappearing woman. Whereas the Testament of Judah dispenses completely with the search and interrogation of Gen 38:20–21, allowing Judah simply to report on the local men’s denial of an initiate’s presence in the area,74 Jubilees follows the structure of the biblical account but adds to the men’s response. Reinforcing their denial, they insist: “There is no prostitute here, nor do we have any prostitute with us” (Jub. 41:14).75 Comparison of these two compositions that appear to have a common or closely related biblical base suggests that the absence of contextual clues pointing to a special meaning of qedešah in Gen 38:21–22 led most translators and interpreters to assume that it was simply another term for “prostitute.” The defining terminology (zonah) and action is that of vv. 15–18; consequently the language of v. 15 was substituted for the rare, and confusing, language of vv. 21–22; hence the disappearance of the distinction in the Septuagint and most other Versions. In the Testament of Judah, however, the distinct language of Hebrew Gen 38:21–22 is exploited as the contextual clue that “explains” Tamar’s action in vv. 14–22. A striking consequence of these differing approaches to the biblical text is that the work that presents the most radical restructuring and reconception of the biblical account is the one that preserves an element of the original lost in the more conservative treatment and in all other versions. The Testament of Judah points to two critical factors in the interpretation of qedešah in Gen 38:21–22: (1) the influence of other biblical texts and the interpretive traditions associated with them, and (2) the influence of extra-biblical texts and traditions. It seems likely that the prohibition of Deut 23:18 and exegetical traditions related to that text played a role in the interpretation of the Testament of Judah, together with a tradition concerning a custom of pre-nuptial prostitution among the “Amorites.” Was that tradition already attached to the Deuteronomy passage, or was it established through the Genesis text—which provides a narrative context lacking in Deuteronomy? It is difficult if not impossible to determine, and any further exploration must await close study of Deut 23:18. What is apparent from this limited discussion of an early interpretive work is the difficulty of accessing and 74.  Additionally, Judah speculates that she had come from “another district” and had (just) seated herself at the gate (T. Jud. 12:9). This suggestion of a brief appearance seems to contradict the seven-day term specified in the explanation of the bridal custom. 75.  Emphasis added. See VanderKam, Book of Jubilees, 2:271–72.

22

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

assessing the sources drawn upon by early biblical interpreters—which may have included oral traditions not bound to the surviving written sources, as well as other biblical texts interpreted through undetermined filters. Nevertheless, it is clear that these early interpretations arise from the need to explain enigmatic or offensive features of the biblical text to later generations76 or to reread the accounts in terms of current ideas and expectations. Thus they are formulated in the language and concepts of their time and do not give access to “original” meanings. The search for historical meanings is a project of modern critical study of the Bible, for which ancient exegetes had neither interest nor resources. Aquila

One further source of early Jewish interpretation is found in the rendering of qedešah in the Greek translation attributed to Aquila (ca. 130 CE77). In place of pornē in v. 21, Aquila has endiēllagmenē (lit. “changed [of sex]”). John William Wevers translates as “female sodomite, lesbian,” explaining that Aquila expresses his disapproval by this rendering.78 Elsewhere the term is attested only in LXX 1 Kgs 22:47 (LSJ 539 cn.), where the masculine form is used for qadeš. Since vv. 46–47 are a hexaplaric addition, it would appear that both occurrences of this expression represent relatively late views of the nature of the qedešah / qadeš. Aquila offers no variant at Deut 23:18 where the Septuagint has already introduced terms for initiates alongside the terms for prostitutes. It is difficult to determine what Aquila understood by his use of endiēllagmenē but he clearly wants to distinguish this class from the normal prostitute and characterize it as more revulsive. The Hexaplaric use of the same term for qadeš in 1 Kgs 22:47 suggests an analogy with the castrated priests of Cybele (galli). What is noteworthy about this interpretation of deviant sexuality is how limited it is. None of the references from antiquity that describe female “prostitution” in honor of a deity suggest that this involved “unnatural” sex. Paul’s reference to “women [who] exchanged (metēllaxan) natural intercourse for unnatural” (Rom 1:26) occurs in a context, however, that suggests that such acts were a part or consequence of the worship of pagan deities (Rom 1:22). Is this association of “perverted,” rather than simply promiscuous, sexual behavior with pagan religion an idea peculiar to certain Hellenistic Jewish circles? Or was it more widespread?79 76.  What is also clear is that the attempts of early interpreters to explain difficult or disturbing features in the biblical text often introduce new problems and tensions into the account. See Menn, Judah and Tamar, 148–49, 151. 77.  Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament (trans. Erroll F. Rhodes; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979) 53. Natalio Fernández Marcos, The Septuagint in Context: Introduction to the Greek Version of the Bible (trans. Wilfred G. E. Watson; Leiden: Brill, 2000). 78. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis, 642 n. 17. 79.  Bernadette Brooten (Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996] 320) notes that Tertullian placed fricatrices (women who

Introduction 23

Rabbinic and Medieval Jewish Interpretation

Genesis Rabbah, the oldest extant verse-by-verse commentary on the book of Genesis,80 passes over vv. 21–22 completely. This may be explained by the nature of the genre, which aimed to draw out the meaning of the biblical text for a community that sought moral and religious guidance from Scripture. Unlike the retelling of the story in the Testament of Judah, rabbinic exegesis did not treat the narrative as a whole but sought the hidden meanings of individual words and phrases. Attention is focused on the figures of Judah and Tamar, who do not appear as actors in the verses containing qedešah.81 One might speculate that the connection of the term with the prohibition of Deut 23:18 would encourage interpreters to identify it with the native population and de-emphasize its bearing on Tamar’s actions. As previous interpreters, the rabbinic commentators are primarily concerned to exonerate Tamar and Judah in their problematic sexual encounter—and association with an assumed pagan practice does not appear to advance this end. The silence of Genesis Rabbah concerning the qedešah of Gen 38:21–22 is characteristic of premodern interpretation as a whole. Exceptions are notably few and do not provide alternative interpretations to the common understanding of qedešah as (simply) another term for prostitute. This is evidenced by a rare composition that focuses on the etymology of qedešah as the interpretive key to the whole account. The work is a seventh-century CE poem by the Palestinian liturgical poet Yannai, depicting Tamar as “a proselyte who risks her life to align herself with the people of Israel through bearing Judah’s offspring.”82 The poem contains an extended word play on the root q-d-š, “to be holy,” which appears to be an elaborate pun on the term used in the search for Tamar in Gen 38:21–22: Holy (haqqĕdôšāh) Tamar sanctified (qîdĕšāh) the Name when she longed for consecrated (qĕdûššāh) seed. She dissembled and became a consecrated woman (qedešah) and her Holy One (qĕdôšāh) made her way successful.83 had sexual relations with other women) in the same category as “castrates, hangmen, and gladiators— persons marginal to polite society.” Noting that the fricatrices, like the castrated Cybele priests (galli), failed to conform fully to their gender, she states: “ancient astrologers sometimes classified tribades [the Greek equivalent of fricatrices] together with castrated men. Aquila seems to make a similar association. 80.  The editorial shaping of the work dates to the late fourth or early fifth century, although some of the traditions contained in the work go back to the second temple period, and later accretions, distinguished in genre from the earlier commentary, appear in the final chapters (Menn, Judah and Tamar, 288 n. 3). On the general character of the work and comparison with other forms of early Jewish interpretation on Genesis 38, see ibid., 286–354. 81.  Cf. vv. 2–7, concerning Judah’s Canaanite wife and sons, which receive scant commentary. Only the need to explain the levirate marriage command in v. 8 elicits extended commentary. 82.  Ibid., 278. 83.  Menachem Zulay, ed., Piyyute Yannai: Liturgical Poems of Yannai (Berlin: Schocken, 1938) 54, cited by Menn, Judah and Tamar, 278. Menn (262) comments on the expression “sanctification of the

24

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

It is difficult to determine what this author understood by qedešah, but his reference to “dissembling” suggests that he shared the common view that it represented a prostitute. His poem reveals the “hidden” meaning of the term, however, as used of Tamar; a holy end was served by unholy means, because the Holy One was directing the action. Medieval Jewish commentary/exegesis, for the most part, followed the pattern of avoidance exhibited by Genesis Rabbah in relation to qedešah in Gen 38:21–22. One exegete who does offer commentary on the term is Rashi, who attempts to link etymology to contextual meaning. Thus, he explains qedešah as meaning “a woman who is devoted to and who is ever ready for illicit intercourse” (mĕquddešet ûmĕzummenet liznūt).84 Early Christian Interpretation

Since early Christian exegesis was dependent on the Greek and Latin versions of the Jewish Scriptures/Old Testament, one would not expect commentary on the Hebrew term used in vv. 21–22. A number of glosses, however, attributed to Church Fathers of the fourth–fifth centuries, preserve references to the alternative Greek rendering, endiēllagmenē, attributed to Aquila.85 Although this interpretation appears consonant with Paul’s understanding of sexual relations in pagan religion (Rom 1:26–27), it does not seem to have been applied to interpretations of Gen 38:21–22.86 Name” (qydwš hšm) as it is used Targum Neofiti’s narrative expansion of Gen 38:25–26. It is found on Tamar’s lips as she is summoned to be burned. Portrayed as a martyr, she invokes the example of the three young men thrown into the burning fire, calling them as witnesses who will “sanctify the holy Name.” No direct connection is made here with Tamar, however, and the etymology of the Hebrew term in vv. 21–22 is concealed by employing the same term for “prostitute” used in v. 15. Menn notes, nevertheless, that the use here of the phrase “sanctify the Name” brings the story into a new semantic field—one in which the poem of Yannai is conceived. Menn (282) summarizes: The development of this theme [“sanctification of the Name] in Targum Neofiti transforms Tamar and Judah from the morally ambiguous characters of the biblical narrative to conscientious individuals who exemplify the most principled adherence to ethical standards through their willingness to give their lives. This development shifts attention from the royal ancestors’ involvement with deception, prostitution, incest, and perversion of justice, and resignifies Judah and Tamar as exemplars of post-biblical piety and morality, worthy of emulation by those standing in the shadow of biblical tradition. 84.  Rosenbaum and Silbermann, Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, 188. 85.  François Petit, ed., La Chaîne sur la Genèse: Édition Intégrale, vol. 4 (Louvain: Peeters, 1991) 197–98. 86.  One reason may be that its strongly negative associations do not fit the narrative context, in which Tamar’s action will be validated (v. 26) and in which Judah’s attraction to the woman is explained by his perception of her as an “ordinary” prostitute. Aquila’s rendering would seem to be

Introduction 25

The one notable exception to the pattern of Christian dependence on the Septuagint was Jerome, who not only translated the Old Testament into Latin from the Hebrew, but also attempted to make the fruits of Jewish exegetical scholarship available to the church. In his Quaestiones hebraicae in Genesim (ca. 392 CE) he presents a compilation of haggadic traditions from various sources, which at times appear closer to Targumic tradition than to the Midrash or Talmud.87 For Genesis 38, he offers commentary on terms or expressions in vv. 5, 12, 14,88 26, 29 and 30, but has nothing on vv. 21–22. Thus he accurately reflects the lack of Jewish philological or exegetical interest in the use of qedešah in these verses. In his own translation, he apparently understood the term as simply another term for “prostitute,” translating meretrix for the second occurrence in v. 21 and scorto in v. 22—but simply mulier (“woman”) in Hirah’s question in v. 21, leaving the inference entirely to the men of the place. Modern Commentaries

The following discussion offers a selective and abbreviated treatment of a number of modern commentators and special studies in order to show the range of interpretation and key ideas in modern critical scholarship. It does not treat the most recent studies, which will be drawn upon in the final exegesis and conclusions. The 1838 Commentar über die Genesis by Johann Christian Friedrich Tuch89 uses the term Buhlerin in summarizing the plot of the narrative in Genesis 38, both in reference to v. 15 and vv. 21–22.90 In the detailed commentary, however, Tuch notes that in place of the narrator’s reference in v. 15 to an “öffentliche Hure” (as in Josh 2:1), a term is used that was taken from the “unchaste Astarte service” attested in Herodotus Hist. 1.199 and Bar. 6:43 (= Epistle of Jeremiah 43). Although unlawful (Deut 23:18), he concludes that the practice found acceptance among the Hebrews up to the time of Josiah (2 Kgs 23:7) and the borrowed term was more appropriate to the occurrence of qedešah in Deut 23:18, with its polemical cultic context. But Aquila has no alternative there to the double rendering of prostitute and initiate. 87.  On the nature, sources, and date of the work, see C. T. R. Hayward, ed., Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis, Translated with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 3–27. 88.  His interpretation here of ‫ ְּבפֶ תַ ח עֵ ינַיִ ם‬as “at the cross-roads” accords with Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, Targum Neofiti, and the Peshitta, and his explanation is similar to that found in Gen. Rab. 85:7. Against the Septuagint’s rendering of ‫ עינים‬as a place name, Jerome explains that it means “eyes” and that the phrase must mean that Tamar “sat at a place where two roads met, or at a crossroads, where a traveller has to look more carefully which road he should take” (Hayward, Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions, 76; cf. 222). 89.  Available to me only in the second edition of 1871: Tuch, Commentar über die Genesis: Zweite Auflage besorgt von Professor Dr. A. Arnold nebst einem Nachwort von A. Merx (2nd ed.; ed. A. Arnold and A. Merx; Halle: Waisenhaus, 1871 [1st ed., 1838]). The additions of Merx (and notes of Arnold?) are clearly indicated and do not affect the interpretation of Gen 38:21–22. 90. Tuch, Commentar, 431.

26

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

retained in Hebrew usage (for which he cites especially Hos 4:14). It was apparently considered “more decent” than ʾiššāh zônāh (“harlot woman”), he suggests, and that is why it was used by Hirah and the men of the region in vv. 21–22.91 He acknowledges the existence of ordinary prostitutes “at all times” among the Hebrews (citing 1 Kgs 3:16) and argues that they should not be viewed particularly as foreigners (from Phoenicia or Syria) on the basis of the terms nokrîyāh (“foreign woman”) and zārāh (“‘strange’ woman”) in the book of Proverbs.92 From these remarks, it appears that Tuch viewed the language of vv. 21–22 as simply alternative speech for an “ordinary” prostitute and not as evidence for an Astarte cult, despite his references to such a cult in Israel down to the time of Josiah. Tuch’s interpretation drawing on Herodotus and a view of prostitution as a feature of Astarte worship in the ancient Levant, including Israel, is the common view of the nineteenth century and not confined to scholarly commentaries. In a three-volume annotated translation of the Bible published in 1858 and intended “für die Gemeinde,” Christian Carl Josias Bunsen offers the following note to his translation of “Buhlerin” in vv. 21–22 (cf. “Hure” in v. 15): “literally the ‘consecrated woman’ (die Geweihte) according to the old Syrian-Phoenician terminology (Sprachgebrauch) of the worshippers of Astarte, or the goddess of love; a person who engaged in prostitution (sich . . . preisgab) in honor of the deity.”93 This explanation is followed by references to 1 Kgs 14:24; 2 Kgs 23:7; and Herodotus, Hist. 1.199, which prompts the question of why the OT texts cited are those containing masculine forms of the noun. The reference to Herodotus in a work designed for general use indicates that his “report” was “common knowledge” at the time and played an important role in western views of ancient Oriental religion and custom.94 The generalizations about the cult of Astarte also suggest an established body of “knowledge” about this goddess and her devotees among the general population (at least in Germany). In his 1878 commentary, Carl Friedrich Keil likewise explains the qedešah of vv. 21–22 by reference to an Astarte cult, expanding on the rationale for the practice as a characteristic of Canaanite religion, and omitting any reference to 91.  Ibid., 434. 92. Ibid. 93.  Christian Carl Josias Bunsen, Die Bibel oder die Schriften des Alten und Neuen Bundes nach den überlieferten Grundtexten übersetzt und für die Gemeinde erklärt, Vollständiges Bibelwerk für die Gemeinde. Part 1. Das Gesetz (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1858) 80. 94.  Gernot Wilhelm has traced the history of interpretation of Hist. 1.199 from antiquity to modern times in an illuminating article, “Marginalien zu Herodot Klio 199,” in Lingering Over Words: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran (ed. I. T. Abusch, J. Huehnergard, and P. Steinkeller; HSS 37; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990] 505–24), which will be discussed below. While Wilhelm’s focus is on Assyriological assessment of this report and its relation to current views of cult–related prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia, his discussion offers valuable insights into the role played by classical authors in post-Renaissance views of the biblical world.

Introduction 27

Herodotus.95 Defining haqqedešah as “the consecrated woman” (die Geweihte), who was consecrated to Astarte, the nature goddess of the Canaanites, he describes her as the “hierodule of the deified principle of generating and birthing Nature, who served this goddess through prostitution” (citing Deut 23:18).96 Like Tuch, he understands the use of the term in vv. 21–22 as an alternative expression for an ordinary prostitute, explaining the choice as dictated by the higher status of the term in the Canaanite milieu. In contrast to this understanding of vv. 21–22 as employing a term for a Canaanite hierodule to describe an “ordinary” prostitute, Franz Delitzsch (1887) interprets Tamar’s action in v. 14 as intending to present herself as a hierodule of Astarte.97 Although he understands her masquerade (‫ )ו ִַּת ְתעַ ּלָ ף‬as “Vermummung nach Art einer Buhldirne” (citing ‫ עֹ ְטיָה‬in Cant 1:7 as an analogy), he explains it as follows: “She wanted to appear, according to Canaanite custom, as a qedešah (Assyrian Qadištu), i.e, as one who gives herself to prostitution to honor the goddess of love, Astarte—which, according to vv. 21–22, she succeeded in doing.” Of particular interest here is the equation of Hebrew qedešah with Akkadian qadištu, a class of women dedicated to a deity, known from the Laws of Hammurabi, which had only recently been deciphered. No reference is made to Herodotus,98 but the idea of prostitution in honor of the goddess is taken over from him and applied to the newly discovered texts—which lack any such associations. In his 1901 commentary on Genesis (1901), Hermann Gunkel translates the three occurrences of qedešah in vv. 21–22 with “die Hierodule,” thereby distinguishing it from the “Hure” of v. 15.99 But in his comments on Judah’s action in v. 15, he describes him as “going to the ‘Qedesche,’” equated with “going to the ‘Hure.’ ”100 Despite his use of the terms “Hierodule” and “Qedesche” with their cultic associations, he describes Tamar’s action as the courageous and extreme act of presenting herself as a “despised prostitute (verachteten Dirne).”101 The qedešah, according to Gunkel, is “easily recognizable” from vv. 14–15—to which he adds reference to 95. Keil, Biblischer Commentar über die Bücher Mose’s, vol. 1: Genesis and Exodus (3rd ed.; Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1878) 288. The absence of a reference to Hist. 1.199 is especially noteworthy in view of the fact that only four lines earlier Keil cites Hist. 1.195 to explain the significance of the signet ring and staff that Judah surrenders. Is the omission simply a sign that Herodotus’s account of the “Babylonian custom/law” was common knowledge in nineteenth-century Germany? 96. Ibid. 97.  Franz Delitzsch, Neuer Commentar über die Genesis (Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1887) 448. 98.  Delitzsch does not mention Hist. 1.199, but, like Keil, he cites Hist. 1.195 on the seal and staff (ibid., 419). 99.  Hermann Gunkel, Genesis, übersetzt und erklärt (HKAT 1, 1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1901) 370–71. 100.  This identification is made in the context of Gunkel’s observations on the significance of the reference in v. 12 to the death of Judah’s wife. Judah only goes to the Qedesche, he notes, after his wife is dead, suggesting that the narrator wants to excuse him with this notice (ibid.). 101.  Ibid., 375.

28

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

Prov 7:10. He finds evidence for her position by the road in Jer 3:2; Ezek 16:25; and Ep Jer 43 as evidence of similar Babylonian custom. He understands the veil to be a feature of the qedešah’s dress, although he is unable to document the origin of the custom. Noting, however, that it served to preserve a “remnant” of modesty for the woman, he concludes that “these Qedeschen were not as shameless as the Dirnen of our large cities.”102 While he treats the qedešah as a type of prostitute, he observes that there were also “common prostitutes” (allgemein bekannte Huren) in ancient Israel, such as those who maintained a kind of inn, as exemplified in Josh 1:2 (citing further comparisons to a merchant city in Isa 23:15ff.; Nah 3:4; and Rev 18:3). In commentary on vv. 20–23 Gunkel observes the narrator’s use of Hirah at this critical point, arguing that his only role in the entire story is at this point and that he was introduced at the beginning simply for the purpose of retrieving Judah’s pledged staff and seal, explaining that a man of Judah’s standing could not retrieve the pledge himself.103 Despite Gunkel’s attention to the author’s efforts to shield Judah’s reputation, he finds it noteworthy that the qedešah is mentioned in such an inoffensive way (“harmlos [ohne Abscheu oder Zorn]”): “dergleichen gibt es eben, wie jedermann weiss.” But this prompts another question from Gunkel: “Who gave herself to such activity, and who went to such women?” He answers with a summary statement concerning “religious prostitution” as a phenomenon of ancient Near Eastern religion. “Religious prostitution,” represented by Hebrew qedešah and Assyrian qadištu, played a major role in the service of Ishtar-Astarte among the peoples of the ancient Near East from ancient times (“seit Alters”), he maintains, and, as one can see from this passage and others, was also wellknown in ancient Israel. Gunkel speculates that Israel learned these things from the Canaanites, observing that Tamar was a Canaanite. It was only through the polemic of the prophets, he concludes, that the practice was finally eradicated from Israel. From the commentaries cited above it appears that by the beginning of the twentieth century all of the elements that have figured in modern interpretations of qedešah were present. Although attention shifts in more recent works from classical antiquity to Ugarit and ancient Mesopotamia as sources for the practices and beliefs behind the biblical references, the arguments remain remarkably constant. This can be seen from a sampling of more recent commentaries.

102. Ibid. 103.  Gunkel explains: Der Erzähler denkt also: ein Mann wie Juda kann sein Pfand von der Hure nicht selber heimfordern. Dergl. wie der Verkehr mit der Hure, das sind Dinge, die ein vornehmer Mann wohl tut, aber von denen er nicht öffentlich redet. (Ibid., 376)

Introduction 29

The 1934 commentary on Genesis by the Jewish biblical scholar Benno Jacob offers detailed philological commentary on the passage in the tradition of rabbinic commentary, but supplements the opinions of the rabbis with the findings of modern critical scholarship.104 In vv. 21–22, Jacob uses the transliteration Qedescha in his translation (cf. “Dirne,” v. 15), commenting that Hirah does not refer to the woman as zonah (the narrator’s term), but rather, in the language of the Canaanites to whom he is speaking, qedešah, “Hierodule.”105 Defining qedešah as “one who prostitutes herself in the service of a cult,” he explains: “Solche Tempelprostitution war im ganzen Altertum verbreitet und ist u.a. auch vom cod. Hammurapi (§172, 178–180) und den assyrischen Gesetzen (§40) bezeugt, im AT 2 K 23:7; Hos 4:14; vgl. Dt 23:18.”106 Noteworthy is the fact that his first OT reference is the masc. pl. noun in 2 Kings (which contains a reference to women’s service in the cult of Asherah—but no reference to prostitution and only the masc. pl. qedešim).107 In explaining Hirah’s language as Canaanite usage, Jacob further suggests that Hirah’s motive may have been “consideration for Judah and from a feeling of decency.”108 It is not clear from this observation whether he understands the use of qedešah here as a euphemism for zonah, with the local men making the same assumption (perhaps based on the specification of her position—by the road, rather than at a temple precinct) or whether he believes that the terms were interchangeable in the local milieu. John Skinner ([1910] 1930) explains the interchange of terms in Gen 38:15 and 21–22 by suggesting that it presupposes “a temple-votary . . . separating herself for private prostitution.”109 Thus qedešah describes the woman’s primary or past professional identification, while zonah describes her role and activity in the scene with Judah. In Skinner’s view, the two terms refer to distinct institutions and roles, with zonah having the determinative role in interpreting the dynamics of the narrative. Skinner’s interpretation honors the etymological associations of qedešah and appears to identify the Hebrew term with the Akkadian qadištu. Although nothing in the Akkadian sources would lead one to associate prostitution with this class of women, the biblical usage coupled with Herodotus’s account of the Babylonian women who prostituted themselves at the temple of Mylitta suggested a 104.  Benno Jacob, Das erste Buch der Tora: Genesis, übersetzt und erklärt (Berlin: Schocken, 1934). 105.  Ibid., 717–18. 106.  Ibid., 718. 107.  See below. 108.  English translation from the abridged English translation: Ernest I. Jacob and Walter Jacob, eds., The First Book of the Bible: Genesis, Interpreted by B. Jacob. His Commentary Abridged, Edited, and Translated (New York: Ktav, 1974) 260. The German original read: “vielleicht auch aus Rücksicht auf Judah und (Str., Pr.) aus Austandsgefühl” (Das Erste Buch der Tora, 718). 109.  John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis (2nd ed.; ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1930) 454.

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Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

connection. The question was (and is) how the connection was to be understood. Was the sexual activity to be understood as a form of religious service dedicated to the deity, or was it a “sideline,” indulged for private gain—or for support of the temple? Both Gerhard von Rad and Claus Westermann blur the boundary between harlot and hierodule, emphasizing the different sensibilities of the ancient audience. Von Rad’s argument for the interchange spells out the nature of the sacred prostitution assumed to underlie this text: In the ancient Orient, it was customary in many places for married women to give themselves to strangers because of some oath. Such sacrifices of chastity in the service of the goddess of love, Astarte, were, of course, different from ordinary prostitution even though they were strictly forbidden by law . . . . At the borders between Israel and Canaan, where our whole story takes place, the appearance on the road of a “devoted one” was obviously nothing surprising. Tamar thus does not pretend to be a harlot as we think of it, but rather a married woman who indulges in this practice, and Judah too thought of her in this way.110 While Westermann describes Tamar’s actions as those of a prostitute, calling qedešah a “more polite designation,” he adds that “there will have been no clear separation between the two in the rural situation proposed here.”111 Nevertheless, he notes, qedešah denotes “something more or less accepted.” Despite later attack by the prophets (Hosea, Ezekiel), he explains, “cultic prostitution,” which had played a role in the Near East from ancient times, was still acknowledged in this mixed population.112 Conclusions More recent commentaries and specialized studies of the passage do not add new data, only new combinations and theories. From this sampling it appears that differences of interpretation turn primarily on the way in which Tamar’s action and Judah’s response in vv. 14–15 are understood in relation to the language used in vv. 21–22. Some commentators equate zonah and qedešah, while others distinguished them; some view the veil of v. 14 as a sign of the woman’s “profession,” 110.  Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (trans. J. H. Marks; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961; German original, 1956) 354–55; emphasis added. 111.  Claus Westermann, Genesis 37–50 (trans. J. J. Scullion; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986; German original, 1982) 53. 112.  Ibid., 54.

Introduction 31

while others understand it as simply a requirement of the plot. Herodotus’s account of the Babylonian women at the Temple of Mylitta is assumed by all (at least in the older works), but is seen in more recent works as corroborated by the appearance of the Akkadian cognate qadištu in the Laws of Hammurabi, and other texts—though none of the latter references contains evidence of prostitution. A constant in all interpretations is the notion that prostitution in honor of the goddess Astarte (or another “fertility goddess”) was a common feature of ancient Near Eastern religion, long established and widely attested, from Mesopotamia to Canaan. The evidence cited for such claims, however, (at least in the sampled commentaries) is limited to Herodotus’s report, supplemented at times by the Epistle of Jeremiah, both referring to Babylon and describing prostitution in honor of a goddess—but not by temple personnel. These identifications leave many issues unaddressed, ones which become more apparent when the extrabiblical texts cited as evidence are examined more closely. Appeals to the Ugaritic texts in recent works introduce new problems while reviving old ones, since only the masculine cognate is attested there. One problem in most commentaries is the practice of citing passages containing the masculine forms of the noun as corroborative evidence for statements about the qedešah practicing prostitution in honor of the goddess. In some cases, the combining of male and female references seems to assume complementary roles of a class of hierodules composed of male and female practitioners, at times assumed to occupy the same quarters. The link in older works is seen in common dedication to Astarte/the goddess of love, treated at length in studies of the religion of the ancient Semites, works based primarily on the reports of classical and patristic writers. Problems abound with the proposed analogies to the biblical qedešim, while the combining of male and female devotees in a single class raises a further set of problems, which demand both textual and sociological attention. Because of the importance of nineteenth and early twentieth century views of Canaanite and ancient Near Eastern religion (or, more broadly, Victorian anthropology and history of religions) on the interpretation of qedešah in the Hebrew Bible, particular attention must be given to its constructs and its sources. Since these views live on, in various amplifications and modifications, in contemporary textbooks, commentaries, and reference works and continue to shape both popular and scholarly views of the qedešah and the socio-religious milieu in which she is located, attention must also be given to the way in which the issues are formulated and supported in these works. The following chapter examines the subject of “sacred prostitution” as an interpretive construct that became a “given” in twentieth-century biblical interpretation and works on ancient Near Eastern religion and culture.

Chapter 2

Sacred Prostitution as Interpretive Construct

sacred prostItutIon is a “given” in the introductory textbooks and standard reference works on the Hebrew Bible and the history and religion of ancient Israel. Anyone today who has had an introductory course in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible or uses an annotated Bible “knows” that sacred prostitution was a characteristic feature of the Canaanite “fertility cult” and ancient Near Eastern religion in general.1 Although questions have begun to be raised in scholarly circles concerning the assumed institution and/or practices, these have not yet occasioned a fundamental rejection or rethinking of the inherited conceptions or had any noticeable impact on interpretation aimed either at the laity or religious leaders.2 Attitudes vary, from relatively sympathetic portrayals that emphasize the needs and insecurities of ancient agricultural societies to 1.  The original draft of this chapter, written in 2003, described what was essentially a consensus in the latter half of the twentieth century. While the present version incorporates references to more recent literature, documenting doubts and denials concerning the inherited construct, it is still necessary to focus on the view in its “classical” formulation, because it persists in popular works and as unexamined presuppositions in the analysis of many other texts and subjects. For a recent statement of the state of the subject, see Susan Ackerman, “Fertility Cult,” NIDB 2:450–51, and idem, “The Question of ‘Sacred Prostitution,’” NIDB 4:652. 2.  Specialized studies treating various aspects of sacred prositution are, in chronological order, Mayer Gruber, “Hebrew qĕdēšāh and her Canaanite and Akkadian Cognates,” UF 18 (1986) 133–48; Robert A. Oden, Jr., “Religious Identity and the Sacred Prostitution Accusation,” in idem, The Bible Without Theology: The Theological Tradition and Alternatives to It (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987) 131–53; Joan Goodnick Westenholz, “Tamar, qĕdēšā, qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia,” HTR 82 (1989), 245–65; Wilhelm, “Marginalien zu Herodot Klio 199”; Karel van der Toorn, “Cultic Prostitution,” ABD 5:510–13 (1992); Marie-Theres Wacker, “Kosmisches Sakrament oder Verpfändung des Körpers? ‘Kult Prostitution’ im biblischen Israel und in hinduistischen Indien: Religionsgeschichtliche Überlegungen im Interesse feministischen Theologie,” BN 61 (1992) 51–75; Christine Stark, “Kultprostitution” im Alten Testament? Die Qedeschen der Hebräischen Bibel und das Motiv der Hurerei (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); and Stephanie L. Budin, The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 33

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Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

blanket condemnations that associate the assumed practice with general sexual depravity, sexual “orgies,” and homosexuality. The tendency in academic writing has clearly been toward more “understanding” and accepting approaches.3 Regardless of attitudes, however, the general understanding of the subject among biblical scholars has been relatively constant, drawing on the idea of “sacred marriage,” as the sexual union of male and female deities ritually enacted by human representatives in order to stimulate the processes of reproduction and regeneration in seed and soil. Because this understanding is so firmly established in the literature and tied to multiple references in biblical, classical, and ancient Near Eastern texts, it is difficult to recognize it as a relatively recent construct. Although the expression sacred (or religious/cultic) prostitution appears in scattered references before the Victorian era, it is not until the latter half of the nineteenth century that it becomes a subject of scholarly interest and debate. And it is heavily dependent on Sir James George Frazer for the particular interpretation that has dominated biblical scholarship since the early twentieth century. In work incorporated into the third edition of his widely popular Golden Bough, Frazer articulated the construct that lies behind modern references to sacred prostitution and the “Canaanite fertility cult.” It is a construct that brought together diverse elements from ancient and classical texts that had no common name, function, or meaning. It was shaped by modern western interests in religion and sex in “primitive” cultures and fed by new discoveries from the ancient Near East and colonial encounters with peoples of distant lands, whose strange customs challenged western norms and awakened memories and rumors from Europe’s own past.4 To establish the general outlines of this “common knowledge” in the latter half of the twentieth century a selection of statements from introductory textbooks and general reference works is presented below. Although specialized studies of key texts and practices deserve attention for their particular arguments and evaluation of sources, they are less useful for establishing the assumptions that most scholars and readers attach to the subject of sacred prostitution. My concern here is to identify the main elements of the popular view, with particular attention to constancy and variability in the construct and its associations. 3.  Feminist interpretation in particular has tended to see the qedešah as representing a suppressed form of goddess worship and a victim of patriarchal religion. Attention has been focused almost exclusively on Hosea, as illustrated by Athalya Brenner, ed., A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets (FCB 8; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995), where 11 of the 17 articles are devoted to Hosea. I will not attempt to characterize feminist interpretation as a whole, which is also concerned with the figure of the zonah, who is identified at times with the qedešah and/or viewed as a “free” woman, not under male control. I will engage particular feminist interpretations in Chapter 6 as they relate to the exegesis of individual texts. 4.  On the role of romanticism and the search for modern Europe’s pagan roots, see Chapter 3.



Sacred Prostitution as Interpretive Construct

35

Sacred Prostitution in Standard Works of Old Testament/ Hebrew Bible Introduction and Reference A popular textbook for American college and seminary students, published in 1957 and still in use in the first decade of the present century (in a fourth edition, dated 1986), was Bernard Anderson’s Understanding the Old Testament.5 Anderson describes the religion of Canaan in a restrained and sympathetic manner that avoids negative terms of appraisal. He portrays the struggle of faith in the period of the Judges as a struggle between a religion of nature, based on the needs of an agricultural society, and a religion of history. The biblical references to the Baals and Ashtarts point to the primary actors and the essential drama of Canaanite religion, as Anderson describes it: “The Baal of a region is the ‘lord’ or ‘owner’ of the ground; its fertility is dependent upon sexual relations between him and his consort.” But this is not simply a divine drama. Man was not a mere spectator of the sacred marriage. It was believed that by ritually enacting the drama of Baal it was possible to assist—through magical power—the fertility powers to reach their consummation, and thereby to insure the welfare and prosperity of the land. The cooperation with the powers of fertility involved the dramatization in the temples of the story of Baal’s loves and war. Besides the rehearsal of this mythology, a prominent feature of the Canaanite cult was sacred prostitution (see Deut 23:18). In the act of temple prostitution the man identified himself with Baal, the woman with Ashtart. It was believed that human pairs, by imitating the action of Baal and his partner, could bring the divine pair together in fertilizing union.6 The 1984 textbook of Lawrence Boadt, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction,7 offers a similar reconstruction of Canaanite religion as a fertility religion involving cultic prostitution. Boadt devotes an entire chapter to “Canaanite Religion and Culture,” citing Hos 4:12–13 and Deut 23:17–18 (H 18–19)8 to illustrate the persistence of “Canaanite” practices in eighth- and seventh-century Israel. Characterizing Canaanite religion as a “nature religion” in which fertility was a major concern, Boadt concludes, “Naturally then emphasis was centered on performing 5.  Bernard Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall). A completely revised 5th edition appeared in 2007, with W. Stephen Bishop and Judith H. Newman named as “contributors.” 6.  Ibid. (1957) 98; emphasis added. The 4th edition (1986) substitutes “farmers” for “man” in the first line (186). 7.  New York: Paulist. 8.  The term “cult prostitute” is used to translate three of the four terms (qdšh, qdš, and zwnh) and is placed in parentheses following the literal translation of klb as “dog.”

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Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

sexual actions that would bring about fertility by human imitation of the divine powers that bestowed fertilizing seed and life on the land.”9 In support of this construction, he points to the Ugaritic tablets as giving us “a good idea of the myths and rites used by the Canaanites.” He continues: Both involve generous amounts of magical imitation in which priests and worshipers represent sexual matings of the gods. One example would be the annual New Year’s festival in which the king, as Baal’s representative, would unite himself with a high priestess in a “sacred marriage” to guarantee the land’s prosperity and fertility for the coming year. At the same time, other worshippers would abandon themselves to sexual license with official cult prostitutes, both men and women, in order to fulfill prayers or vows asking for children, or better crops, or an end to drought.10 Similar association of sacred prostitution with “fertility religion” is also found in standard works on the history and religion of ancient Israel. John Bright’s History of Israel11 enjoyed three editions between 1959 and 1981 and was the standard reference work for several generations of American seminarians. His characterization of Canaanite religion as “an extraordinarily debasing form of paganism, specifically of the fertility cult,” reflected the views of his teacher, W. F. Albright,12 and remained unchanged through all editions.13 The distinctive features of this cult are described as follows: Important in Canaanite myth was the death and resurrection of Ba‘al, which corresponded to the annual death and resurrection of nature. As the myth 9. Boadt, Reading the Old Testament, 216. 10.  Ibid., 216–17 (emphasis added). In fact, as Chapter 5 will show, the Ugaritic texts contain no references to female cultic personnel that might be identified as “official cult prostitutes,” but only references to a class of male qdš(m). 11.  Philadelphia: Westminster, 1959; 2nd ed., 1972; 3rd ed., 1981. 12.  Albright’s most influential work was his Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (5th ed.; Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1969 [1st ed., 1942]). While Bright cites Albright as a primary reference in his synopsis of Canaanite religion (History of Israel [1959] 108 n. 25) and echoes his emphasis on its degrading sexual practices, he addressed an American audience no longer familiar with the classical references on which Frazer, and Albright, drew and makes no reference to them. In contrast, Albright still represents the older tradition, as exhibited in the following statement: Sacred prostitution was apparently an almost invariable concomitant of the cult of the Phoenician and Syrian goddess, whatever her personal name, as we know from many allusions in classical literature, especially in Herodotus, Strabo, and Lucian . . . . [T]he erotic aspect of their cult must have sunk to extremely sordid depths of social degradation. (Archaeology and the Religion of Israel [1969] 159) 13. Bright, History of Israel (1959) 108; (1981) 118.



Sacred Prostitution as Interpretive Construct

37

was re-enacted in mimetic ritual, the forces of nature were thought to be reactivated, and the desired fertility in soil, beast, and man thereby secured. As in all such religions, numerous debasing practices, including sacred prostitution, homosexuality, and various orgiastic rites, were prevalent.14 A more specialized treatment of the subject is given in Marvin Pope’s article, “Fertility Cults,” in the widely used Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (1962): The OT furnishes abundant evidence as to the character of the religion of the land into which the Israelites came. Fertility rites were practiced at the numerous shrines which dotted the land, as well as at the major sanctuaries. The Israelites absorbed the Canaanite ways and learned to identify their god with Baal, whose rains brought fertility to the land. A characteristic feature of the fertility cult was sacral sexual intercourse by priests and priestesses and other specially consecrated persons, sacred prostitutes of both sexes, intended to emulate and stimulate the deities who bestowed fertility. (IDB 2:265) Summary statements sufficed in two handbooks on the religion of ancient Israel from the sixties. The fact that both were originally published in German attests to the common conception on both sides of the Atlantic. Helmar Ringgren (Israelite Religion, 1966) accents ritual action in his characterization of Canaanite religion: The cultic drama of the dying and rising fertility god clearly played an essential role in the cultus [of the Canaanites]. There was, in addition, sacral prostitution, considered very important because it was felt to promote fertility.15 For Georg Fohrer (History of Israelite Religion, 1972), “fertility cult” simply implies sacral prostitution: Canaanite religion, being a fertility cult, was familiar with the sacral prostitution that was widespread throughout the ancient Near East.16 14.  A History of Israel (1959) 108, emphasis added; cf. 92, 141, 149, 218, 242 for further references to the pagan fertility cult and its “debasing” or “orgiastic” rites. A note in the third edition (1981) cites a caution by John Gray against “supposing that Canaanite religion was entirely preoccupied with the fertility cult and devoid of social concern,” but adds that “the total picture remains rather ugly” (119 n. 27). 15.  Emphasis added. Helmer Ringgren, Israelite Religion (trans. D. E. Green; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966 [German orig., 1963]) 43. 16.  Emphasis added. Georg Fohrer, History of Israelite Religion (trans. D. E. Green; Nashville: Abingdon; [German orig., 1969]) 301.

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Fohrer’s succinct statement exhibits two essential features of the “common knowledge” that have made it so resistant to challenge: (1) the view that sacral prostitution was an essential feature of “fertility cults” and (2) the belief that the practice was “widespread throughout the ancient Near East.” The latter conviction has permitted theories of sacred prostitution to persist despite absence of evidence and invalidation of individual cases and claims. An example of this type of reasoning may be seen in the following statement from the commentary by G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles on the Laws of Hammurapi: there is nothing definite to show whether the various priestesses named in them were temple-prostitutes, but there can be little doubt that sacral prostitution existed in connection with the temples, especially with that of Ishtar, if only because of the widespread testimony of antiquity.17 Closer examination of the examples cited above reveals that the actions, actors, and meaning of the acts are not described uniformly. Multiple explanations may stand side by side. Sometimes the assumed ritual action is performed by a king and a priestess; at other times, or concomitantly, by “cult prostitutes,” or even by lay women and men. Some appeal to “sacred marriage” traditions, others to a “dying and rising god.” In some, Baal is the primary figure, as the “lord” or “owner” of the land—or as a vulnerable “dying and rising” god, identified with the vegetation that dies annually and is regenerated. Strangely missing in most of the above accounts is any reference to the divine female partner, reflecting a shift in interpretive models from an original focus on a “great mother goddess,” variously identified as Astarte, Ishtar, or some other local representation.18 Sometimes the cult prostitutes are described as female, sometimes as comprised of both sexes. Notable in all of the accounts is the loose manner is which sacred prostitution is related to the ritual action of the cult.19 The reason for this lack of specificity, and the variability of the models, is that the portrait of sacred prostitution presented in modern textbooks has been constructed from fragments of evidence from diverse times and contexts. None individually will support the construct, but the appearance of any of the elements is commonly taken as evidence that the 17.  The Babylonian Laws, Edited with Translation and Commentary (2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1952–55) 1:360. 18.  The exception is Pope’s article, which begins by identifying the fertility cult of the ancient Near East with a “great mother goddess” in a description that shows clear dependence on Frazer (n. 22 below). 19.  See, e.g., Anderson (Understanding the Old Testament, 98): “Besides the rehearsal of this mythology, a prominent feature of the Canaanite cult was sacred prostitution”; and Boadt (Reading the Old Testament, 217): “At the same time, other worshippers would abandon themselves to sexual license with official cult prostitutes.”



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whole complex is present. Thus despite mounting criticism, on several fronts, sacred prostitution continues to be a “given” in general treatments of ancient Near Eastern, and more specifically “Canaanite,” religion. Another notable feature of popular (and scholarly) presentations of sacred prostitution is the shifting base of “evidence” invoked in support of the theory. The idea, once established, has proved remarkably tenacious and resilient, exhibiting a kind of primacy that makes it immune to threat from conflicting evidence or arguments, or even loss of foundational texts. This is evidenced most dramatically in the appeal to Ugaritic texts that dominates recent references, such as Boadt’s. For a generation no longer familiar with the classical sources on which Frazer constructed his case (sources still primary for Albright), these more ancient texts from the Bible’s own cultural milieu have seemed to carry decisive weight. Yet they are of a quite different nature—mythic texts with no accounts of ritual practices, cultic acts, or popular beliefs—whose testimony is often difficult to integrate into the inherited construct. The situation is still more complicated as new textual and artifactual evidence from different regions of the ancient Near East is brought to bear, introducing new factors even as it purports to corroborate older views. The consequence is tensions, contradictions, and lack of clarity in the arguments. Sir James Frazer and the Concept of Sacred Prostitution I have identified Frazer as a key figure in shaping the construct of sacred prostitution familiar to us today and securing its place in biblical scholarship and “general knowledge.” He is also responsible, I believe, for a change in basic attitudes toward the practices he sought to explain, a change evidenced in most of the examples cited above. In contrast to earlier views that stressed the licentious nature of pagan religion and culture as evidence of its debased moral character, treatments of the subject by most biblical scholars in the second half of the twentieth century make some effort to explain the logic of the practices in terms of a primitive world view determined by economic necessities and pre-logical thinking—a legacy, I suggest, of Frazer in his immensely popular Golden Bough.20 Although his primary sources and many of his ideas were shared by others of his day, the popularity and authority accorded to this massive study of “primitive religion” assured him a prominent place in efforts to reconstruct the religion of the biblical world. Thus he is cited in most twentieth-century treatments of the “fertility cult” of the ancient Near East and is singled out by Robert Oden in his 1987 critique of the “sacred prostitution 20.  Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (3rd ed.; 12 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1911–15).

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accusation” as both typical of his age and influential beyond any of his contemporaries in his impact on biblical scholarship.21 Frazer’s best-known statement on sacred prostitution concludes a catalogue of reports from antiquity of prostitution identified with a goddess by articulating an underlying rationale for the diverse practices described in the reports: We may conclude that a great Mother Goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of Western Asia; that associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants . . . and further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary, union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast.22 The term sacred prostitution does not occur in this passage, and the statement is formulated in a manner that allows for a great many different arrangements and conditions for the “union of the human sexes at the sanctuary.” Abstracted from its context, it invites the profusion, and confusion, of examples and models sampled above. Before engaging in a detailed examination of Frazer’s work, it is necessary to consider his antecedents and the environment in which he worked, since he was not alone in his interest in sacred prostitution, nor did he invent the notion, as some have supposed.23 Marie-Theres Wacker has observed that the expression 21.  Oden, “Religious Identity,” 136, 138. 22.  James G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris: Studies in the History of Oriental Religion (3rd ed., rev. and enl., in 2 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1914, repr. 1919; = vols. 5–6 [Part IV] of The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3rd ed.) 1:39. Here the dependence of Pope’s opening paragraph is especially clear: The oldest common feature of the religions of the ancient Near East was the worship of a great mother-goddess, the personification of fertility. Associated with her, usually as a consort, was a young god who died and came to life again, like the vegetation which quickly withers but blooms again. . . . (Pope, “Fertility Cult,” 265) Pope identifies the divine couple in Mesopotamia as Ishtar and Tammuz, in Egypt as Isis and Osiris, and later in Asia Minor as Cybele and Attis. For Syria in the second millennium BCE, as evidenced by the Ugaritic texts, he identifies the dying and rising god as Baal-Hadad, but notes that “there is some confusion in the roles of the goddesses.” 23.  For example, Bettina Stumpp (Prostitution in der römsichen Antike [Berlin: Akademie, 1998] 137) identifies Frazer as the first to use the expression sacred prostitution (cited by Stark, Kultprostitution, 31 n. 132).



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sacred prostitution does not occur in the ancient sources.24 She attributed its coinage, or first appearance in scholarly literature, to “British anthropologists of the Victorian era,” noting especially its use by Frazer in The Golden Bough and his decisive influence on “religionsgeschichtliche Theoriebildung” for the ancient Orient.25 In emphasizing Frazer’s influence on modern conceptions of sacred prostitution she cites the passage quoted above, but she also observes that the expression was already found in William Robertson Smith’s Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889).26 In fact, it has a considerably longer, and more complex history of use, though it still belongs to modern western attempts to understand the institutions, and mind, of the ancient Orient and classical antiquity. Before Frazer: Sacred Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Scholarship Sacred harlotry or religious prostitution was a well-known subject in nineteenth-century discourse on sexual relations and religious practices among various peoples of antiquity as well as surviving “savage” cultures.27 It rarely 24.  Wacker, “Kosmisches Sakrament,” 51. It is possible that this observation, which I had made independently, has also been made by others, but I have seen no recognition of this fact, or of its significance, in any other treatments of the subject. 25.  Ibid., 52. 26.  Ibid. Oden began his survey of the “sacred prostitution accusation” in modern scholarship with Robertson Smith, as an exemplar for his thesis of a religiously motivated apologetic behind modern discourse on the subject. Although he notes that “accounts of the religiously sanctioned practice of various sexual acts” begin in antiquity, he finds a “perceptible increase” in the rehearsing of such accounts beginning in the final decades of the nineteenth century, an increase he links to the growth of historical-critical biblical study and theological response to its findings. “The more Israel’s religion appeared to be related closely to the religions of her neighbors,” he argues, “the more intently scholars from within the theological tradition sought grounds to establish the distinctiveness and superiority of this religion.” Denunciation of sacred prostitution as a practice of Israel’s neighbors served to establish the superiority of Israel’s religion within the Hebrew Bible—and in the “modern theological tradition.” Robertson Smith, he noted, championed comparative research while maintaining that his research “demonstrated Israel’s uniquely high standing among the religions of antiquity.” He bolstered his conclusion, Oden alleges, by his statement that “the temples of the Semitic deities were thronged with sacred prostitutes,” adding that “this statement is not supported by any evidence, nor was it thought necessary” (“Religious Identity,” 135). Oden’s analysis of late nineteenth-century literature on sacred prostitution as “accusation” with an apologetic motive may be accurate with respect to biblical scholarship, but it fails to appreciate the broad fascination of the modern West with the strange practices of ancient and “savage” cultures that made a “best seller” of The Golden Bough. 27.  My focus in tracing the roots of Frazer’s views is on British scholarship. Its relationship to currents in continental scholarship will be alluded to at points, but needs more attention and expertise than I can give it.

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appears, however, as a distinct subject in reference works or subject indexes, but must be sought under a number of other headings in compositions dealing with a wide range of social and religious concerns. It may be linked to such disparate subjects as bride capture and sexual hospitality to strangers, the origins of marriage and the patriarchal family, or phallic cults. It may be treated as a subtype of “prostitution” or confined to the treatment of particular texts, cults, or cultural traditions, identified by the terms hetaera / hetairea, hierodule / hieroduleia, k/ qedeshot, or simply by reference to Herodotus, whose report on the Babylonian cult of Mylitta is the constant core of virtually every treatment, supplying the key “facts” and interpretation for all other references. A comprehensive account of this pre-Frazerian usage is beyond the scope and aims of this investigation, but a sampling of the usage that preceded Frazer’s formulation will help to clarify his contribution.28 Anthropological Debate: C. Staniland Wake vs. Sir John Lubbock on the Question of Origins The earliest publication I have been able to identify with a title addressing the subject of sacred prostitution is a paper by that title presented to a meeting of the London Anthropological Society on June  19, 1873 by its Honorary Secretary, C. Staniland Wake and published in the proceedings of the society.29 The paper opens with an evocation of the name of Darwin that serves to brand the opinion he aims to contest:30 Mr. Darwin, in a recent work (The Descent of Man, vol. ii. p. 361) seems to endorse the opinion that the high honor bestowed in ancient times on women who were “utterly licentious,” is intelligible only “if we admit that

28.  The sampling offered below traces usage that lies outside the specialized realm of biblical studies and ancient history, although the authors surveyed made use of current biblical scholarship in treating biblical texts and contexts. 29.  C. S. Wake, “Sacred Prostitution,” Anthropologia 1 (1874) 156–64. It was later republished with twelve other essays in Serpent-Worship and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism (London: Redway, 1888) 149–64. Although Wake died in 1910, a privately printed book of 1929 highlighted the essay in its title (Sacred Prostitution and Marriage by Capture; n.p.) and made it the lead chapter (followed by “Marriage by Capture,” “Marriage Among Primitive Peoples,” and “Origin of Serpent Worship”). This latter publication, in which all bibliographical references are omitted, suggests popular interest in the subject, along with marriage and religion in primitive societies, at about the same time that The Golden Bough was at the height of its popularity. 30.  For the larger context of debate over evolutionism in the nascent discipline of anthropology, see George W. Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1987) 238–73; on the London Anthropological Society, see 247–57.



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promiscuous intercourse was the aboriginal, and therefore, long-revered, custom of the tribe” (see Sir John Lubbock’s, Origin of Civilization, 86).31 The author of the view damned by Wake’s Darwinian endorsement was one of the most popular anthropologists of his day, whose Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man (1870) had already gone into a second edition in the year of its initial publication.32 Thus, in challenging Lubbock’s view, Wake is addressing central issues in anthropological, and popular, debate of the time, however bizarre or unfounded they may appear to us today. Although Frazer does not cite Wake, who disappeared from scholarly view until his rediscovery in the 1970s and 80s,33 he drew on discussion in anthropological circles of the late nineteenth century that Wake represents. Consequently, attention to Wake and his sources gives us a better understanding of sacred prostitution as a subject of public debate and scholarly publication in the period when Frazer was beginning his work—on the originally unrelated subject of sacred kingship. When Frazer finally picks up the subject of sacred prostitution it is as a tangential theme that is never fully integrated into the primary discussion of the priest-king; and it assumes a pre-existing body of “common knowledge” and debate. In his paper, Wake proposes to show that “the fact” referred to by Lubbock (namely “honorable” female promiscuity) had “nothing at all to do with the custom” of aboriginal promiscuity or “communal marriage,” to which Lubbock had connected it.34 Wake’s debate with Lubbock places the subject of sacred prostitution in the context of a larger discussion that had engaged a wide spectrum of scholars in the new science of anthropology, as well as the older disciplines of theology, history, philosophy, and law. That larger debate concerned the origins and development of marriage and the family, modern civilization, morality, and monotheism. It pitted monogenists against polygenists and evolutionists against diffusionists and degenerationists.35 In this debate, sacred prostitution was a “given,” a “fact” by which theories of primitive social and sexual relations might 31.  Wake, “Sacred Prostitution,” 156. Wake’s use of Darwin is highly selective, since Darwin goes on to qualify Lubbock’s notion of aboriginal promiscuity in the very next paragraph (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex [2 vols.; London: Murray, 1871] 2:361). 32.  John Lubbock, The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man (London, 1870; repr., ed. with an introduction by Peter Rivière [Classics in Anthropology Series; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978]). A 7th edition appeared in 1912, with the added subtitle (from the 2nd ed.), Mental and Social Condition of Savages. 33.  See Rodney Needham, “Editor’s Introduction” in the republication of Wake’s most important work, The Development of Marriage and Kinship (London, 1889; Classics in Anthropology Series; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967) v–xlvii, esp. v–xiv; cf. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 179–81, 297, 315. 34.  Wake, “Sacred Prostitution,” 156; emphasis added. 35. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, especially Chapters 4–6.

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be tested. It presented a problem because it seemed to counter the accepted rules of sexual morality and marriage in the very societies in which it was found. The Evidence for Sacred Prostitution

Wake begins his argument by rehearsing the evidence for sacred prostitution, citing the Histoire de la Prostitution of Pierre Dufour as the source of his examples. Describing this evidence as forming “one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of morals,”36 he summarizes it in a catalogue that extends to four pages. It begins as follows: According to Herodotus, every woman born in Babylon was obliged by law, once in her life, to submit to the embrace of a stranger. Those who were gifted with beauty of face or figure soon completed this offering to Venus, but of the others some had to remain in the sacred enclosure for several years before they were able to obey the law. This statement of Herodotus is confirmed by the evidence of Strabo . . . . The compulsory prostitution of Babylonia was connected with the worship of Mylitta, and wherever this worship spread it was accompanied by the sexual sacrifice . . . . The Phoenician worship of Astarte was no less distinguished by sacred prostitution, to which was added promiscuous intercourse between the sexes during certain religious fêtes . . . . The Phoenicians carried the custom to the Isle of Cyprus, where the worship of their great goddess, under the name of Venus, became supreme . . . . With their worship of Astarte or Venus, the Phoenicians introduced sacred prostitution into all their Colonies.37 Here we have the essential ingredients of every nineteenth- and early twentieth-century account of practices identified as sacred prostitution: compulsory “prostitution” connected with the worship of Mylitta-Astarte-Venus (and interpreted as a sexual sacrifice), with which other forms of promiscuous intercourse might be associated. This core is typically extended in various ways to include sexual relations in other contexts of explicit, or assumed, religious associations, including association with male as well as female deities. Thus a critical issue in assessing theories of sacred prostitution is the question of what constitutes evidence, and whether the evidence presented points to a single phenomenon. Wake offers an especially extensive compilation of evidence, comprising the following examples: 36.  Wake, “Sacred Prostitution,” 157; Pierre Dufour, Histoire de la prostitution chez tous les peuples du monde, depuis l’antiquité la plus reculée jusqu’à nos jours (4 vols.; Paris: Seré, 1851–53). Dufour’s work is treated below. 37.  Wake, “Sacred Prostitution,” 157.



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For the Phoenician colonies, Wake cites St. Augustine on the three Venuses of Carthage: one of virgins, one of married women, and one of the courtesans— to the last of whom the Phoenicians “sacrificed the chastity of their daughters before they were married.” Adding that “it was the same in Syria,” Wake cites the evidence from Byblos: “At Byblos, during the fêtes of Adonis . . . every female worshipper had to sacrifice to Venus either her hair or her person.” “The same curious custom,” he continues, “appears to have been practiced in Media and Persia, and among the Parthians.” Citing Herodotus, he reports that the Lydians were “particularly noted for the zeal with which they practiced the rites of Venus.”38 From Asia Minor, Wake moves to Egypt, noting that “some writers deny that sacred prostitution was practiced [there],” but argues for the contrary opinion on the basis of “the great similarity between the worship of Osiris and Isis and that of Venus and Adonis.” Quoting Dufour and citing Strabo, he considers evidence (of quite disparate nature) from ancient Bubastis and Thebes and from “present day” dancing girls of that country, “who are also prostitutes, [and] attend the religious festivals just as the ancient devotees of Astarte.” For Greece he cites evidence for sacred prostitution under the patronage of Venus Pandemos at Athens and Strabo’s report on the thousand prostitutes of the temple of Venus in Corinth. He then proceeds to Rome, noting, in Defour’s words, that prostitutes “frequented all the temples, in order . . . to find there favorable chances of gain; they showed their gratitude to the divinity who had been propitious to them, and they brought to his sanctuary a portion of the gain which they believed they owed him.”39 Still quoting Dufour, Wake concludes that owing to “the systemic abstention from judicial and religious control,” “sacred prostitution preserved at Rome nearly its primitive features, with this difference, nevertheless, that it was always confined to the class of courtesans, and that, instead of being an integral part of worship, it was a foreign accessory to it.”40 Wake concludes his review of the evidence by considering modern examples from India, arguing that “the religious prostitutes of antiquity find their counterparts in the dancing girls attached to the Hindu temples.”41 These “female slaves of the idol” were dedicated to temple service by their parents, he says, and act as dancing girls and courtesans. “Notwithstanding their calling,” he notes, “they were treated with great respect,” citing the legend of Gautama’s entertainment by a high-ranking 38.  Ibid., 158. 39.  Note the shift from a female to a male deity. 40.  Ibid., 159. Much of Wake’s presentation appears to consist of direct translation of Dufour’s text, sometimes in quotation marks, but without page references. 41.  Wake’s description here consists largely of a verbatim account of the Bayadêres of Southern India by a certain Bishop Heber, in which it is often unclear whether the opinions expressed are those of Wake or Heber.

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lady with the title “Chief of the Courtesans” as evidence that this was always the case.42 Having given the “chief facts connected with religious prostitution,” Wake is ready to demonstrate that “this system has nothing to do with any custom of communal marriage, or promiscuous intercourse between the sexes.” It roots instead, he contends, in the custom of “sexual hospitality.”43 Before considering his critique and counter proposal, Lubbock’s arguments must be reviewed. Sir John Lubbock and the Origins of Marriage

The Origin of Civilization (1870) was the second major work of a natural scientist whose archaeological interests had brought him to anthropology and the problem of human origins in an antiquity that could no longer be contained within a biblical chronology. The challenge for Lubbock and his generation was to describe the earliest forms of human culture and trace the path from these origins to the defining institutions of modern civilization, while also accounting for the diverse, and often abhorrent, practices and beliefs of contemporary “savages.”44 Evolutionary models gained force, and with the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1858 sociocultural evolutionism could find support in biological parallels. Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury) was one of the pioneers of sociocultural evolutionary theory and its comparative method, along with his contemporaries E. B. Tylor and John McLennan.45 In his earlier work, Prehistoric Times, as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (1865), Lubbock had set forth the presuppositions and method for linking prehistoric and modern cultures, reasoning from comparability of material culture to comparability of mental states and social organization. In The Origin of Civilization, he “traces up” each of the major social institutions and cultural expressions of modern (Western) civilization: art, marriage, relationship (kinship), religion, language, morality, and law.46 Because the pace of change was not uniform, he reasoned, clues to earlier stages of development could be seen in practices and beliefs that had “survived” into modern times in remote and isolated territories. Lubbock’s references to sacred prostitution appear in his chapter on the origin and development of marriage (Chapter 3), not 42.  Ibid., 160. See Chapter 6 for a fuller treatment of the Indian data, with contemporary sources. 43.  Ibid. Emphasis added. 44.  The literature of this age commonly refers to the exotic peoples of the regions beyond Western Europe as “savages,” “rude,” “lower races,” etc. 45.  On the impact of Darwinism on anthropological speculation and the complex relationship between sociocultural and biological evolutionism, see Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 144–85, particularly 145–46. 46. Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, lxv; Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 154–55.



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in his treatment of religion (Chapters 4–6)47 or morals (Chapter 7). Beginning with the evidence of contemporary savages, detailed in ten pages of examples, he argues that “the lowest races have no institution of marriage” and concludes that the absence or primitive nature of marriage among these groups must represent the “earliest social condition of man,” a condition he describes as communal marriage.48 His task is then to “trace up the custom of marriage in its gradual development” by considering the various ways in which the “communal marriage system” was “broken up and replaced by individual marriage.”49 In support of his view, Lubbock cites the Swiss jurist and historian Johann Jakob Bachofen (Das Mutterrecht, 1861), who had posited an original state of hetaerism characterized by mother right and followed by matriarchy, and the Scottish anthropologist John McLennan, who had independently posited a state of general promiscuity as the earliest form of sexual relations.50 He rejects Bachofen’s reconstruction of an early stage of female dominance and formulates his own theory in dialogue with McLennan, who had reconstructed an early stage of bride capture correlated with the rise of exogamy. Lubbock theorized that bride capture was the first step in the development of individual marriage, reasoning that “no man could appropriate a girl entirely to himself without infringing the rights of the whole tribe.” But “a warrior who had captured a beautiful girl in some marauding expedition” might be expected to claim a peculiar right to her. Since she did not belong to the tribe, it suffered no loss thereby.51 Lubbock argues that his explanation derives additional probability from evidence of “a general feeling that marriage was an act for which some compensation was due.”52 Citing evidence from a chapter on Venus worship in a work by Jacques-Antoine Dulaure,53 he suggests a different interpretation of the customs reported there:

47.  Lubbock’s treatment of religion forms the core of the work (occupying 150 pages out of a total of 350), tracing the development of religious thought through seven stages from atheism through “fetishism,” nature-worship or totemism, shamanism, etc. to a final stage in which morality becomes associated with religion (Rivière, “Introduction,” in Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, xlii–xlv). 48. Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, 66–67. 49.  Ibid., 60, 66. 50.  John McLennan, Primitive Marriage: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies (Edinburgh, 1865; repr. ed. with an introduction by Peter Rivière; Classics in Anthropology Series; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). 51. Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, 86. 52. Ibid. 53.  Jacques-Antoine Dulaure, Des divinités génératrices ou du culte du phallus chez les anciens et les modernes (Paris: Dentu, 1805). This was republished in 1825, together with a work written earlier in 1805, under the title Histoire abrégée de différens cultes, 2 vols. (1: Des cultes qui ont précédé et amené l’idolâtrie ou l’adoration des figures humaines; 2: Des divinités génératrices chez les anciens et les modernes) (2nd ed.; Paris: Guillaume). This is the edition cited by Lubbock.

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That special marriage was an infringement of . . . communal rights, for which some compensation was due, seems to me the true explanation of the offerings which virgins were so generally compelled to make before being permitted to marry.54 “In many cases,” he continues, “the exclusive possession of a wife could only be legally acquired by a temporary recognition of the preexisting communal rights.”55 Thus, in Babylonia, according to Herodotus, every woman was compelled to offer herself once in the temple of Venus, and only after doing so was she considered free to marry. The same was, according to Strabo, the law in Armenia. In some parts of Cyprus also . . . there was a similar custom, and Dulaure asserts that it existed also at Carthage, and in several parts of Greece. The account which Herodotus gives of the Lydians, though not so clear, seems to indicate a similar law.56 Here is the familiar list, or at least parts of it, but in a new interpretive context. Lubbock continues his parade of examples with references to bride-sharing customs of the Balearic Islands and Greenland Eskimos and a variety of practices associated with Indian temples, most following Dulaure.57 Lubbock does not use the expression sacred prostitution in his discussion of these cases, but he is clearly dealing with the same data treated elsewhere under this expression—and the same problem, namely interpreting reported cases of female promiscuity that appear to be publicly sanctioned, even honored, and at times obligatory. As other reporters and interpreters of these “anomalies,” he combines disparate categories of roles and behavior: “courtesans” (especially those with special training and/or status), temple servants, brides-to-be (under temporary religious or communal obligation), and women (usually married) obligated by vows, penalties, or customs of hospitality. The attempt to bring all of these into a single category with a single origin or explanation shows strains in Lubbock, and every other interpreter. Unlike most recent interpreters, however, Lubbock, like Bachofen, understands the “phenomenon” as associated in some fundamental way with the institution of marriage and the limits on female sexual relations imposed 54. Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, 86–87. 55.  The idea that (exclusive) marriage required some sort of compensation or “expiation” was also proposed by Bachofen, together with the idea that the practice of limited female promiscuity by all, or promiscuity confined to a special few (prostitutes and/or hierodules), must be a symbol of an activity once exercised by all. 56. Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, 87. 57.  Ibid., 88–89. Unlike other authors, who find examples of “sacred prostitution” in Hindu temples, Lubbock presents the practice as a temporary premarital rite rather than the practice of temple personnel or women more or less permanently attached to the temples.



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by the latter institution in classical Greek, patristic, and nineteenth-century European culture. Wake and Sexual Hospitality

Wake launches his critique of Lubbock by lifting up his Indian example and his contention that “the life led by the courtesans attached to the Hindu temples is not considered shameful, because they continue the old custom of the country under religious sanction.”58 Insisting on the absence of any evidence for such a former custom, he argues that religious sanction alone would account for the respect accorded the temple prostitutes.59 Further, he argues, respect would be greatly increased if the religious position of the temple prostitutes was connected with “ideas which have a sacredness of their own.” That is the case he intends to demonstrate, connecting the religious prostitution of the Hindu temples to the custom of “sexual hospitality.” Probably no custom is more widely spread than the providing for a guest a female companion, who is usually a wife or daughter of the host. Such a connection with a stranger is permitted even among peoples who are otherwise jealous preservers of female chastity.60 As evidence he cites Babylonian practice in the time of Alexander,61 Eusebius’s report on Phoenicians prostituting their daughters to strangers “for the greater glory of hospitality,” and women of Cyprus who had devoted themselves to the “Good Goddess” who walked the shores to attract the strangers who disembarked.62 Noting that strangers alone were entitled to seek “sexual hospitality” at the temple of Anaitis in Armenia, during the fetes of Venus and Adonis in Syria, and from the women of Babylonia in their one-time “sacrifice of their persons,” Wake concludes that “in the earliest phase of what is called sacred prostitution it was not every man who was entitled to enjoy its privileges,” but only strangers.63 Besides hospitality, which he describes as “an almost sacred duty with uncultured peoples,” Wake identifies another series of ideas associated with the “system 58.  Wake, “Sacred Prostitution,” 160. 59.  “The ease with which any doctrine or practice, however, absurd or monstrous, be accepted if it possesses a religious sanction, would alone account for the respect entertained for religious prostitutes” (ibid., 161). 60. Ibid. 61.  No source is cited, but the following clause notes that “according to the Roman historian,” parents and husbands did not decline offers of money for the favors accorded (ibid.). 62.  Ibid. The idea of “hospitality” seems rather attenuated in the latter case, as Wake reports it, and is totally lacking in his earlier recounting of “the facts” of sacred prostitution in Cyprus. 63. Ibid.

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of sacred prostitution,” namely those associated with marriage and bearing children, the “great aim of woman’s life” in the East.64 Desire for children led not only to offerings, Wake argues, but also to the making of vows to be performed on obtaining the desired blessing. Reasoning that the nature of the vow “would undoubtedly have some reference to the thing desired,” he cites a report of Indian women who made vows to obtain children and, on bearing a “pretty daughter,” would leave her with the “idol.” From this he concludes that “it is much more probable that [a desire for children], rather than a habit of licentiousness . . . led to the sacrifice at the shrine of Mylitta.”65 He adds further that “it would not be surprising if the ancient Babylonish custom had, of itself, resulted in a system of sacred prostitution.” “The act of sexual intercourse was in the nature of an offering to the Goddess of Fecundity,” he notes, “and a life of prostitution in the service of the goddess might well come to be viewed as pleasing to her and as deserving of respect at the hands of her worshippers.” Wake concludes: The legitimate inference to be made from what has gone before is that sacred prostitution sprang from the primitive custom of providing sexual hospitality for strangers, the agents by which it was carried out being supplied by the votaries of the deity under whose sanction the custom was placed. Assuming its existence, and the strong desire on the part of married women for children, which led them to sacrifice their own virginity as an offering to the Goddess of Fecundity, or to dedicate their daughters to her service, we have a perfect explanation of the custom of sacred prostitution. The duty of these “servants of the idol” would include the furnishing of hospitality to the strangers who visited the shrines and fêtes of the deity. These pilgrims became the guests of the deity, and she was bound to furnish them with the same hospitality as that which they would have met with if they had been entertained by private individuals. The piety of her worshippers enabled her to do this, either by devoting their daughters for a limited period to this sacred service, in return for which the reward of fecundity would be looked for, or by presenting them absolutely to the goddess in return for favors received at her hands. It is not surprising that among peoples having such notions, the temple courtesans were regarded with great respect, nor that those who had acted in that capacity with success were eagerly sought after as wives.66

64.  As evidence, he points to the Hebrew women’s lament for Jephthah’s daughter—occasioned less by her death than by the recorded fact that “she knew no man” (ibid., 162). 65.  Ibid. When Wake shifts to the argument for a reproductive motive, his sources also change. His previously cited evidence from Dufour (which he links to the motive of hospitality) does not support the “fertility” argument—although Wake now tries to impute it to the Mylitta example. 66.  Ibid.; emphasis added.



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Conclusions

Wake’s paper on Sacred Prostitution lifted up an esoteric and titillating topic67 that had found a place in a larger argument concerning the origins of marriage and the theory of primitive promiscuity or communal marriage.68 Wake does not contest the “facts” of religious prostitution, which are drawn from existing compilations and appear to have been widely known, though he adds cases from his own reading. His debate with Lubbock is about the placement of these “facts” in a general theory of social organization and evolution. Wake does not make a fundamental distinction between sacred and ordinary prostitution, but views both as special cases of men relaxing their rights over women in deference to other males. Whether for hospitality or remuneration, the primary motive is (male) pleasure. But he adds a second motive, reproduction, which he attributes to the women as well as the men. This dual rationalization (sexual pleasure and fecundity) is present in some of his sources and appears in most discussions of the subject, but it is highly problematic. It is only one of the problems, however, that arise in attempts to comprehend the diverse customs and beliefs presented as evidence for sacred prostitution and assign them a single place, function, and/ or etiology in a developmental sequence, a theory of “Oriental” religion, or the reconstruction of a particular cult. This diversity of situations and interpretations bound by the unifying language of sacred prostitution belongs to the assemblages used by Lubbock and Wake. Sources and Antecedents: Sacred Prostitution in European Social Thought of the Early Nineteenth Century and Before When two British anthropologists in the 1870s consider the subject of sacred prostitution, their primary sources are two French works from earlier in the century. One, published in 1805, is a study of “gods of generation,” concerned primarily with 67.  Cf. his earlier article “The Influence of the Phallic Idea in the Religions of Antiquity,” Journal of Anthropology 1 (1870) 97–105, 199–227; repr. in Hodder M. Westropp and C. Staniland Wake, Ancient Symbol Worship: Influence of the Phallic Idea in the Religions of Antiquity (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1874) 33–97. His highlighting of sex plays to contemporary social concerns and moral judgments (e.g., concern over the growing incidence of prostitution that prompted the Contagious Diseases Acts), but he treats the subject as a sociological rather than a moral category, and defers discussion of sexual morality from his work on The Evolution of Morality (1878) to The Development of Marriage and Kinship (1889; “Preface,” xlix). See Stocking, Victorian Anthropology, 201. 68.  On the widespread assumption of the theory (together with the allied notion of the priority of matrilineal kinship) by the leading anthropologists in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, see ibid., 204.

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“phallic worship”;69 the other is a four-volume history of prostitution published between 1851 and 1853.70 Together they illustrate the dual contexts in which sacred prostitution has been treated (religion and social relations), in each of which it is presented as a special sub-category of a more general phenomenon. Both works treat sacred prostitution as an established “fact” linked to a particular body of texts from antiquity. But each has contributed new perspectives and emphases to interpretation of that “phenomenon.” Pierre Dufour, Histoire de la prostitution

The four-volume work entitled Histoire de la prostitution chez tous les peuples du monde was published under the name of Pierre Dufour, a pseudonym for Paul Lacroix.71 A prolific author of works on art, literature, and history, Lacroix/Dufour (hereafter Dufour) decries the failure of historians to treat a subject that “attaches itself on all sides to the history of religions, of laws, and of manners (moeurs),” but is constantly left aside as a forbidden topic (comme à l’index).72 Contrasting his work to that of the “archaeologists,” who alone dared approach the subject—in Latin dissertations that allowed them to defy the rules of decency without condemnation—Dufour avers that his aim is “to make vice detestable by unveiling its turpitudes” and so enlighten the public on the true nature of prostitution.73 69. Dulaure, Des divinités génératrices. English translation by “A. F. N.”: The Gods of Generation: A History of Phallic Cults Among Ancients and Moderns (New York: Panurge Press, 1933; repr. Des divinites generatrices: chez les anciens et les modernes, with a “chapitre complémentaire” by Arnold van Gennep [Nouvelle Collection Documentaire; Paris: Société du Mercure de France, 1905]). 70. Dufour, Histoire de la prostitution (n. 36 above). 71.  Lacroix/Dufour was best known by his primary nom de plume, Paul-Louis Jacob, or “Bibliophile Jacob.” 72.  Citation from the English translation of Samuel Putnam (Lacroix, History of Prostitution among all the Peoples of the World from the Most Remote Antiquity to the Present Day [3 vols.; Chicago: P. Covici, 1926] 1:3 / Histoire 1:9). The same complaint is made over a century later by the authors of two independently published works that appeared almost simultaneously in the early 1960s. See Fernando Henriques, Prostitution and Society: A Survey (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1962) 1:13, and Vern Bullough, The History of Prostitution (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1964) 3–4. Bullough laments that lack of accurate historical information has led researchers to “perpetuate as historical fact, statements and beliefs which are inaccurate or which would be difficult to document.” Unfortunately, that is also the case with his own work and that of Henriques when they attempt to trace the early history of prostitution. Resorting to works such as Dufour’s, they simply repeat theories of origins (including primitive promiscuity and religious prostitution) formed in the early nineteenth century and repeated as “fact,” or authoritative scholarly opinion. 73.  History, 3–4 / Histoire, 10. By the early nineteenth century, prostitution had become a major social and political concern in Great Britain, Western Europe, and America, occasioning extensive publication, organization, and legislation relating to public health, criminal activity, civic and family life, and morality. It is only then that serious scholarly attention began to be given to the subject. An example of the interests of the time may be seen in the authorship of the article on “Prostitution” in the 11th edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica (29 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,



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Dufour’s Histoire de la prostitution became the authority on the subject, but did not receive an English translation until 1926, when Samuel Putnam resurrected the work for a select American audience in a limited edition of 1250 numbered copies “for subscribers only.”74 The work begins with an introduction in which Dufour identifies three distinct forms of prostitution, belonging to three different epochs of human society: 1. “hospitality prostitution” (prostitution hospitalière); 2. “sacred,” or “religious,” prostitution; and 3. “legal,” or “political,” prostitution.75 In Dufour’s view, prostitution existed already in the earliest period of general promiscuity, when “the woman, in order to obtain from the man a part of the game that he had killed . . . consented to give herself to ardors which she herself did not feel.”76 Later, he argues, when fixed and durable unions had been formed, “the dogma of hospitality” engendered another species of prostitution, “equally antecedent to moral and religious laws.”77 For Dufour, sexual hospitality has its origins in the need of early hunters for a resting place when wandering far from home. Thus “a condition of general utility . . . made of hospitality a sacred dogma, an inviolable law,” with the husband voluntarily yielding his bed and his wife to the guest whom the gods had brought him.78 Sacred prostitution, in Dufour’s analysis, was almost contemporary with hospitality prostitution and closely akin to it. With the birth of religion and the invention of gods, Dufour argues, “ignorant and credulous men” offered all that was most precious on their altars. So likewise women offered themselves as a sacrifice to the god (“that is to say, his idol or priest”). Continuing, he argues that as pagan 1911] 22:57–64), which was assigned to a certain Arthur Shadwell, M.A., M.D., LL.D., identified in the list of contributors as “Member of Council of Epidemiological Society, Author of The London Water-Supply; Industrial Efficiency; Drink, Temperance and Legislation” (22:vi). 74. Lacroix, History, front matter. A similar translation history is shared by Dulaure’s work, which did not appear in an English version until 1933 (more than a century after its initial publication in 1805) and then only in a privately printed edition of 2000 issued for “private collectors of erotica” (Gods of Generation, Frontispiece). Unfortunately, Putnam’s translation of Dufour’s work in its 1st edition (the only one available to me) is often of such poor quality that it is barely intelligible, and at times simply wrong (see Bullough, History of Prostitution, 293), as in the following example: “the cult of Venus was, then, in a way, a sedative for the women (sédentaire pour les femmes), a nomadic experience for the men” (History, 30; Histoire, 52). 75.  Histoire, 11 / History, 4. The classification is that of August Philippe Edouard Rabutaux (De la prostitution en Europe depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’à la fin du XVIe siècle avec une bibliographie par M. Paul Lacroix [Paris: Seré, 1851]). 76.  History, 6 / Histoire, 14. While Dufour attributes the initiating impulse to the woman, he identifies male need and sentiment as precipitating the second phase, where prostitution is linked to hospitality. Nevertheless, he argues that women’s self-interest played a role in every stage and form of prostitution, insisting that “from these early times the woman did not give herself into servitude, but followed her own free will … her own avaricious instincts” (ibid.). 77.  History, 6 / Histoire, 14–15. 78. Ibid.

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religions developed dogmas and principles and were assimilated to political states, the philosophers and priests who planned and accomplished this “work of pious trickery (fraude ingénieuse)” were careful to leave the ancient practices of sacred prostitution in place, only regulating and directing its practice. From then on, he concludes, prostitution became “the essence of certain cults of gods and goddesses who ordained, tolerated or encouraged it.”79 Dufour’s ideas on sacred prostitution and its relationship to prostitution of hospitality and legal prostitution are developed in Part One, devoted to Greek and Roman antiquity, prefaced by a note on Chaldea, “cradle of hospitality prostitution and sacred prostitution.”80 A single paragraph, uniting Mesopotamian traditions with biblical names and chronology (all unreferenced), brings the history from origins down to Herodotus and the cult of Mylitta.81 The familiar passage from Herodotus is quoted in full and the cult there identified with the cult of Venus Uranios in Cyprus and Phoenicia.82 Here Dufour lays out the “canonical” series cited by Wake and familiar from other treatments of the subject, characterizing the later examples as evidence of the “propagation” of the cult of Mylitta, with its accompanying prostitution, in Asia and Africa. “In each of these countries,” he writes, “the goddess took a new name and her cult affected new forms, under which there always reappeared sacred prostitution.” The constant in the widely dispersed cults of local goddesses was sacred prostitution—which also took multiple forms.83 Dufour’s detailed account moves from the Syria to Cyprus, Carthage, Greece, and Italy, attributing the cult in all these locations to Phoenician expansion. He then turns to Asia Minor, concluding that “Everywhere . . . there were temples of Venus, and sacred Prostitution everywhere presided at the fetes of the goddess, whether she took the name of Mylitta, Anaitis, Astarte, Urania, Mithra, or some other symbolic name.”84 Despite details of local practices, beliefs, and legends, as well as quotations from the ancient authors, no sources are cited apart from the authors’ names. Despite his expansive treatment, he appears to be working from

79.  History, 7–8 / Histoire, 17–18. Dufour views legal prostitution as an inevitable development from religious prostitution, passing into customs and laws (History, 10–12 / Histoire, 23–25). 80.  Histoire, 37. 81.  According to Dufour, the northern part of the country was inhabited by a warlike and savage race of mountain-dwelling hunters, who invented hospitality and prostitution, while the southern part of the country, a land of fertile plains, was inhabited by pasturalists, of a “gentle and peaceful” nature, who observed the stars, created sciences, and invented religions, and with these sacred prostitution. The subsequent uniting of the two peoples with the founding of Babylon led to the eventual blending of their distinct beliefs and customs (moeurs). Thus, Dufour argues, sacred prostitution and prostitution of hospitality soon came to signify one and the same thing in the thinking of the Babylonians and became one of the most characteristic forms of the cult of Venus or Mylitta. 82.  History, 22 / Histoire, 40. 83.  History, 25 / Histoire, 43–44. 84.  History, 30 / Histoire, 52.



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a fixed collection of texts that was well established by the eighteenth century and lies behind Dulaure’s work as well.85 Prostitution Among the Hebrews Dufour is unique in one way, however: in moving beyond this classical corpus to consider prostitution among the ancient Hebrews, a source that Wake passed over entirely in his rehearsal of evidence for sacred prostitution.86 But his treatment involves strained and conflicting arguments as he draws on a Vulgate-based French translation to describe the thrice-repeated prostituée of Gen 38:21–22 as the earliest example of legal prostitution among the Hebrews while citing Jewish interpreters and Hebrew scholars to describe the Vulgate’s effeminate ones (effoeminati) as qedeshim, viewed as priests of the cult of Baal-peor (identified with Adonis or Priapus).87 In Dufour’s reconstruction of sacred prostitution in Israel, it is a cult of male practitioners in the service of a male deity. Only secondarily are women introduced as cult personnel, in order to increase diminishing revenues, and these are foreigners. Continuing their trade, for their own profit, after the demise of the Baal cult, they served the needs of Jewish prostitution.88 As Dufour interprets Deut 23:17 (H 18), it refers to legal prostitution, viewed as an absolute prohibition 85.  Indirect evidence for such compilations of texts may be seen in Voltaire’s complaints about “compilations” of histories, that invariably contained Herodotus’s account of the Mylitta cult. On Voltaire’s role in the history of sacred prostitution, see below, pp. 62–64. 86.  Wake’s omission serves to confirm the impression that the idea of sacred prostitution was originally conceived in relation to a body of literature from Greek antiquity that was brought only secondarily into association with biblical texts and other sources from the ancient Near East and the world of contemporary “savages.” 87.  He views Moloch as the female counterpart, “none other than the Mylitta of the Babylonians, the Astarte of the Sidonians, the Venus Genetrix, woman made divine” (History, 56). Yet he views the “idol” of the Moloch cult as “represented under the figure of a man with the head of a calf,” attributing this view to “savants” who extracted it “from the Talmud and from Jewish commentators” (ibid.). 88.  In Dufour’s words, The origin of these effeminate ones goes back evidently to the profusion of various obscene maladies which had vitiated the blood of women . . . . When the public health had been somewhat regenerated, the Jews who gave themselves to the cult of Baal were no longer content with their effeminates; and these latter, seeing themselves less sought after, in order to prevent the diminution of the revenues of their cult, conceived the idea of consecrating to Baal an association of women who should prostitute themselves for the benefit of the altar. These women, named like the other[s] qedeshoth, in Biblical language, did not reside with them in the portico or in the confines of the temple; they lived under variegated tents at the approaches to the temple . . . . These foreign women continued their trade for their own profit after the temple of Baal was no longer there to receive their offerings; and it was they who, trained from infancy for this shameful priesthood, served exclusively the needs of Jewish Prostitution. (History, 58–59 / Histoire, 92) The reference to tents comes from an interpretation of 2 Kgs 17:30 by John Selden, which came to be attached to the interpretation of the Venus cult in Sicca Veneria (Carthage).

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for Israelite women. But his understanding of the counterpart (scortator in the Vulgate [n. 89]) is unclear, since he recognizes “the needs of Jewish Prostitution” (n. 88 above).89 Dufour’s confused treatment of sacred prostitution among the Hebrews illustrates the problems created by two feminine terms translated “prostitute” in the Vulgate tradition, and by masculine as well as feminine forms of a term understood to represent “consecrated” persons. Although Dulaure has worked out a logic (of foreign origins) that would not be accepted today, his efforts to comprehend and order the evidence from the Jewish Scriptures make it clear that they do not fit the categories of sacred prostitution that he has traced through other cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world. Jacques-Antoine Dulaure, Des divinités genératrices

Dufour’s treatment of sacred prostitution, in the context of a history of prostitution, offered the most detailed and exhaustive treatment of the subject till then, but it was not the first attempt to present a comprehensive account. A half-century earlier, in 1805, Jacques-Antoine Dulaure had treated the same core texts as evidence of a “Venus cult” in a larger study of “gods of generation.”90 Dulaure’s treatment of sacred prostitution, like Dufour’s, forms a small part of a larger work and presents evidence and ideas that appear to have a history of their own, distinct from the themes of the work in which it has been imbedded. Dulaure’s references to sacred prostitution appear in a chapter on the cult of Venus interposed between chapters on the cult of the phallus among the Romans (his final chapter on this cult in the ancient world) and phallic cults of pre-Christian and Christian Europe. Attention to the Venus cult clearly interrupts the discussion of phallic cults; and despite the “natural” linkage of a cult of the goddess of love with that of the male symbol of love-making, this linkage is not found in the sources from classical antiquity. The phallus plays no role in most of the traditions concerning the cult of the Oriental goddess(es) that became identified with Venus;91 and it is only in India, in the cult of a male deity, that “sacred prostitutes” are associated with the symbol of male 89.  “There shall be no prostitutes among the daughters of Israel, nor any procurer among the sons of Israel” (“non erit meretrix de filiabus Israel nec scortator de filiis Israel,” ibid., 51). 90.  Des divinités génératrices (n. 53 above). Wake shows familiarity with this work in his critique of Lubbock and makes multiple references to it in his article on “The Influence of the Phallic Idea in the Religions of Antiquity.” Dufour too cites Dulaure, but only in reference to theories about the phallic nature of the cult of Baal-peor. The work was reissued in 1885 (as vol. 2 of the 1925 combined work entitled Histoire abrégée de différens cultes), and in 1905 it was republished, with an appended “chapitre complémentaire” by the French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (2nd ed.; Nouvelle Collection Documentaire; Paris: Société du Mercure de France). 91.  The only explicit attention to the phallus is in the cult of the Magna Mater, whose male cult personnel violently excise their male member in order to serve the goddess as “women.”



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generative power (the lingam). Dulaure acknowledges that the two cults had different origins, but he argues that both had the same end, namely to increase population. In the Venus cult, the “fecundating faculty of nature” was the object of veneration and “the act of generation was sanctified.”92 Here we see the “fertility” theme that became dominant in Frazer and in late twentieth-century biblical commentary, but played a decidedly secondary role in Dufour’s interpretation. Dulaure is at pains to show that the debauchery and sense of repugnance associated with the practices of the Venus cult in a later age were not part of the original cult or conception. He begins by considering the historical and cultural factors that led to the development and distribution of the cult, “so wide-spread in the Orient,” and later introduced into Greece and Italy. Describing its ceremonies as sanctifying the act of generation, he depicts the cultic action: the “youth of both sexes came solemnly to offer their first-fruits to this goddess: just as elsewhere other deities were offered the firstlings of the flowers and fruits, and the newly born of domestic animals.”93 But the ceremony persisted beyond the circumstances that had occasioned it: “the attachment for old customs, especially among those who cling to religion, maintained it until a time when advanced civilization and altered manners began to render it humiliating for the persons who were forced to submit to it.”94 For the judgment of enlightened modernity Dulaure cites Montesquieu, who summarizes the evidence from classical antiquity: The cult that is rendered this deity [Venus/Aphrodite] is rather a profanation than a religion. She has temples where all of the girls of the city prostitute themselves in her honor, and make themselves a dowry from the profits of their devotion. She has some where every married woman goes, once in her life, to give herself to the one who chooses her, and throws the money she has received into the sanctuary. There are some others where the courtesans of all countries, more honored than the matrons, go to carry their offerings. There are some, finally, where men make eunuchs of themselves and dress as women in order to serve in the sanctuary consecrated to the goddess.95 With this introduction, Dulaure is ready to present his own documentation and analysis of the cult, observing that “many writers of antiquity testify that 92. Dulaure, Gods of Generation, 127. 93.  Ibid. No texts are cited for this imaginative reconstruction, which does not correspond to any of the testimonies from antiquity. 94. Ibid. 95.  Ibid., 251 n. 14. The quotation is from a passage in Montesquieu’s novel Le temple de Gnide (1725), in which he contrasts the “purer worship” demanded by Venus from the people of Gnidus to that elsewhere associated with her cult.

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these devout and voluptuous ceremonies were practiced in various countries of the Orient, and notably at Babylon.” The familiar examples follow, cited from French or Latin editions.96 Comparison with Dufour’s presentation of evidence confirms the existence of a common “canon” of texts from classical antiquity understood as evidence of sacred prostitution, but Dulaure’s citation of individual sources, in different languages, shows that there was no single written work treating the collected references as a whole before Dulaure’s and Dufour’s independent publications. The common tradition is indicated in the order in which each author moves from Babylon to Cyprus, Phoenicia, Carthage, and Asia Minor,97 with Greece and Rome completing the story of the conquest of the west by the oriental goddess and her cult. Both find evidence of similar practices and beliefs in ancient Israel, in India, and among other oriental and “primitive” peoples, but each develops these links in distinct and independent fashion. Dulaure’s account is instructive not only for its earlier witness to a common underlying tradition, but also for its differences in emphasis, selection of incidents or details, and interpretation of texts, as well as occasional citations of examples lacking in Dufour’s more expansive treatment. A review of Dulaure’s work is excluded by the repetition it would entail of the data cited by Dufour, but it should be noted that Dulaure’s account appears to be the first comprehensive treatment of religious prostitution. Dulaure has more to offer, however, to an understanding of the origins of modern notions of sacred prostitution than a rehearsal of ancient tales. Through his documentation of sources, ancient and modern, he provides a window on knowledge and debate of the subject that extends into the preceding century, and before. His citation of texts from classical antiquity in French editions indicates that the works had a larger audience than the specialists known as classicists or antiquarians. He also cites other types of literature beyond the primary sources. The first is “archaeological” (in the original use of the term), consisting of specialized and comparative studies of the religion and culture of antiquity.98 This new antiquarian scholarship is represented by references to John Selden’s De diis 96.  Sources cited from French editions (without publication data) are: Herodotus: Clio, Euterpe, Melpomène; Lucian: Traité de la Déesse de Syrie; Aelianus: Histoire diverses; Pausanias: Corinthe; Euripides: Hypolite; Ovid: Fastes; Titus Livius; Diodorus Siculus; Plutarque: Œuvres morales, Traité des actions courageuses des femmes, Vie de Lycurgue; and Plato: Loi. Citations from sources in Latin are from Justinus; Valerius Maximus; St. Augustine: De civitate Dei; Eusebius: Vita Constantini; Theodoretus: Historia ecclesiastica; Juvenal: Satirae; and Tacitus: Annales. Dulaure’s references to Strabo indicate that he was using a Latin edition. Gods of Generation, 23 / Des divinités génératrices, 40. 97.  There are minor differences, with Dulaure treating Armenia before moving to Phoenicia. 98.  On the rise of the History of Religion or Comparative Religion studies in the seventeenth century, see Guy G. Strousma, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).



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Syris (1617);99 Elias Schedius’s De diis Germanis (1648);100 and the “Mémoires sur les Phéniciens” of Abbé Étienne Mignot (1770–1786).101 Selden, the first English Orientalist, was a jurist, whose De diis Syris has been called the “first careful study of Phoenician and Syrian mythology,”102 and described as “epoch-making” by the historian Arnaldo Momigliano.103 The work is noted for its early use of the comparative method,104 with its views on the Venus cult of Babylon, Samaria, and Carthage cited as authoritative for centuries—although no longer acceptable to modern scholarship. Schedius’s work, though focused on the pre-Christian cults of northern Europe, contains a lengthy chapter on “Urania Venus” (pp. 118–72), a further example of the use of comparative method.105 Mignot, the “father” of Phoenician scholarship, was familiar to a broader French public entranced by the ancient Orient that was being unveiled by archaeology.106 The second class of modern sources that contributes to Dulaure’s (and Dufour’s) treatment of sacred prostitution is “ethnographic,” consisting of travel reports describing the practices and beliefs of contemporary inhabitants of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Dulaure draws on this literature primarily for clues to attitudes and motives behind the practices described in texts from classical antiquity, but also for evidence of corresponding rites and customs on the theory that 99.  Dulaure’s citation of Selden is confined to a single footnote (Des divinités génératrices, 193 n. 2) on the suggested etymology of “Venus,” and the cult site of Sicca veneria or Succoth-Benoth (De Diis Syris Syntagmata 2 [rev. ed.; rev. Andreas Beyer; Amsterdam: Lucam Bysterum, 1680 [orig. London, 1617] 234, 310). 100.  De diis Germanis, sive, Veteri Germanorum, Galorum, Britannorum, Vandalorum religione syngrammata quatuor (Amsterdam: Elzevir, 1648). 101.  Dulaure’s citations of Mignot refer to two pages in his “Treizième Mémoire sur les Phéniciens: Suite du culte Phénicien, & des pratiques religieuses de ce people” (Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 38 [1777] 59–60) concerning the Hebrew behind the Vulgate’s meretrix in Deut 23:17 (Dulaure, Des divinités génératrices, 197 n. 1) and the Phoenician/Carthaginian cult of Venus (193 n. 2). 102.  Lewis M. Dembitz and Joseph Jacobs, “Selden, John” (http://www.jewishencyclopedia. com/articles/13399-selden-john). According to Dembitz and Jacobs, Selden’s works on Jewish law continued to be reprinted through most of the nineteenth century as the chief sources on their subjects for the non-Jewish world. See G. J. Toomer, John Selden: A Life in Scholarship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), and Jason Philip Rosenblatt, Renaissance England’s Chief Rabbi: John Selden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 103.  Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ancient History and the Antiquarian,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950) 308. 104.  “John Selden,” Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Selden). 105.  The book’s many learned quotations in Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek attest to the interest of the time in tracing the roots of western religions to primordial origins exemplified in the patriarchal traditions of the OT/HB and in other ancient Oriental literature. 106.  Jean Richard, “Les Précurseurs de l’Orientalisme,” CRAI 145/4 (2001) 1640. One of Mignot’s readers was the novelist Gustave Flaubert in research for his Carthage-based novel Salammbô. Other examples of this fascination of the time include the operas “Aida” and “Abduction from the Seraglio,” the Masonic order, and the archaeological monuments from Egypt and Mesopotamia that drew crowds to the British Museum and the Louvre.

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they represent earlier stages of religious and moral development through which the West had also passed.107 Most of the examples relate to India.108 The third class of literature that Dulaure cites beyond the Renaissance harvest of Greco-Roman antiquity is Enlightenment critique of that legacy. These citations reveal not only conceptions and attitudes concerning sacred prostitution, but also the extent to which key traditions and concepts had become part of the “general knowledge” of the eighteenth century. Dulaure’s quotation from Montesquieu’s 1725 novel, Le temple de Gnide, shows that an idea of a “Venus cult” was familiar to an early eighteenth-century popular audience—as a cult characterized by sexual license, of various sorts, performed by various actors (male and female), under various conditions. Although no texts or authors are identified, the characterizations are transparent to those who know the traditions reported by Dufour and Dulaure. And although they relate to different deities and institutions, they are united into a common “sex cult.” Despite differing practices and interpretations by ancient authors, the essential unity of the rites and customs identified as sacred or religious prostitution is assumed by all modern interpreters.109 If Dulaure’s citation of Montesquieu points to a broader Renaissance legacy of Venus traditions, his citation of Voltaire points to a narrower focus of those traditions. In his critique of Voltaire, Dulaure highlights the critical role played by Herodotus in all constructions of sacred prostitution—and the role of Voltaire in making “Mylitta” a household word. He also highlights the question of criteria for interpreting ancient or foreign customs and morals. His engagement with Voltaire is contained in a lengthy footnote appended to his concluding remarks on the history of the Venus cult. Noting the depths of depravation to which it had sunk in its late Roman manifestations and its susceptibility of abuse, he nevertheless insists that its motives were originally pure. The founders, he maintains, “doubtless believed it necessary for the propagation of humankind and for its prosperity; proper for the uniting of families, for the tightening of social 107.  The examples served to enhance the plausibility of the ancient reports as “fact” rather than fancy by showing parallels or ways of thinking that might explain the practices reported from antiquity. 108.  Dulaure’s references include the memoirs of the Portuguese adventurer, Fernão Mendes Pinto, who traveled in the East from 1537 to 1558 (from a French translation of 1645); François Bernier’s Voyage dans le Mogul et l’Indoustani (1671) and M. de la Flotte’s Essais historiques sur l’Inde (1769) for reports on the cult of Jagganath; and Pierre Sonnerat’s Voyage aux Indes et à la Chine (1782) for observations on Indian views of reproduction. He also cites Frédéric-Louis Norden’s Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie (1795–98), for evidence of a pyramidal stone image representing the goddess of generation, and Constantin-François Volney’s Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte (1787) for a plea to approach ancient monuments from the perspective of their creators rather than their modern observers. 109.  Some point to migration or borrowing, or see regional manifestations of a common veneration of female reproductive power, while others treat the identification as self-evident.



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bonds, for the maintenance of peace and union among nations, for increasing the population.” “It would be necessary,” he concludes, “to have lived in the time and place of the origin of such institutions in order to judge them properly.”110 It is here that he appends his critical note: After so much unimpeachable testimony, so many combined proofs of the existence of religious prostitution, one will doubtless be astonished to learn that a man, justly famous for his philosophy, for his genius, for the brilliance and universality of his talents, that Voltaire, in his Dictionnaire philosophique, at the word Babel, has treated what Herodotus and his translator Larcher report on this subject, as fables, as tales from the Thousand and One Nights. “These tales of Herodotus,” he says, “are today so decried by all honest people, reason has made such progress, that even old women and children no longer believe such foolishness.” It would be easy to be right against Voltaire here: to his opinion, devoid of proofs, could be opposed the testimony of the whole of antiquity. But a refutation in due form is not necessary: the numerous authorities I have just cited are a sufficient answer.111 Dulaure’s primary argument is preponderance of evidence from antiquity. But he adds a further consideration from comparative ethnography: I merely wish to place here, for the instruction of the reader, some reflections made by a man who has more fully observed the manners of the different oriental nations and who has traveled more than Voltaire: “One judges ancient peoples badly when he takes as a basis of comparison our opinions and our customs . . . he gratuitously gives himself hindrances of contradiction in supposing in them a wisdom in conformity with our principles: we reason too much according to our ideas, and not enough according to theirs.”112 Dulaure’s criticism of Voltaire points to the prominence of Herodotus as the key witness from antiquity in modern discussions of sacred prostitution and 110. Dulaure, Gods of Generation, 254. 111.  Ibid., 254–55 n. 49, emphasis added. The source of the quotation from Voltaire is not the Dictionnaire philosophique, as Dulaure records, but a work entitled Questions sur L’encyclopédie, distribuées en forme de dictionnaire (2nd ed., London [false imprint], 1771–72), art. “Babel.” Cf. idem, “Des Babiloniens devenus Persans,” in La philosophie de l’histoire: Par feu l’abbé Bazin ([London?] 1765), 69; and “L’apologie des dames de Babylone,” Chapter 2 in La défense de mon oncle (London [i.e. Amsterdam?] 1768) 12–13. On the popularity of this theme in the eighteenth century and its history in literature into the present, see Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 507–10 and below. 112. Dulaure, Gods of Generation, 254–55 n. 49, citing Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte, vol. 1. Volney’s reflections were designed to support his argument that the great pyramids of Egypt were in fact graves—however unthinkable according to modern sensibilities.

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suggests that attention to the “Father of History” in his passage from the ancient to the modern world may lead us further into the origins of the concept than most of the other ancient witnesses. Herodotus, Father of Sacred Prostitution

The Assyriologist Gernot Wilhelm has traced the reception history of Herodotus’s most cited text from ancient times to modern Assyriological debate in an illuminating study that accents Voltaire’s role in popularizing the account. According to Wilhelm, Herodotus’s reputation in antiquity combined admiration for his fine literary style and entertaining stories with denial of historical value to his tales, which were widely regarded as artful “lies.”113 This negative view of the trustworthiness of the accounts accompanied their resurrection in the fifteenth century,114 but the sixteenth century saw a change of fortunes for Herodotus as a recorder of social mores. Eyewitness reports of equally fantastic customs, recounted by travelers to distant lands and hitherto unknown cultures, spurred reappraisal of the legacy of antiquity (both classical and biblical)—as well as inquiry into Europe’s own pagan roots. Exemplifying the new approach to Herodotus was Henricus Stephanus’s Apologia pro Herodoto (1566), which argued that a comparison of national customs showed Herodotus to be trustworthy. Vindicated by the new “comparative method of ethnography,” Herodotus became the key to unlocking the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, and Greece—as well as the dark corners of Bible history.115 A key figure in the controversies of the eighteenth century that prevented trust in Herodotus from becoming absolute was the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, who lifted up the Mylitta account as a test case for a general rule on the credibility of historical sources. What is not in accord with nature, he declared, cannot be true (“Ce qui n’est pas dans la nature n’est jamais vrai”); and human nature, as 113.  Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 507–8. For a fuller account, see Arnaldo Momigliano, “The Place of Herodotus in the History of Historiography,” History 43 (1958) 1–13, especially 1–5. 114.  A more complex account is provided by Momigliano, who describes the “first reaction of the West to the rediscovery of Herodotus” as one of “sheer delight,” noting that the Byzantine historian, Laoconicus Chalcocondyles, who transmitted interest and admiration for Herodotus to Italian scholars in the first half of the fifteenth century, was a student and imitator of Herodotus. But the Italian humanists who were learning to read Herodotus were also discovering his critics, and strained relations with the Byzantines reinforced suspicion of the “Father of History” (“Place of Herodotus,” 11). Although the negative historical appraisal was not tied to his report on the Babylonian women, particular concern with this account is suggested by the absence of the paragraph (199) in several fifteenth-century manuscripts (Wilhem, “Marginalien,” 507). 115.  By the end of the sixteenth century, according to Momigliano, Herodotus had been “recognized as the indispensable complement to the Bible in the study of Oriental history,” and although controversies continued over the credibility of certain sections of his work, he could no longer be dismissed as simply a “storyteller” (“Place of Herodotus,” 12–13).



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well as the ancient city’s illustrious reputation, made it unthinkable that the men of Babylon would permit their wives or daughters to prostitute themselves to strangers.116 Voltaire’s critique assumes that the account was already well known; the preface to his argument makes that explicit: it is precisely the repetition without question that compels his critique. I am astonished that Herodotus should say before all Greece . . . that all the Babylonian women were compelled by the law to prostitute themselves once at least in their life to strangers, in the temple of Militia, or Venus. I am still more astounded that in all the histories which are compiled for the instruction of youth, this tale is constantly preserved . . . . Should not those who are at present employed in compiling ancient history, and copy so many authors without examining any of them, have perceived that either Herodotus related fables, or rather his text was corrupted, and that he only meant those courtesans who are settled in all great cities, and who even waited for passengers upon the roads.117 Here Voltaire does not simply deny credibility to the account, but attempts to explain the origin of the fantastic tale. In subsequent writings, he also appeals to comparative ethnography, while rejecting inappropriate comparisons made by Herodotus’s defenders.118 He responds to criticism of his attack on Herodotus by Pierre Henri Larcher119 by acknowledging that the Asiatic customs were indeed different from those of his countrymen; they were more severe. Women in the Orient are always confined in their houses, he says, or only go out veiled. And eunuchs were created to assure the faithfulness of wives and virginity of daughters.120 116.  Ibid. Wilhelm (“Marginalien,” 507) describes eighteenth-century debate over the historicity of Herodotus’s report on Babylon as having attained a fundamental importance far beyond the immediate question (“eine über den Gegenstand als solchen weit hinausgehende gründsätzliche Bedeutung”). 117. Voltaire, Philosophie de l’histoire, 69–70 (emphasis added). See also his Questions sur l’Encyclopedie, where he decries credence in everything Greek and mindless compilations—confirming the popularity of these sources in his time: Hérodote, ou Ctésius, ou Diodore de Sicile rapportent un fait; vous l’avez lu en grec; donc se fait est vrai. Cette maniere de raisonner n’est pas celle d’Euclide … il y aura toujours plus de gens qui compilent que de gens qui pensent. (Chapter 2, “Babel,” 7) 118.  Ibid., 6. Cf. Momigliano, “Place of Herodotus,” 13. 119.  Pierre Henri Larcher, trans. and ed., Histoire d’Herodote, tr. du grec avec des remarques historiques et critiques, un essay sur la chronologie d’Herodote, et une table géographique (new, rev., cor., and augmented ed.; Paris: Crapelet, 1802). 120.  Voltaire (nom de plume of François-Marie Arouet), “L’apologie des dames de Babylone” (Chapter 2 in La défense de mon oncle; London [i.e. Amsterdam?] n.p., 1768) 9–10. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

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Peut-on croire que dans Babilone, dans la ville la mieux policée de l’Orient, des hommes si jaloux de leurs femmes les auront envoyées toutes se prostituer dans un temple au plus vils étranger? . . . Que toutes les femmes & toutes les filles ayent foulé aux pieds la pudeur si naturelle à leur sexe? Le faiseur de contes Hérodote a pu amuser les Grecs de cette extravagance, mais nul homme senseé n’a dû le croire.121 The notoriety acquired by Herodotus’s account of the Mylitta cult as a result of the debate engendered by Voltaire made it a ready subject for literary appropriation, exemplified by a French novel of 1798.122 And although it faded from the literary scene in the succeeding century, the Mylitta cult remained a fixed item in popular views of the ancient Orient, at least for an educated European public, reemerging as a motif in recent European feminist literature.123 Thus the sexual sacrifice of the Babylonian women acquired a life of its own, while remaining the cornerstone of all notions of sacred prostitution. But its credibility as historical evidence continued to reflect the fortunes of the “Father of History,” as he enjoyed a new burst of acclaim in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and renewed skepticism in the twentieth. Wilhelm marks the beginning of the modern reassessment of Herodotus as historian with the publication in 1858 of a new edition of the History by George Rawlinson, which boasted extensive notes and appendices by the decipherer of Babylonian cuneiform, Sir Henry Rawlinson.124 Although Assyriological studies were still in their infancy, their rapid development in the middle of the 19th century had made it possible and necessary to reevaluate Herodotus in the light of the newly discovered texts from the ancient Near East. The new scholarship, according to Wilhelm, was as divided as the old over the historical trustworthiness of Voltaire pens his critique of Larcher under the guise of a nephew of the late Abbé Bazin (the alias he adopted as author of La philosophie de l’histoire). Accusing Larcher of believing the tale of Babylonian outrage simply because Herodotus said it (“tu le croire parce qu’Herodote l’a dit”), he defends the honor of the Babylonian women against Herodotus’s defamation by appealing to Oriental custom—which he claims to know better than Larcher because he had accompanied his uncle in Asia! Hence Dulaure’s appeal to the judgment of Volney, who knew the Orient more intimately than Voltaire. 121.  Ibid., 10. Cf. Questions sur l’Encyclopedie, Chapter 2, “Babel,” 5, where he also emphasizes oriental ideas of sexual honor and jealousy in criticizing Herodotus’s treatment of Babylon. 122.  E.-F. Lantier, Voyages d’Antenor en Grèce et en Asie (cited by Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 509). 123.  Wilhelm cites the example of the 1983 novel Kassandra by the German author Christa Wolf, who transferred the scene to the temple of Athena in Ilion and tied the cultic obligation of prostitution to defloration (“Marginalien,” 510). 124.  G. Rawlinson, The History of Herodotus. A New English Version, edited with copious notes and appendices, illustrating the history and geography of Herodotus, from the most recent sources of information; and embodying the chief results, historical and ethnographical, which have been obtained in the progress of cuneiform and hieroglyphical discovery, assisted by Sir Henry Rawlinson, and Sir J. G. Wilkinson (4 vols.; London: Murray, 1858).



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Herodotus, with Rawlinson giving high credibility to the accounts, and A. H. Sayce attempting to prove that Herodotus had never been to Babylon.125 Despite Sayce’s skepticism concerning Herodotus’s claims of eyewitness knowledge, he nevertheless accepted 1.199 as a faithful report and, according to Wilhelm, was the first to connect it with the existence of temple prostitutes, which he identified with the qadištus of the Assyrian texts.126 Conclusions “Religious prostitution,” as the distinguishing feature of the cult of an Oriental goddess (who found a home in both Greece and Rome), appears to have been widely known in Renaissance Europe as a part of the newly recovered legacy of classical antiquity. Herodotus’s account of the cult of Mylitta was the touchstone, but reports by other ancient authors concerning practices in Cyprus, Carthage, Phoenicia/Syria, and Rome also contributed to knowledge of this “Venus (or Aphrodite) cult.” These traditions were brought into a new light during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by reports of similar practices, and beliefs, among contemporary inhabitants of distant lands. The eighteenth century saw a new skepticism of the traditions even as it registered broad enthusiasm for new studies of antiquity and ethnography. By the beginning of the nineteenth century antiquarian compilation was giving way to modern historiography, but Dulaure’s work, though imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment, is still little more than an assemblage of uncritical reports of questionable, or at least untested, historical value. Yet it represents a new stage in the history of sacred prostitution as a subject of discourse and investigation, as the first documented attempt to bring together all of the relevant data and interpret them in terms of a comprehensive theory. Dufour represents a similar stage of comprehensive collecting, and shares Dulaure’s didactic motive, but anecdotal interest takes precedence over the theoretical in his work. It was not until the second half of the century and the decipherment of Babylonian cuneiform that new sources for reconstructing the religion and culture of the ancient Orient, as well as ancient Greece and Rome, would enable—and require—reassessment of inherited “facts” and constructs. That reassessment was part of a larger revolution in historical reconstruction that involved the nature of human society itself and its basic institutions of family, tribe, and state, religion, 125.  Archibald Henry Sayce, The Ancient Empires of the East; Herodotos I–III, with Notes, Introductions, and Appendices (London: Macmillan, 1884), cited without page reference by Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 511. 126.  Ibid., 510.

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law, and sexual relations. But the revolution proceeded at different pace along different branches of the newly developing sciences, and communication between the disciplines became more difficult as specialization increased. Lubbock and Wake were both engaged in the project of social and historical reconstruction and reconceptualization prompted by new discoveries of the great age and diversity of human society. Their interest in sacred prostitution was to locate it in an evolutionary schema of sexual relations and social order and provide an explanation of its history and function as an institution in antiquity and in certain non-western societies. For them, it was a “given,” a peculiar form of sexual relations documented by such scholars as Dulaure and Dufour, with Herodotus providing an historical anchor. The subject was not yet ready for reexamination based on a reassessment of the historical sources. That situation pertained through much of the twentieth century; ideas that were long fixed continued to determine expectations and lines of inquiry as new sources from Mesopotamia and Ugarit began to be interrogated for evidence of sacred prostitution. Although Frazer had given new emphasis to the idea of an agricultural fertility cult as the context for understanding the posited institution, the basic “facts” remained fixed, to be proved or disproved by new discoveries. In Chapter 5, the new body of data from the biblical world will be examined to see how it illumines the biblical texts, but first the data from classical antiquity on which the notion of sacred prostitution was constructed must be assessed (Chapter 4), and the work of the classicist who had the most profound effect on biblical interpretation, Frazer (Chapter 3). Before turning to Frazer, however, a further word is needed on the breadth of the cultural legacy bequeathed by the history sketched above. Until the rise of the modern sciences of Biblical Studies and Assyriology in the nineteenth century, sacred prostitution belonged to the realm of “general knowledge” shared by the educated elite and reflected in literary works well into the twentieth century. And the sexual revolution of that century just past, together with the rise of the women’s movement and its revival in the 1970s, led to new interest in “the goddess” and her cult, myths of female dominance, and traditions of priestesses and “holy harlots.” A new discourse on sacred prostitution arose outside the realm of biblical scholarship, or with only tenuous connections to it. A reminder that sacred prostitution has become a recognized cultural item and part of the vocabulary of western culture, no longer tied to its generating texts and primary contexts, may be seen in a recent Google search and a chance reference. The latter is from an essay by the sociologist Robert Bellah in which he attempts to explain Max Weber’s concept of “Liebesakosmismus” by characterizing it as “the sacred prostitution of the soul” (“um der ‘heiligen Prostitution der Seele,’



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willen”)—an expression Weber took from Baudelaire.127 The Google search for “sacred prostitution” produced a wide array of articles, encyclopedia or dictionary entries, blogs of sex workers and others describing their experiences of “holy sex,” web sites of goddess worshippers—and their critics, exposés of sacred prostitution as a recruitment device of certain cults, advertisements for reprints of the works of Dulaure and Wake, and a few scholarly papers and threaded discussions on ancient texts and practices.128 It is not necessary for this study to determine what Baudelaire, or Weber, meant by the expression, or how contemporary sex workers use it to describe their profession; nor is it necessary to treat the new feminist literature that explores links between sex and the sacred, however important that may be for contemporary response to historical and canonical tradition. What is necessary is to recognize that use of the language of sacred prostitution to analyze biblical texts carries with it a history of use, and expectations, shaped in large measure outside the context of critical textual studies.

127.  Bellah, “Max Weber and World-Defying Love: A Look at the Historical Sociology of Religion,” JAAR 67 (1999) 277, citing Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (3 vols.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1920–21) 1:546. 128.  My original search, in 2009, produced “about 20,900” results, headed by a Wikipedia article, which lacked documentation and simply stated that religious prostitution was “revered highly among Sumerians and Babylonians” and noted that “in ancient sources (Herodotus, Thucydides) there are many traces of hieros gamos, starting … with Babylon, where each woman had to reach, once a year, the sanctuary of Militta … and there have sex with a foreigner, as a sign of hospitality” (emphasis added (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /relgious_prostitution). A repeated search in April 2016 yielded “about 517,000,” registering an enormous increase in interest and/or search capacity, but yielded a similar mix of academic and popular works with the same broad spectrum of examples (https://en. wikipedia org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution). What has changed most significantly since my original search is the Wikipedia article, which now has a substantial bibliography and reflects criticisms by such scholars as Oden and Budin, but still extends its scope to ancient India, medieval and modern India (including Buddhism and Hinduism), Asia, Mesoamerica, and South America, and “recent Western occurrences.” The notion that sacred prostitution was a common practice “elsewhere” persists in many treatments.

Chapter 3

Sir James George Frazer and the Concept of Sacred Prostitution

In Chapter 2, sacred prostitution was shown to be an established notion of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European discourse on the cult of Venus/ Aphrodite (and allied goddesses), with roots in Renaissance recovery of the world of classical antiquity. A catena of Greek and Roman texts provided the foundational data, serving as a kind of “canon,” anchored by Herodotus’s account of the Babylonian women’s sexual “sacrifice.” But reports of “similar” cases among modern “savages” extended the corpus of examples and fueled universalizing theories, exhibited in the works of two evolutionary anthropologists who viewed it as a vestige of an earlier stage in the development of marriage and the family. The classicist and anthropologist Sir James George Frazer stands in this double tradition, though he refers to no earlier work on the subject, and neither his reading of the primary texts nor his appeal to comparative ethnography distinguishes his treatment of sacred prostitution from antecedent accounts.1 What is distinctive is his incorporation of the subject into a myth-and-ritual complex centered on a dyingand-reviving-god of vegetation and associated with ideas of divine kingship.2 This assimilation to a male-centered cult does not control all of his treatment of sacred prostitution and had little impact on continuing discussion outside the realm of 1.  He did contest the views of a number of contemporary classicists and historians of religion who proposed an alternative interpretation of the primary texts from antiquity. And while he is known as the master, or even “father,” of the comparative method, he did not invent it, and his application of comparative ethnography to the subject of sacred prostitution is markedly strained, and by no means the first, pace Stark (“Kultprostitution,” 31), who states “So verbindet er als erster explizit die Thematik religiös-kultisch verstandener Sexualität mit zu seiner Seit neuen ethnologischen Erkenntnissen.” 2.  A further novelty, ignored by biblical scholars and most others who cite Frazer’s views, is his view of the “holy men” and “holy women” who performed the sacred sexual service as “personating,” or being possessed by, the deity. 69

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biblical studies, but it played a significant role in OT/HB interpretation.3 A further notable feature of Frazer’s treatment of the subject is the prominent role played by biblical texts in his interpretations of the classical sources. Frazer’s name and fame are linked primarily to his greatest work, The Golden Bough, a work of comparative anthropology subtitled A Study in Magic and Religion. Begun at a time when the comparative method was already under attack, it represented the apex (or grand caricature) of the method. But critique of his work within the discipline, he claimed, did little to dampen the enthusiasm that marked its reception by a wider audience—including the general public.4 Frazer was in fact a man of many facets, heralded in literary circles and acclaimed as a folklorist, historian of religion, and classical scholar. His first love was classics, which won him a fellowship (eventually extended for life) at Trinity College, Cambridge for his dissertation on Platonic epistemology (1879). And even after he was drawn to the new field of anthropology, he continued his work in the classics, devoting fourteen years to a six-volume edition of Pausanius’s Description of Greece (1898), interrupted by the first edition of The Golden Bough (1890), which was completed in less than a year.5 Moreover, he returned to the classics in his final decade of scholarly productivity, producing the Loeb Library edition of Apollodorus’s The Library in 1921 and a new translation and commentary on Ovid’s Fasti in 1929.6 His classical studies were in fact the fertile ground that generated his comparative 3.  Whether Frazer’s influence on biblical studies was simply a consequence of the general acclaim for his magnum opus or involved a more specific attraction is difficult to say. As a leading classical scholar interpreting texts from classical antiquity, his views certainly carried weight. His close ties to the Old Testament scholar William Robertson Smith may also have played a role, together with his interest in Hebrew and Semitic folklore, which led him to study Hebrew and produce a three-volume work on Folklore in the Old Testament (1918). 4.  “Frazer is an embarrassment. The man who has had more readers and who was arguably a better writer than any other anthropologist writing in English does not appear in any of the professional lineages that anthropologists acknowledge today.” Thus begins Robert Ackerman’s 1987 biography J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1), acknowledging the dismal state of Frazer’s reputation in a changed discipline and a changed world, while arguing for a reexamination of his work, in his own time and in the broader world engaged by his writings (2–4). Cf. R. Godfrey Lienhardt, “Frazer, James George,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (ed. David S. Sills; 17 vols.; New York: The Free Press, 1968) 5:550–51. 5.  Robert Fraser, The Making of The Golden Bough: The Origins and Growth of an Argument (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990) 39–43. For his archaeological commentary on the ancient travelogue Frazer felt compelled to trace Pausanius’s footsteps, making two expeditions to Greece, in 1890 (paid for by the advance on his manuscript of The Golden Bough) and 1895. Thus the “armchair archaeology” of The Golden Bough, derided by anthropologists who had adopted a field-based study model, was the choice of a scholar who was not simply Tylor’s heir, but knew the incomparable value of first-hand acquaintance with sites and settings. See George W. Stocking, Jr., After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888–1951 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995) 13, 15, 148–51. 6.  Ackerman (J. G. Frazer), who describes Frazer’s work on the Fasti as “comparable only to his commentary on Pausanius in its scope and brilliance” (292), concludes that “the Fasti represents the apex of his intellectual life and is arguably the finest work he ever accomplished” (300).



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studies of religion, and Pausanius played a key role in that development. Pausanius’s report on his travels throughout Greece in the second century CE preserved observations and traditions of rituals, artifacts, and beliefs that persisted in the countryside but were no longer known in Athens. Thus his work gave access to elements of ancient Greek religion that had disappeared from all other records and fed Frazer’s interests in “primitive” religion and comparative anthropology.7 Frazer’s introduction to anthropology came through reading Tylor’s Primitive Culture, but it was William Robertson Smith, who became his conversation partner and close friend at Trinity, that set him on his new professional course.8 Smith was co-editor for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and soon enlisted Frazer with assignments that served to establish him in the field of anthropology.9 With the entries “Taboo” and “Totem,” Frazer was drawn into the subject of “primitive” religion and by 1887 had produced a four-volume work on Totemism and Exogamy. Two years later he had completed a manuscript on “magic, folklore, and religion in the ancient world,” which appeared the following year (1890) as a two-volume work entitled The Golden Bough.10 Its generally positive reception encouraged Frazer to begin work on an expanded second edition (published in 1900), launching a project of elaboration that culminated in the massive twelve-volume third edition (1911–15), to which he supplied a one-volume abridged version in 1922, and a thirteenth volume, Aftermath, in 1936. Sacred Prostitution in The Golden Bough Although the first two editions of The Golden Bough contained no reference to sacred prostitution, attention to the origins and rationale for the work is instructive for the limits, and tensions, in Frazer’s later treatment of the subject. The genesis of the work, which he subtitled “A Study in Comparative Religion,” lay, according to Frazer, in an attempt to explain the rule of an ancient Italian priesthood, associated in legend with a sacred tree, a royal title, and succession to office by murder 7.  A later translator of Pausanius, Peter Levi, contended that Frazer’s edition was the keystone of his life’s work and that Frazer and Pausanius were “spurred on by much the same concerns” (Fraser, Making of The Golden Bough, 40; see further 41–43). 8.  Smith had found refuge at Cambridge, as Reader in Arabic and Fellow of Trinity College, following his dismissal from Aberdeen as a result of a series of heresy trials (Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 59). 9.  On the relationship between the two men, and Frazer’s sense of indebtedness to Smith, see Fraser, Making of The Golden Bough, 27–32, 45–49, and Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 58–63. For a focus on their ideas, see Robert Alun Jones, “Robertson Smith and James Frazer on Religion: Two Traditions in British Social Anthropology,” in Functionalism Historicized: Essays on British Social Anthropology (ed. George W. Stocking, Jr.; History of Anthropology 2; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) 31–58. 10. Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 414.

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of the incumbent.11 The explanation that Frazer developed (involving notions of incarnate gods, tree worship, and the killing of a divine king) had a larger aim however—to illumine some obscure features of primitive religion and, more fundamentally, the workings of the “primitive mind.”12 With this aim in mind, Frazer sets forth his rationale for devoting so much attention to the popular superstitions and customs of the European peasantry, acknowledging his indebtedness to the German folklorist, Wilhelm Mannhardt:13 In spite of their fragmentary character the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of the Aryans . . . . The great intellectual and moral forces which have revolutionized the educated world have scarcely affected the peasant . . . . Compared with the evidence afforded by living tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of early religion is worth very little.14

11.  The priesthood was that of Diana Nemorensis, “Diana of the Wood,” whose sacred grove and sanctuary were located near the village of Nemi (sometimes identified as Aricia). The golden bough of the title was taken from the name of a well-known painting by Turner of the lake of Nemi in its woodland setting, in which the bough of the tree is “gilded by the golden light suffusing the scene” (Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (2 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1890 [hereafter GB 1890] 1:1). The subject, based on a legend reported by Strabo (2 n. 3), first presented itself to Frazer in a poem by Thomas Macaulay entitled “The King of the Wood,” whose key lines appear as the epigram at the head of Chapter 1: The still glassy lake that sleeps / Beneath Aricia’s trees— Those trees in whose dim shadow / The ghastly priest doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer / And shall himself be slain. (1:1) See Fraser, Making of The Golden Bough, 33. 12.  “Preface to the First Edition,” reprinted in the third edition (GB I/1:xii); Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 415. Frazer (GB 1890, 1:3) argues that “recent researches into the early history of man have revealed the essential similarity with which, under many superficial differences, the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life.” Accordingly, he seeks to detect the motives that led to the institution of the Nemi priesthood, and further, to “prove that these motives have operated widely, perhaps universally, in human society, producing in varied circumstance a variety of institutions specifically different but generically alike.” With such a theory of universal patterns, and stages of religious thought and practice, the search for corroborating evidence had no limits, and the work eventually expanded into twelve volumes. 13.  Frazer argued that because the rule of the sanctuary (that a candidate for the priesthood could only claim the office by slaying the current priest) had no parallel in classical antiquity, it must root in an earlier barbarous age, survivals of which could still be seen in the folk customs of the European peasantry. Mannhardt’s extensive collection of “living superstitions,” focused especially on the beliefs and rites of woodsmen and farmers, was only partially published, in his two major works, Der Baumkultus der Germanen und ihrer Nachbarstämme (Berlin: Bornträger, 1875) and Antike Wald- und Feldkulte aus nordeuropäischer Überlieferung (Berlin: Bornträger, 1877). 14.  GB I/1:xi–xii (“Preface to the First Edition”).



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Frazer’s indebtedness to Mannhardt is evident in the mass of folk customs and beliefs that became the real subject of his expanding work. But he confesses an even greater debt to his friend William Smith, whose influence he credits for transforming “lively interest” in the early history of society into “systematic study.” Acknowledging many traces of Smith’s ideas in his new work, he claims direct dependence for its central idea, the conception of the slain god.15 The second edition of The Golden Bough (GB 1900) had expanded to three volumes, mostly through a great expansion of illustrative material, and displayed a revised subtitle: “A Study of Magic and Religion.” The latter signaled the only significant change in Frazer’s thinking between the two editions—the recognition of a fundamental distinction, even opposition, between magic and religion, in which he assigned magic to a lower intellectual stratum in the evolution of thought.16 Frazer also used the Preface to the new edition to clarify the scope and purpose of his work against critics’ misconceptions and to disassociate himself from Smith’s view of totemism.17 Most revealing is his reflection on the task he had set for himself and the glimpses it offers into the sense of discovery and mission that drove his work. Comparing the anthropologists of his day to the classical scholars at the “revival of learning,” he writes: To these men the rediscovery of ancient literature came like a revelation, disclosing to their wondering eyes a splendid vision of the antique world, such as the cloistered student of the Middle Ages never dreamed of . . . . To us moderns a still wider vista is vouchsafed, a greater panorama is unrolled by the study which aims at bringing home to us the faith and practice, the hopes and the ideals, not of two highly gifted races only, but of all mankind, and thus at enabling us to follow the long march, the slow and toilsome ascent, of humanity from savagery to civilization.18 15.  Ibid., 1:xiv. Frazer makes special note of Smith’s article “Sacrifice” in the Encyclopedia Britannica and the further development of his views on sacrifice in The Religion of the Semites (2nd ed. 1894; repr. New York: Schocken, 1972). Frazer’s indebtedness was not simply intellectual, but included a deeper personal debt, reflected in the dedication that prefaced the work: “To my friend William Robertson Smith in gratitude and admiration.” That dedication remained, unchanged through all three editions, despite Frazer’s later repudiation of some of his friend’s key ideas. 16.  GB 1900, 1:xvi. 17.  Ibid., 1:xvii–xx. On the central theme of the work, he saw no reason to withdraw his explanation of the priesthood of Aricia, contending that he had found new confirmation of his thesis that the priest, called “King of the Wood,” was an embodiment of a tree spirit, who in an earlier period had “probably been slain every year in his character as an incarnate deity” (xiv). 18.  Ibid., 1:xxi. For Frazer, the work of the anthropologist in the comparative study of beliefs and institutions had more to offer than merely a “means of satisfying an enlightened curiosity.” Such study might become “a powerful instrument to expedite progress,” he argued, by exposing the “sands of superstition” on which the foundations of modern society were in part laid. Acknowledging that it was “a melancholy and … thankless task to strike at the foundations of beliefs in which … the hopes

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In the first two editions, Frazer had devoted individual sections to the worship of Adonis, Osiris, and Attis as prime examples of the celebration of the death and resurrection of vegetation, illustrative of the theme, “killing the god” (Chapter 3). These examples, together with the rites of Dionysus, were substantially the same, he argued, and offered close parallels to the spring and midsummer celebrations of the European peasantry. Frazer did little more than sketch the salient features of their ritual and legend, noting that the nature and worship of these deities had been “discussed at length by many learned writers.”19 In 1906, however, in preparation for the third edition of the work, he produced a separate study of the “three Oriental worships” entitled Adonis, Attis, Osiris: Studies in the History of Oriental Religion. It is here that sacred prostitution appears for the first time, in connection with the cult of Adonis. A second edition in 1907 contained minor corrections and significant additions, including a new chapter entitled “Sacred Men and Women,” in which many further references to sacred prostitutes occur.20 The third edition, of 1914, which formed the heart of the final twelve-volume Golden Bough,21 was basically unchanged and constitutes the basis of my analysis.22 and aspirations of humanity through long ages have sought refuge from the storm and stress of life,” he insists nevertheless that “we must follow truth alone” (GB 1900, 1:xx–xxii). The implications of his view of the primitive roots of all religions, including Christianity, were never spelled out in his popular writings, but are formulated in an obituary essay on his friend (and lifelong Christian) William Robertson Smith. Frazer praises Smith for his advocacy of the comparative method in the study of ancient and primitive religion, concluding that it demonstrated the evolution of religious ideas and institutions along similar lines among all the peoples of the world, at least in early times—and thus a common primitive and ancient base underlying all modern (Western) religions. While such study could not pronounce on truth claims made by any religion, he argued, it “proves that many religious doctrines and practices are based on primitive conceptions which most civilized and educated men have long agreed in abandoning as mistaken.” “From this,” he concludes, “it is a natural and often probable inference that doctrines so based are false and that practices so based are foolish” (Frazer, “William Robertson Smith,” cited by Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 83). See further Fraser, Making of The Golden Bough, 53, 209–12, and Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 31, 188–89, 239–40. 19.  GB 1890, 1:278–79. 20.  The Preface to this edition acknowledges the help, among others, of Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie and above all his Hebrew teacher, the Reverend Professor R. H. Kennett (GB 1900, 1:xiii). 21.  Originally published as two volumes in one, the volumes were separated in the final edition, as volumes 5 and 6 (Part IV, Books 1 and 2), with vol. 5 (IV/1) devoted to Adonis and vol. 6 (IV/2) to Attis and Osiris. 22.  Frazer acknowledges further new sources for this edition, particularly the “learned treatises” of Baudissin on Adonis, E. A. Wallis Budge on Osiris, and J. Garstang on the Hittites (“Preface to the Third Edition,” GB IV/1:ix). As this acknowledgment indicates, Frazer read constantly and widely, filling his notebooks with copious notes and extracts and expanding his sources by correspondence with scholars in a variety of fields, including the Semitists Theodor Nöldecke and Franz Cumont, as well as anthropologists, missionaries, travelers, and colonial administrators (for whom he devised a questionnaire to aid the gathering of data). His discussion of Mediterranean practices and beliefs is accompanied by voluminous citations of original sources, as well as standard scholarly treatments. For the ancient Near East, he is largely dependent on the theories and attitudes of his sources, though at times he offers interpretations that run counter to those of leading scholars of the day. His citations



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Sacred Prostitution and the Cult of Adonis

All of the initial references to sacred prostitution occur in connection with the treatment of Adonis, yet they are curiously distributed; the primary cluster relates to the cult of Aphrodite in Cyprus, in which Adonis scarcely figures at all, while the treatment of Adonis in Syria, the “original” site of the cult, introduces the theme only in interpretation of biblical references to “sacred men” (qdšym). Further discussion of sacred prostitution is included in the added chapter on “sacred men and women,” in which Frazer defends his view of the “institution” against an alternative understanding of the practices as purely secular, supporting his thesis by appeal to parallels in India and West Africa that have none of the features of the Adonis cult. Frazer’s study of the Adonis cult begins with the underlying myth (Chapter 1), then moves to its two primary sites, Syria (Chapter 2) and Cyprus (Chapter 3).23 Problems of interpretation surface in the first chapter, where Frazer seeks the genesis of the myth and rituals associated with this god in attempts to control the cycles of nature. In Frazer’s view, the earliest attempt to affect the course of nature through magic was succeeded by a more advanced stage of reasoning in which a religious theory was articulated that attributed the growth and decay of vegetation to the waxing and waning strength of divine beings.24 But the notion of affecting the course of change remained: They still thought that by performing certain magical rites they could aid the god, who was the principle of life, in his struggle with the opposing principle of death. They imagined they could recruit his failing energies and even raise him from the dead. The ceremonies which they observed for this purpose were in substance a dramatic representation of the natural processes which they wished to facilitate.25 More specifically, the rituals imitated or dramatized the critical moments of the life cycle: show broad acquaintance with the latest scholarly work as contained in commentaries, encyclopedia articles, editions of Babylonian, Egyptian and Hittite texts, excavation reports, and general works on ancient Semitic religions and culture. Full bibliographical references (including place and date of publication, edition, and page numbers) identify his sources, which are collected into a 142-page bibliography in the third edition of The Golden Bough (12:3–144). 23.  Seven additional chapters expand on this base: 4: “Sacred Men and Women”; 5: “The Burning of Melcarth”; 6: “The Burning of Sandan”; 7: “Sardanapalus and Hercules”; 8: “Volcanic Religion”; 9: The Ritual of Adonis”; and 10: “The Gardens of Adonis.” Chapter 4 is as long as the first three chapters combined (53 pages), exceeded only by Chapter 6 (55 pages), which treats the Tyrian Melcarth in Cyprus, the Baal of Tarsus, the gods of Boghazköy, and the gods and goddesses of Cilicia. 24.  GB IV/1:3–4. 25.  Ibid., 1:4.

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As they now explained the fluctuations of growth and decay, of reproduction and dissolution, by the marriage, the death, and the rebirth or revival of their god, their religious or rather their magical dramas turned in great measure on these themes. They set forth the fruitful union of the powers of fertility, the sad death of one at least of the divine partners, and his joyful resurrection.26 The notion of the cycle of life allows Frazer to draw upon a variety of myths, rituals, and hymns that could be identified with particular aspects or “phases” of this cycle and thus to construct an “underlying” whole that is not fully articulated in any of the parts. Frazer’s reconstruction of the master myth is not original, but he looks farther afield for evidence and emphasizes the death and rebirth of vegetation as the root metaphor.27 The prime examples of rites that celebrate the death and rebirth of vegetation he finds in the lands bordering the Eastern Mediterranean: Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from the dead. In name and detail the rites varied from place to place: in substance they were the same.28 The first problem for Frazer’s theory presents itself in his attempt to derive the cult of Adonis from that of Babylonian/Sumerian Tammuz, though it is not of his making.29 Here he follows other scholars, and he is aware of tensions between the Babylonian and the Greek evidence.30 Although he observes that the cult of Adonis had already been borrowed by the Greeks by the seventh century BCE, he begins his treatment of the cult with the Tammuz literature of Babylonia, in which Tammuz appears as “the youthful spouse or lover of 26. Ibid. 27.  Frazer’s treatment of the religious traditions of the ancient Near East and Egypt draws heavily on current scholarship of archaeologists, Assyriologists, and biblical scholars, in addition to the older classical sources, while his focus on agricultural motifs shows the constant influence of Mannhardt, whom he cites repeatedly. 28.  Ibid., 1:6. 29.  For recent critiques, and defenses, of Frazer’s view of the dying-and-reviving god and its connection with ancient Near Eastern kingship and/or “fertility cults,” see Mark S. Smith, “The Death of ‘Dying and Rising Gods’ in the Biblical World: An Update, with Special Reference to Baal in the Baal Cycle,” SJOT 12 (1998) 257–313, and Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection: “Dying and Rising Gods” in the Ancient Near East (ConBOT 50; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2001). Cf. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, 75–76. 30.  Listing sources both ancient and modern, he finds only two dissenters, both modern: Renan and Chwolsohn (GB IV/1:6 n).



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Ishtar, the great mother goddess, the embodiment of the reproductive energies of nature.” Following the common view of scholars at the time, in which Tammuz was understood to die every year, and every year “his divine mistress journeyed in quest of him,” he describes the resulting state: During her absence the passion of love ceased to operate: men and beasts forgot to reproduce their kinds: all life was threatened with extinction. So intimately bound up with the goddess were the sexual functions of the whole animal kingdom that without her presence they could not be discharged.31 In this account it is Ishtar, not Tammuz, who represents the death and rebirth of nature—though Frazer links the revival of “all nature” to their joint reappearing.32 Here the myth of Inanna/Ishtar’s descent to the netherworld provides the “missing link” to the goddess and the theme of revival absent from the laments for the dead god.33 The dirges quoted by Frazer make explicit identification of Dumuzi with the vegetation, but the unidentified female speaker in the “Lament of the Flutes” appears to be the mother, rather than the lover, of the departed. Frazer relates the laments to an annual ceremony of mourning for Tammuz in the midsummer month that bears his name, describing the ritual scene as though present.34 But he follows this with the observation that “the tragical story and the melancholy rites of Adonis” are better known from the descriptions of Greek writers, relating the Greek myth that describes a dispute over the “comely youth” in his infancy by the goddesses of love and death, Aphrodite and Persephone, and its resolution by the decree of Zeus that Adonis should spend half of the year with each.35 Moving from myth to ritual, Frazer looks to the two major sites where the rites of Adonis were localized: Byblos in Syria and Paphos in Cyprus—oblivious to the irony of locating a cult defined as an agricultural fertility cult at two port cities, 31.  Ibid., 1:8. 32.  Ibid., 1:9. 33.  Ibid., 1:9–10. Frazer does not identify individual sources for his account of Ishtar’s descent, but his footnotes on Tammuz/Dumuzi (pp. 8, 10) are especially extensive (15 titles, ibid., 1:10 n. 1), including philological notes on the name, collections of hymns and dirges, monographs on the deity and his cult, as well as general works on Sumerian and Babylonian religion, biblical parallels, and calendrical considerations. 34.  Ibid., 1:9–10. 35.  Ibid., 1:10–11. To this he adds the account of Adonis’s death through the attack of a wild boar (or a jealous Ares) and Aphrodite’s lament for her beloved, describing it as a reflection of Babylonian myths, although he notes that no reference had yet been found to Tammuz’ death by a boar (11 n. 2), and there is no counterpart to the infancy story.

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whose primary associations were maritime and mercantile.36 Both were seats of the worship of Aphrodite, identified as Semitic Astarte, and both were linked in legend to King Cinyras, father of Adonis.37 Frazer’s treatment of the cult begins with the older site, Byblos. Adonis in Syria Frazer’s main argument in this chapter concerns the divinity of the Phoenician kings, for which he finds evidence in royal theophoric names and the claims of Semitic monarchs to affinity with their god.38 Citing examples from Damascus, Edom, Samal, and Tyre, Frazer moves to Byblos, but here he can only conjecture: “In like manner the kings of Byblos may have assumed the style of Adonis; for Adonis was simply the divine Adon or ‘lord’ of the city, a title which hardly differs in sense from Baal (‘master’) and Melech (‘king’).”39 Lacking direct evidence, he turns to Jerusalem for help: Some of the old Canaanite kings of Jerusalem appear to have played the part of Adonis in their lifetime, if we may judge from their names, Adoni-bezek and Adoni-zedek, which are divine rather than human titles. Adoni-zedek means “lord of righteousness,” and is therefore equivalent to Melchizedek . . . who seems to have been neither more nor less than one of the old Canaanitish kings of Jerusalem.40 With a further leap, he finds confirmation of the connection with the Adonis/ Tammuz cult in the Jerusalem temple: Thus if the old priestly kings of Jerusalem regularly played the part of Adonis, we need not wonder that in later times the women of Jerusalem used to 36.  In describing the attraction of Cyprus to Phoenician colonists, Frazer himself emphasizes the “niggardly nature of their own rugged coast, hemmed in between the mountains and the sea” (GB IV/1:31). Moreover, the Aphrodite of Paphos was known as the “sea-born goddess.” 37.  GB IV/1:13. For the identification of Syrian and Cyprian Aphrodite with Astarte in ancient times, Frazer cites Cicero and Joannes Lydus. His analysis of Adonis in Phoenicia is based on Baudissin’s Adonis und Esmun (13 n. 1). 38.  Frazer cites names such as Zekar-Baal and Adom-melech as examples and interprets the name Ben-Hadad as identifying the ruler as son of the god. Noting that some kings of Edom bore the name Hadad without any qualifying ben-, he suggests that they may have gone a step further, identifying themselves with the god in their own lifetime (GB IV/1:14–15). Smith, Religion of the Semites (2nd ed., 1894) 44–45, 66ff. is cited as a primary source on the divinity of Semitic kings and the kingship of Semitic gods (GB IV/1:15 n. 1). In the case of Tyre, Frazer argues that its kings traced their descent from Baal, citing Ezek 28:2, 9 (16 n. 3). 39.  GB IV/1:17; emphasis added. 40. Ibid.



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weep for Tammuz, that is for Adonis, at the north gate of the temple. In doing so they may only have been continuing a custom which had been observed in the same place by the Canaanites long before the Hebrews invaded the land.41 In this chain of hypotheses, removed both from Byblos and from kingship, Frazer now introduces the subject of this investigation: Perhaps the “sacred men,” as they were called, who lodged within the walls of the temple at Jerusalem down to the end of the Jewish kingdom, may have acted the part of the living Adonis to the living Astarte of the women. At all events we know that in the cells of these strange clergy women wove garments for the asherim, the sacred poles which stood beside the altar and which appear to have been by some regarded as embodiments of Astarte. Certainly the “sacred men” must have discharged some function which was deemed religious in the temple at Jerusalem; and we can hardly doubt that the prohibition to bring the wages of prostitution into the house of God, which was published at the very same time that the men were expelled from the temple, was directed at an existing practice. In Palestine as in other Semitic lands the hire of sacred prostitutes was probably dedicated to the deity as one of his regular dues: he took tribute of men and women as of flocks and herds, of fields and vineyards and oliveyards.42 Frazer’s discussion of the Adonis cult in Syria focuses on the male role, understood according to a conception of a divine (priest-)king, who in ritual celebration “dies” and is “reborn.” Thus Frazer looks first of all for evidence of the concept of divine kingship, finding it in royal theophoric names. Although he knows that such names were also borne by non-royal persons, he interprets the broader usage as a later degradation of an original divine title.43 And although he identifies Byblos as the primary site of the cult, he has no evidence from that site for royal participation in such a cult. The slender evidence that he does possess (legend of Cinyras’s kingship and Lucian’s report on the Adonis rites) he relegates to the final three pages of the chapter, devoting the greater part of the chapter (eleven pages) to “evidence” from the Hebrew Bible! 41.  Ibid.; emphasis added. 42.  GB IV/1:17–18. 43.  Ibid., 1:17 n. 3. He cites Nöldeke (art. “Names” in Encyclopaedia Biblica, 3:3286) for the view that the names were “sentences expressive of the nature of the god whom the bearer of the name worshipped,” but his theory of divine kingship disposed him to search for an “original” meaning behind the broader usage attested in the historical sources.

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The subject of sacred prostitution in this chapter is introduced in a curious way, and is derived entirely from biblical references, generalized to describe ancient Canaanite practice. The link is found in the women weeping for Tammuz in the Jerusalem temple (Ezek 8:14). But Frazer’s reconstruction of the cultic practice moves from the mourning, which is everywhere the central and characteristic feature of the Adonis/Tammuz cult, to suggest a different form of interaction between the chief actors and a different cast of players. For the male role in the drama, Frazer turns from the Israelite king, as playing the role of Adonis, to the “sacred men” (qdšym) lodged within the temple, according to the common reading of 2 Kgs 23:7. And with this shift to the qdšym comes a shift in metaphor from mourning to mating. For the “sacred men” are associated elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible with prostitution—though usually understood as homosexual prostitution! The further identification of the qdšym in this passage with Asherah (assumed to represent Astarte) brings in the theme of sacred prostitution—as an established concept associated with ancient Semitic/Canaanite religion. That concept does not belong in any integral way to the Adonis cult, and is connected neither with divine kingship nor with the women in Ezekiel’s temple vision. The precondition for its introduction here is the notion of sacred drama requiring human players to impersonate the gods, while the trigger is provided by a text associating “sacred men” with Asherah/Astarte. With 2 Kgs 23:7 Frazer has chosen the most problematic of biblical texts containing the term qdš(h) to introduce the theme. And to explain the activity of these men—whom he first describes as “act[ing] the part of the living Adonis to the living Astarte of the women” (mourning for Tammuz?)—he resorts to the concept of “dues,” conflating the parallel prohibitions of Deut 23:18–19.44 The effect is to shift the religious meaning of the action from the sacred drama to the dedication of fees for sexual services.45 The remainder of the chapter is devoted to the role of the divine or semi-divine kings of the Hebrews and Phoenicians as representative of the life-giving power of the “Lord of the land” Baal, whose title Adon, “Lord,” became Greek Adonis.46 Although no reference to sacred prostitution appears in this discussion, the divine drama that is commonly assumed to underlie it is treated at some length. Citing 44.  GB IV/1:17–18. Frazer’s understanding of both passages is informed by the standard critical commentaries and histories of his day and is representative of informed biblical scholarship. 45.  Frazer’s employment of multiple, and at times conflicting, models of interpretation, is characteristic of his work, which proceeded by addition, without subtraction or revision. His understanding of the activity of the “sacred men,” or “strange clergy,” is further elaborated, in surprising ways, in the section, “Sacred Men and Women” (treated below). 46.  Extensive footnotes offer documentation and commentary on a variety of texts and topics, including Josiah’s reforms and David’s name (understood as Dodo, “the Beloved,” viewed as an epithet of Tammuz in South Canaan, confirming his view of the king as identifying himself with the god of the city (GB IV/1:19 n. 2).



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examples from the Hebrew Bible in which the king appears to be answerable for famine and pestilence and credited with the power of making sick and making whole, “like other divine or semi-divine rulers,”47 Frazer concludes with speculation about the kings of Byblos: But if Semitic kings in general and the kings of Byblus in particular often assumed the style of Baal or Adonis, it follows that they may have mated with the goddess, the Baalath or Astarte of the city.48 What follows is a description of Canaanite fertility religion, largely dependent on Smith, and virtually unchanged in late twentieth-century textbooks: Now to the agricultural Semites the Baal or god of a land was the author of all its fertility; he it was who produced the corn, the wine, the figs, the oil, and the flax, by means of his quickening waters . . . .49 Further, “the life-giving power of the god was not limited to vegetative nature, but to him also was ascribed the increase of animal life, the multiplication of flocks and herds, and, not least, of the human inhabitants of the land . . . . ” In short, “the Baal was conceived as the male principle of reproduction, the husband of the land which he fertilized.”50 So far, therefore, as the Semite personified the reproductive energies of nature as male and female, as a Baal and Baalat, he appears to have identified the male power especially with water and the female especially with earth.51 Frazer continues by linking myth to ritual: If, then, at Byblus and elsewhere, the Semitic king was allowed, or rather required, to personate the god and marry the goddess, the intention of the custom can only have been to ensure the fertility of the land and the increase of men and cattle by means of homeopathic magic.52 The chapter concludes with reference to Cinyras, last king of Byblos, and the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Aphaca, founded by his legendary namesake. The sanctuary is described briefly by location (at the source of the river Adonis) and reputation (destroyed by Constantine “on account of the flagitious character of 47.  Ibid., 1:21–24. 48.  Ibid., 1:26; emphasis added. 49.  Here Frazer cites Hos 2:5ff and Smith, Religion of the Semites, 95–107. 50.  Quoted from Smith, ibid., 107–8. 51.  GB IV/1:26–27. 52.  Ibid., 1:27.

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the worship”),53 followed by a two-page description of the “lovely vale” where “Adonis met Aphrodite for the first or the last time, and [w]here his mangled body was buried.”54 Concluding his account of Adonis in Syria, Frazer describes the annual mourning rites, when “year by year the Syrian damsels lamented his untimely fate . . . and the river ran red to the sea.” The inference of female mourners is certainly a natural one, but Frazer’s source, Lucian’s Syr. d. 8,55 says only that the annual reddening of the river was a signal for lamentation to the “inhabitants of Byblos (tois Bybliois),” and the rites described in Syr. d. 6 appear to involve the whole population. Thus even where an ancient account of a ritual performed for Adonis is preserved, it does not fit the terms Frazer has imposed upon it.56 Although Frazer’s first references to sacred prostitution occur in this chapter, the focus on Adonis limits and skews the selection of texts. Thus well-known references to sacred prostitution relating to the Aphrodite temple at Heliopolis receives no mention here, nor do references to other Syrian/Phoenician sites of her worship. Because sacred prostitution was associated in established tradition with the cult of Aphrodite/Astarte, the subject comes into view only where the cult of the goddess is specifically connected to the cult of Adonis—and even then, it does not always compel Frazer’s attention. Thus Frazer recounts Lucian’s description of the mourning rites for Adonis at Byblos, but completely ignores Lucian’s account of prostitution at the Astarte temple demanded of women who refused to sacrifice their hair in mourning!57 On the other hand, the notion of a drama of divine love that stimulates the life-giving powers of nature has led Frazer to look for human actors and find them in the “holy men [and women]” of the Hebrew scriptures. It is clear in this chapter that sacred prostitution is secondary to the central theme and does not receive full discussion here. Adonis in Cyprus It is in connection with the Adonis cult in Cyprus that Frazer introduces an extended discussion of sacred prostitution, but the ties are primarily with Aphrodite, 53.  GB IV/1:28, citing Lucian, Syr. d. 9; Eusebius, Vita C. 3.55; Sozomen, Hist. eccl. 2.5; Socrates, Hist. eccl. 1.18; and Zosimus 1.58. 54.  GB IV/1:28–29. Frazer, who had no first-hand acquaintance with the region, believed that myths were stamped by the locales in which they originated (IV/1:v), thus giving him license to indulge in literary landscaping (Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 236–38). His description draws on the accounts of modern travelers, with citations of Edward Robinson, W. M. Thomson, E. Renan, G. Maspero, and C. Wilson. 55.  GB IV/1:30 n. 2. 56.  It is certainly possible, and even likely, that a special mourning ceremony of women formed a part of the general commemoration rites. My point is only that Frazer’s theory not only fills the gaps of evidence with speculative reconstruction, but also rewrites existing evidence to fit his pattern. 57.  Frazer does refer to this part of Lucian’s report in his subsequent review of prostitution in honor of the goddess—which contains no reference to mourning rites—reinforcing the hypothesis that the mourning and mating themes, or Adonis and Aphrodite rites, are originally distinct.



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whom Frazer regards as a representative of the great oriental mother goddess. Frazer opens the chapter by reporting that the island had been settled in early times by Phoenician colonists, who brought the gods of their motherland with them.58 At Amathus on the southern coast they instituted the rites of Adonis and Aphrodite/Astarte, he notes, but the great seat of the worship of Aphrodite and Adonis was Paphos, where the famous sanctuary of Aphrodite stood on a hill near the sea. With the mention of Paphos, Frazer’s discussion focuses almost exclusively on the goddess, and her lover appears only in passing comment.59 Frazer cites Herodotus’s report of the sanctuary’s founding by colonists from Ascalon, but noting evidence for the great antiquity of the site, he suggests that a native goddess may have been worshipped there at an earlier time and identified with Aphrodite by the Phoenician colonists.60 “If two deities were thus fused in one,” he argues, “we may suppose that they were both varieties of that great goddess of motherhood and fertility whose worship appears to have spread all over Western Asia from a very early time.”61 He finds confirmation of this hypothesis in the “archaic shape of her image,” a white cone or pyramid, and in “the licentious character of her rites”—both shared, he contends, with other Asiatic deities.62 With this introduction to the worship of the great oriental goddess of fertility, Frazer rehearses the ancient reports of prostitution in her honor: In Cyprus it appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged by custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of the goddess, whether she went by the name of Aphrodite, Astarte, or what not.63 Similar customs prevailed in many parts of Western Asia. Whatever its motive, the practice was clearly regarded, not as an orgy of lust, but as a solemn religious duty performed in the service of that great Mother Goddess of Western Asia whose name varied, while her type remained constant, 58.  GB IV/1:31–32. The deities are identified as Baal of the Lebanon, “who may well have been Adonis,” Aphrodite/Astarte, and “the Tyrian Melchart or Moloch” (32). 59.  Frazer’s entire treatment of the cult at Amathus consists of two sentences. The first describes the rites at this site as so closely resembling the Egyptian worship of Osiris that “some people even identified the Adonis of Amathus with Osiris.” The second notes evidence for worship of Melchart and the presence of Phoenicians in the region until a late period (ibid., 1:32). 60. Ibid. 61.  Ibid., 1:34. 62.  Ibid., 1:34–35. As further evidence of her character as a goddess of fertility and the continuity of her worship under a different name, he cites the contemporary custom of both Christian and Muslim women on the island, who entreat Mary to remove the curse of barrenness—or increase the manhood of men (ibid., 1:36). 63.  Here a footnote (ibid., 1:36 n. 6) lists the familiar citations from Herodotus, Athenaeus, Justin, and Lactantius as sources, adding that “Asiatic customs of this sort have been rightly explained by W. Mannhardt (Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, 283ff.).”

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from place to place. Thus at Babylon every woman . . . had once in her life to submit to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that is, of Ishtar and Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this sanctified harlotry.64  . . . At Heliopolis or Baalbec in Syria . . . the custom of the country required that every maiden should prostitute herself to a stranger at the temple of Astarte, and matrons as well as maids testified their devotion to the goddess in the same manner.65 . . . In Phoenician temples women prostituted themselves for hire in the service of religion believing that by this conduct they propitiated the goddess and won her favor.66 “It was a law of the Amorites, that she who was about to marry should sit in fornication seven days by the gate.”67 At Byblus . . . women who refused to sacrifice their hair had to give themselves up to strangers . . . and the money which they thus earned was devoted to the goddess.68 . . . We are told that in Lydia all girls were obliged to prostitute themselves in order to earn a dowry; but we may suspect that the real motive of the custom was devotion rather than economy.69 . . . In Armenia the noblest families dedicated their 64.  A footnote (GB IV/1:37 n. 1) cites Herodotus and Strabo and discusses the identity and etymology of Mylitta. It also points to discussion of “sacred prostitution in the worship of Ishtar” by Jastrow and Dhorme. 65.  Recounting the abolition of the custom and destruction of the temple by the emperor Constantine, Frazer cites the usual sources (Eusebius’s Vita Constantini; Socrates, Historia ecclesiastica; and Sozomenus’s Historia ecclesiastica), with further commentary on their reports. According to Socrates, he notes, local custom at Heliopolis “obliged the women to be held in common, so that paternity was unknown, ‘for there was no distinction of parents and children, and the people prostituted their daughters to the strangers who visited them.’ ” Frazer makes no attempt to spell out the logic of holding women in common and prostitution of daughters to strangers or relate this custom to the notion of devotion to the goddess. What is evident here is his belief in the origins of sacred prostitution in an earlier stage of primitive promiscuity—a view shared with the evolutionary theorists treated in Chapter 2, and spelled out in his next chapter. 66.  Here a footnote offers the Greek text of Athanasius’s account of women prostituting themselves at Phoenician temples (C. Gent. 26), with a comment that the account of the custom given by H. Ploss (Das Weib in der Natur- und Völkerkunde: Anthropologische Studien [2nd ed.; 2 vols.; ed. Max Bartels; Leipzig: Grieben, 1887] 1:302) may rest on a “misapprehension” of this passage. Ploss stated that, according to Athanasius [no citation], the Phoenicians had a particular [besonderen] slave whose job [Amt] was to “deflower the bride.” “But if it is correct,” Frazer adds, “we may conjecture that the slaves who deflowered the virgins were the sacred slaves of the temples, the qedeshim,” who discharged this office as the “living representative of the god” (GB IV/1:37–38 n. 3). 67.  This reference to “Amorite” practice in a Judean context, quoted directly from Charles’s 1908 edition of The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, is an addition to the standard catalogue, unattested in the examples seen thus far (ibid., 1:38 n. 1). 68.  Here Frazer, citing Lucian’s De Syria dea, notes that the author is “careful to indicate that none but strangers were allowed to enjoy the women” (ibid., n. 2). He speculates that the reported custom may have been “a mitigation of an older rule which at Byblos as elsewhere formerly compelled every woman without exception to sacrifice her virtue in the service of religion” (ibid., 1:38). 69.  At this point in Frazer’s rehearsal of the traditional examples he interpolates a detailed account of a Greek inscription found at Tralles in Lydia, which proves, he says, that “the practice of religious prostitution survived in that country as late as the second century of our era.” The



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daughters to the service of the goddess Anaitis in her temple in Acilisena, where the damsels acted as prostitutes for a long time before they were given in marriage.70 . . . Again the goddess Ma was served by a multitude of sacred harlots at Comana in Pontus.71 Here is the “canonical” list familiar from earlier treatments of sacred prostitution—without reference to antecedent treatments of the subject. Frazer’s cataloging of examples remains close to the language of his sources, which he knew firsthand, with added commentary in which he speculates about earlier and universal forms of the practices, or the religious basis for a seemingly secular custom. Notable in this catalog are the references to practices in Syria that found no place in his treatment of the Adonis cult in Syria. It is clear that this list represents an established canon with a life of its own, unrelated to Adonis worship. From this fixed tradition Frazer moves now in conclusion to forge the missing link. When all of the evidence has been surveyed, he argues, the various practices reported from antiquity may be seen to represent a single underlying pattern, rooted in a common myth: We may conclude that a great Mother Goddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of Western Asia; that associated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in inscription (published by W. M. Ramsay in “Unedited Inscriptions of Asia Minor,” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 7 [1883] 276, and The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia [1 vol. in 2; Oxford: Clarendon, 1895] 1:94–96, 115) recorded that a woman by the name of Aurelia Aemilia “served the god in the capacity of a harlot at his express command” (emphasis added), and that “her mother and other female ancestors had done the same before her.” The “publicity of the record,” which was engraved on a marble column supporting a votive offering, shows, he concludes, that “no stain attached to such a life and such parentage” (GB IV/1:38). With this new example, Frazer emphasizes the religious character of the activity at the expense of the primary tie with the service of a “mother goddess.” Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, 1:94, describes the male deity as a “companion of the Mother-goddess of inferior rank to her,” but attempts to relativize the gender distinction by arguing that “the distinction of sex … is not an ultimate and fundamental fact of the divine life: the god and the goddess, the Son and the Maiden, are mere appearances of the real and single divine life that underlies them.” 70.  Citing Strabo, xi.14.16, as his source, he adds that “nobody scrupled to take one of these girls to wife when her period of service was over” (GB IV/1:38). 71.  Frazer adds that “crowds of men and women flocked to her sanctuary … to attend the biennial festivals or to pay their vows to the goddess,” leaving the nature of the vows unclear. His source here is Strabo, xii.3.32.34.36; cf. xii.2.3. Noting that other sanctuaries in Pontus, Cappadocia, and Phrygia “swarmed with sacred slaves,” he conjectures that “many of these slaves were prostitutes,” pointing to Strabo, xi.8.4; xii.2.3.6; xii.3.31.37; and xii.8.14 (GB IV/1:39).

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their several kind;72 and further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary, union of the human sexes at the sanctuary of the goddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast.73 This frequently quoted predication continues in an unbroken paragraph with an evolutionary argument that is rarely mentioned.74 Frazer suggests that the 72.  The unmistakable echo of Genesis 1 in this gratuitous clause casts the myth of the goddess and her lover as an alternative creation myth, with the echoes continuing in the following lines. At this point Frazer inserts a footnote citing a single scholarly source: “On this great Asiatic goddess and her lovers, see especially Sir W. M. Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, 1:87ff ” (GB IV/1:39 n. 2). Ramsay’s opening paragraph is worth quoting for its similarities in thought to Frazer’s more well-known statement: Now let us consider the essence of Anatolian religion. Its essence lies in the adoration of the life of Nature—that life subject apparently to death, yet never dying but reproducing itself in new forms, different yet the same. This perpetual self-identity under varying forms, this annihilation of death through the power of self-reproduction, was the object of enthusiastic worship, characterized by remarkable self-abandonment and immersion in the divine, by a mixture of obscene symbolism and sublime truths, by negation of the moral distinctions and family ties that exist in a more developed society, but do not exist in the free life of Nature. The mystery of self-reproduction … is the key to explain all the repulsive legends and ceremonies that cluster round that worship. 73.  GB IV/1:39. A long footnote (n. 3) suggests comparison with Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, 284, and Smith, The Prophets of Israel (2nd ed., 1902) 171–74, and adds two further examples of “similar” thinking and practice from more recent times. The Mannhardt reference is from an extensive discussion of the Greek Adonis cult and it Semitic roots or counterpart, aimed at showing a common structure with North European Spring and Mid-summer festivals. In the passage cited Mannhardt argues that the Babylonian and Cyprian women who sacrifice their virginity for the goddess imitate Aphrodite herself, acting as “Abbilder, Stellvertreterinnen, Vervielfältigungen der Göttin.” The Smith reference concerns the Canaanite religious background of Hosea’s marriage metaphor. “Such developed religious allegory as that which makes the national God, not only father of the people, but husband of the land their mother, has its familiar home in natural religions,” Smith argues. “In these religions the idea is taken in a crass physical sense,” he notes, adding that “marriage of female worshippers with the godhead was a common notion among the Phoenicians and Babylonians” (Prophets of Israel, 171). As evidence that the Israelites had sunk to the level of the “heathen Semites” he cites “the prevalence of religious prostitution … precisely identical with the abominations of ‘Ashtoreth among the Phoenicians” (174). Frazer’s “modern” examples include the case reported by Marco Polo on the [Tibetan?] custom of offering wives to strangers as essential to insure the fertility of the soil. The second concerns the Oualad Abdi of Morocco, where, according to Edmond Doutté (Magie et Religion dans l’Afrique du Nord [1908] 560f.), “the women often seek a divorce and engage in prostitution in the intervals between their marriages.” Attempts to regulate this prostitution were opposed by the whole population, according to Doutté, because they believed that “such a measure would impair the abundance of the crops” (quoted in GB IV/1:39 n. 3). 74.  An exception is Oden (“Sacred Prostitution Accusation,” 137–38), who details Frazer’s argument as evidence of the dated nature of his work, noting that the presuppositions of Frazer’s



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conception of such a mother goddess may have dated from a time when the institution of marriage had not yet evolved and women were held in common.75 Only in such a society, he reasoned, could one explain why the goddess herself was regularly supposed to be both unmarried and unchaste, and why her worshippers were obliged to imitate her.76 Speculating that formerly every woman had at least once in her life to submit to the practice that had originally been the permanent state, he conjectures that as individual marriage grew in favor, women found ways of avoiding the obligation, such as offering their hair instead, or substituting an obscene symbol for the obscene act.77 Nevertheless, he argued, it was still deemed necessary for a certain number of women to discharge the old obligation in the old way: These became prostitutes either for life or for a term of years at one of the temples: dedicated to the service of religion, they were invested with a sacred character, and their vocation, far from being deemed infamous, was probably long regarded by the laity as an exercise of more than common virtue, and rewarded with a tribute of mixed wonder, reverence, and pity, not unlike that which in some parts of the world is still paid to women who seek to honor their Creator in a different way by renouncing the natural functions of their sex and the tenderest relations of humanity.78 Frazer presents this notion of sacred prostitution as a vestige of an earlier universal obligation of women, together with the associated notion of an original state of promiscuity, without reference to other authors. In support of his view of prostitutes invested with a sacred character Frazer cites only biblical evidence, observing that “in Hebrew a temple harlot was regularly called ‘a sacred woman’ (qědēša).”79 Once again the Hebrew Bible plays a critical role in Frazer’s interpretation of the classical sources, and once again it is Hebrew qdš(h) that provides the interpretive link. Following this excursus on the nature and origins of sacred prostitution, Frazer returns to traditions associated with the sanctuary at Paphos, and King Cinyras as having instituted the custom there.80 Citing a tradition that associated Cinyras’s reconstruction have been “completely abandoned by twentieth-century ethnographic historians,” while his statements on sacred prostitution “continue to be repeated … as if they were beyond rebuttal.” 75.  See above, Chapter 2, pp. 43, 47–48. 76.  GB IV/1:39–40. Here his argument invokes the notion of homeopathic magic. 77.  Ibid., 1:40, citing Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 2.14; Arnobius, Adv. Nat. 5.19; and Firmicus Maternus, Err. prof. rel. 10 (40 n. 1), none of which refer to an offering of hair. 78.  Ibid., 1:40–41. 79.  Ibid., 1:41 n. 1. Here he cites Encyclopedia Biblica, s. v. “Harlot”; and S. R. Driver, on Gen 38:21. 80.  As sources he cites Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, and Firmicus Maternus (GB IV/1:41 n. 2).

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own daughters with the practice, he interprets this to mean that princesses, as well as women of humble birth, were bound by the custom at Paphos—although the tradition attributed the daughters’ mating with strangers to the wrath of Aphrodite.81 He then launches into a wide-ranging discussion of priest-kings, royal incest, and sacred marriage based loosely on legends connected to Cinyras.82 Of particular note in this section is the way in which the subject of sacred marriage is introduced quite apart from the general discussion of sacred prostitution. It is only in relation to the legend of Pygmalion that the two themes are joined. Sacred Marriage

The subject of sacred marriage receives its primary exposition elsewhere in The Golden Bough, with a different cast of characters—and no mention of sacred prostitution. Appearing for the first time in the expansive third edition, the subject is accorded a separate chapter, in Part I (The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings), where the theoretical basis is laid for the concept of divine kingship and its relation to fertility.83 When Frazer introduces the theme into his discussion of the Cinyras legends, he draws on his earlier treatment, exemplifying the practice by customs from Rome, Assam, and Bengal. This separate treatment of the themes reflects Frazer’s sources, in which the two are not combined—or related. The characteristic modern fusion of the concepts is not yet evident, though Frazer has laid the base for it in his focus on Adonis. Sacred marriage, in Frazer’s understanding, is a concept that belongs to the notion of divine kingship, while sacred prostitution is an institution linked specifically, in his primary sources and 81.  Frazer argues that the form of the tradition preserved in Apollodorus, Bibiotheca 3.14.3 must derive from a later authority who was only able to conceive of the shocking conduct as punishment by the goddess, rather than “a sacrifice regularly enjoined by her on all her devotees” (GB IV/1:41). 82.  GB IV/1:41–50; sacred prostitution does not appear again until p. 50. Noteworthy features of these legends include the Cilician origin of Cinyras and the cult at Paphos, and Adonis’s conception through the incestuous intercourse of Cinyras (or the Syrian king Theias) with his daughter Myrrha. The subject of royal incest (father–daughter and brother–sister) leads to the hypothesis of original descent in the female line (“principle of mother-kin”) as the ultimate cause of this practice, with acknowledgment of McLennan as the first to indicate “the true explanation of the custom [of brother–sister marriage]” (44 n. 2). The same older principle is also seen to underlie the cult of the great Mother Goddess and the form of her worship (44–46). 83.  The general subject of sex and the fertility of nature is addressed in relation to tree worship in Chapter 11, “The Influence of the Sexes on Vegetation” (GB I/2:97–119), followed by Chapter 12, “The Sacred Marriage” (120–70). The latter chapter moves from the case of Diana and the sacred grove that had first commanded Frazer’s attention to a cross-cultural discussion of sacred marriage in Babylonia and Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Sweden, and ancient Gaul before turning to examples from various “uncivilised peoples,” including Peruvian Indians, Blackfoot Indians, Hurons and Algonquins, as well as various peoples of Africa, India, and the Maldives. Further chapters treat specific examples: “The Kings of Rome and Alba” (Chapter 13), “Father Jove and Mother Vesta” (Chapter 16), and “Dianus and Diana” (Chapter 21), which recapitulates the theory of the rise of sacred kings.



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his discussion, to the cult of a goddess identified by Frazer as an Asiatic “great mother” goddess. Although Frazer reconstructed a custom in which Phoenician kings regularly assumed the role of Adonis/Baal in relation to Astarte, he did not use the term sacred marriage to describe the ritual union, and he was unable to cite evidence for the practice, apart from personal names and reference to the biblical qdšym. In traditions relating to Cyprus, however, he finds the missing link—in the legend of Pygmalion, “the Phoenician king of Cyprus, who is said to have fallen in love with an image of Aphrodite and taken it to his bed.”84 Noting that Pygmalion was the father-in-law of Cinyras and that both Cinyras and his son Adonis were also connected to Aphrodite by love affairs, Frazer concludes that “the early Phoenician kings of Paphos, or their sons, regularly claimed to be not merely the priests of the goddess but also her lovers, in other words, that in their official capacity they personated Adonis.”85 Thus the story of Pygmalion “points to a ceremony of sacred marriage in which the king wedded the image of Aphrodite, or rather of Astarte.”86 But the image, in Frazer’s analysis, is also “personated”: As the custom of religious prostitution at Paphos is said to have been founded by King Cinyras and observed by his daughters, we may surmise the kings of Paphos played the part of the divine bridegroom in a less innocent rite than the form of marriage with a statue; in fact, that at certain festivals each of them had to mate with one or more of the sacred harlots of the temple, who played Astarte to his Adonis.87 84.  GB IV/1:49, citing Arnobius, Clement of Alexandria, and Ovid, Metam. 10.243–97 are cited as sources, with Arnobius and Clement both attributing the story to the Greek history of Cyprus by Philostephanus (49 n. 4). 85.  Ibid., 1:49. Frazer finds evidence for this conjecture in the tradition that Adonis reigned in Cyprus, and in the title of Adonis “regularly borne by the sons of all the Phoenician kings of the island.” Although he acknowledges that the title “strictly signified no more than ‘lord,’” he argues that the legends connecting these Cypriot princes to Aphrodite make it probable that they “claimed the divine nature as well as the human dignity of Adonis” (49–50). 86.  Ibid., 1:50. Additional features of Frazer’s reconstruction include positing a whole series of Semitic kings of Cyprus known as Pygmalion, analyzed as a Greek corruption of Phoenician Pumi-yathon. Recalling that Pygmalion was the name of the king of Tyre from whom his sister Dido fled, Frazer cites evidence of the name Pumi-yathon in Phoenician inscriptions from Idalion (Idalium) and on Greek coins from Cyprus, with further references in Diodorus Siculus and Athenaeus. He also notes the occurrence of the names Pygmalion and Astarte together in a Punic inscription from Carthage (50 n. 3). 87.  Ibid., 1:50. Frazer’s appeal to the tradition of Cinyras’s daughters ignores the problem of having the king’s daughters represent the partner whom the king, or his sons, is to “wed” or bed. It appears that Frazer equates the references to the harlot Aphrodite with a class of “sacred harlots” who represented the goddess in the “marriage” with the king, although none of the texts that he cites refers to any class of female personnel, or suggests a ritual involving the king as the central figure.

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Here, as elsewhere in Frazer’s treatment of sacred prostitution, the issue of offspring is raised. Frazer speculates that these progeny “would rank as sons and daughters of the deity, and would in time become the parents of gods and goddesses, like their fathers and mothers before them.”88 Extending this line of argument, he concludes: In this manner Paphos, and perhaps all sanctuaries of the great Asiatic goddess where sacred prostitution was practiced, might be well stocked with human deities, the offspring of the divine king by his wives, concubines, and temple harlots. Any one of these might probably succeed his father on the throne or be sacrificed in his stead whenever the stress of war or other grave junctures called, as they sometimes did, for the death of a royal victim.89 The chapter concludes with a comparison of Cinyras, whose name suggests a “harper,”90 with David, and attendant reflections on the role of music in ritual and ecstasy.91 A final word recalls the premature and violent death of Adonis as a constant feature of the myth and considers whether the priest-kings of Cyprus imitated their divine prototype in death as in life.92 Once again the central issue for Frazer is divine kingship and its links to fertility, around which are assembled a wide range of loosely related materials bearing on various types of divine “incarnations,” or representations, including sacred prostitutes. Summarizing the evidence presented in Chapter 3 (“Adonis in Cyprus”), it is apparent that the theme of sacred prostitution is introduced only in relation to Aphrodite, and no evidence is presented for the existence of sacred prostitutes in her cult in Paphos. The connections between the priest-king and the goddess consist entirely of legends and interpretation of titles; and neither a class of sacred prostitutes nor a general practice involving all women is attested in documents relating 88.  In support of this theory of divine offspring sired by a divine king, Frazer cites the evidence of theophoric names, as previously in his treatment of the Phoenician kings. Interpreting names of the type “Abi-Baal” according to their apparent meaning of “father of Baal,” he suggests that his hypothesis explains a phenomenon (this class of names) that has “proved particularly puzzling to some eminent Semitic scholars.” His reasoning is particularly strained when he attempts to argue that the father of a god and the son of a god might be the same person (GB IV/1:51 n. 4). 89.  GB IV/1:51. Such a “tax,” he suggests, “levied occasionally on the king’s numerous progeny for the good of the country, would neither extinguish the royal stock nor break the father’s heart, who divided his parental affection among so many.” 90.  Frazer connects the name to Greek cinyra, “lyre,” deriving it from Semitic kinnor [so LS 953] (52). 91.  GB IV/1:52–54. 92.  Ibid., 1:55. Frazer notes that tradition varied on Cinyras’s own end, with respect both to age and agency, with one source having him live till the ripe old age of 160.



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to Paphos. For evidence of such a class of “sacred women,” Frazer must resort to the Bible (as he did for the “sacred men” of Chapter 2)! Sacred Men and Women It is only in the chapter on “Sacred Men and Women” (Chapter 4) that Frazer gives focused and sustained attention to the subject of sacred prostitution. Summarizing his findings from the preceding chapter, he concludes that “a system of sacred prostitution was regularly carried on all over Western Asia,” and that in Phoenicia and Cyprus it was specially associated with the worship of Adonis.93 His initial concern in this added chapter is to defend his view of the fundamentally religious nature of the practices described in antiquity against an alternative theory that understood them as secular rituals, but his broader aim is to set the practice in a larger religio-cultural framework. He begins with the alternative theory: It has been proposed to derive the religious prostitution of Western Asia from a purely secular and precautionary practice of destroying a bride’s virginity before handing her over to her husband in order that “the bridegroom’s intercourse should be safe from a peril that is much dreaded by men in a certain stage of culture.”94 This alternative view was, like Frazer’s, an attempt to understand the strange sexual practices reported in antiquity as vestiges of an earlier stage of social and intellectual development. It employed a different model, however, focusing on the premarital nature of the intercourse highlighted in many of the ancient accounts. Against this view Frazer marshals the following objections: 1. The theory fails to account for the deeply religious character of the customs as practiced in antiquity all over Western Asia.95 In support of this assertion Frazer cites the observance of the custom at sanctuaries of a great goddess, the dedication of the wages of prostitution to her, the women’s belief that they gained the favor of the goddess by their action, and authorization by the command of a male deity, for service to the god.96 How this final 93.  GB IV/1:57. 94.  Ibid. The quotation is from L. R. Farnell, “Sociological Hypotheses concerning the position of Women in Ancient Religion,” AR 7 (1904) 88. 95.  GB IV/1:58. 96.  Ibid. Here he cites the inscription from Tralles, treated in n. 69 above.

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evidence might relate to the dominant, and apparently defining, pattern of service to a “great goddess” is not addressed. 2. The theory fails to account for the prostitution of married women at Heliopolis and apparently also at Babylon and Byblus.97 In addition to Eusebius, Herodotus, and Lucian, Frazer offers the evidence of Hos 4:13–14, which mentions the prostitution of “daughters” and “daughters-inlaw.” Arguing that the “prostitution of married women is wholly inexplicable” on the hypothesis of a premarital rite, he insists that the practice involving married women cannot be separated from the prostitution of virgins, which at places occurred side by side.98 3. The theory fails to account for the repeated and professional prostitution of women in Lydia, Pontus, Armenia, and apparently all over Palestine.99 Frazer’s objections relating to habitual/professional prostitution, as well as the involvement of married women, point to problems in interpretation that I have noted earlier. Whether the ancient reporters can be trusted in their interpretations and whether Frazer’s construction better fits the evidence remains to be determined, but the strains of attempting to encompass all of the reported instances of “religious prostitution” in a single theory are evident. In this case, Frazer insists on connecting “habitual prostitution” to initiatory prostitution—a dubious connection, based on Victorian notions of female chastity.100 4. The theory fails to account for the Qedeshim (“sacred men”) side by side with the Qedeshoth (“sacred women”) at the sanctuaries; for whatever the religious functions of these “sacred men” may have been, it is highly probable that they were analogous to those of the “sacred women” and are to be explained in the same way.101 This argument relates solely to biblical sources (primarily 2 Kgs 23:7 and Deut 23:18–19) and is not elaborated. It shows the importance of the biblical evidence in Frazer’s reading of the classical texts, as well as the problem of attempting to 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid. 99. Ibid. 100.  Ibid., 1:58–59. Frazer (59) asks rhetorically: “Are we to suppose that the first act of unchastity is to be explained in one way and all the subsequent acts in quite another?” 101.  Ibid., 1:59.



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relate these disparate sources. As will be seen below, the assumption of analogous function is one of the major fallacies in the interpretation of the qdšym. However one assesses the evidence, Frazer’s attempt to find a place for the occasional references to male sexual activity in religious contexts points to a significant problem in defining sacred prostitution. 5. On the hypothesis [of a premarital rite] . . . we should expect to find the man who deflowers the maid remunerated for rendering a dangerous service . . . . But in Western Asia it was just the contrary. It was the woman who was paid, not the man . . . . This clearly shows that it was the woman, and not the man, who was believed to render the service.102 Frazier supports his argument by citing evidence for remunerating the man in “places where the supposed custom is really practiced,”103 asking in conclusion: “Or are we to suppose that the man had to pay for rendering a dangerous service?”104 With these five arguments Frazer believes he has proved conclusively that whatever the remote origin of the Western Asiatic customs considered in his study of Adonis, they cannot have originated in a custom of bridal defloration, but exhibit a purely religious character in the period from which they are attested, requiring a religious explanation. These customs find their “true parallel,” Frazer now argues, in customs of sacred prostitution still observable in India and Africa. It is from these living examples, he suggests, that the relics of the past can properly be understood. Frazer’s move to ethnography to illuminate the enigmatic records of the past follows a trajectory exhibited a century earlier in the work of Dulaure and assumed by Dufour, Lubbock, and Wake.105 Frazer acknowledges no predecessors, but 102.  Ibid. Frazer suggests that part of the wages were probably paid to the temple, but notes Strabo’s reference to Armenian girls of rich families who often gave more to their lovers than they received (59 n. 3). 103.  GB IV/1:59, n. 2. Eight sources are cited in addition to Wilhelm Hertz, “Die Sage vom Giftmädchen” (in Gesammelte Abhandlungen [Stuttgart, 1905] 156–277), providing examples from Malabar, the Philippines, New Caledonia, and Central Africa (the Azimba and Wa-Yao). 104.  Frazer (GB IV/1:59 n. 4) notes that “this fatal objection” had also been pressed by Hertz. 105.  Another important source of ethnographic material was Ploss, Das Weib in der Natur- und Völkerkunde. The 6th edition (revised and expanded by M. Bartels, 1899) contains a 34-page chapter on “prostitution,” which treats sacred prostitution as a type of extramarital intercourse practiced in ancient Babylon, Cyprus, Phoenicia, and Asia Minor, and still encountered in many Indian temples. Ploss does not identify other modern examples, but devotes considerable attention to details of the Indian practices, citing reports of John Shortt (“The Bayadère: or Dancing Girls of Southern India,” in Memoirs Read before the Anthropological Society of London, 1870; also cited by Frazer) and Gustav Warneck. In contrast, he simply lists the ancient examples by location, as generally known, naming no sources except Strabo (on the premarital consecration of Armenian girls to Annaitis).

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launches his own, apparently independent, investigation, using his own extensive collection of sources,106 his search for “living examples” determined less by the works of earlier investigators than by shared conceptions of social evolution and “survivals.” But while he brought special expertise to the task, in both classics and anthropology, his efforts to combine the data from the two fields are at least as problematic as the ventures of those who preceded him. Sacred Women in India

Like his predecessors, Frazer looks to India for his closest parallel to the sacred prostitutes of Mediterranean antiquity, finding it in the dancing-girls dedicated to certain South Indian temples and commonly designated in western accounts by the term devadasi (“servant/slave of the god”), but also described in common parlance as “harlots.”107 According to Frazer, every Tamil temple of note had a “troop” of these women, whose official duties were to dance and sing before the idol every morning and evening in the temple and whenever it was borne in procession. Among some castes, he reports, it was customary for at least one daughter of every family to be dedicated to this temple service. She was trained in dancing and singing from infancy and initiated into this service at age six to eight by a ritual that had the form of a nuptial ceremony. A recurrent feature of the accounts cited by Frazer is interpretation of the relationship as a form of marriage to the deity.108 According to the reports, the divine bridegroom is represented variously by an idol, a sword, or a priest of the temple.109 The reports have little to say about the devadasis’ sexual activity and nothing concerning fertility myths or sexual symbolism. An account of practices in Tulava gives some sense of the variety of arrangements and types of activities in which the women were engaged in their temple service. Among the four highest castes, Frazer reports, a married woman who “wearies of her husband” or a widow who “grows tired of celibacy” may go to live in the temple, where in exchange for a daily 106.  On his notebooks, see Ackerman, J. G. Frazer, 311–12, who reports that the 55 offered to the British Museum represented “only a small part of his working materials” (311). In presenting ethnographic data, Frazer piles up examples from multiple sources, often in extensive quotations and often with features that conflict with adjacent accounts or do not fit the central point for which they are cited. 107.  GB IV/1:61. Different terms are used to describe these women at different temples and in different sources. Frazer’s account of the institution is based on reports of missionaries, travelers, and colonial administrators, which he sometimes quotes at length (see pp. 63–65 for a single continuous quote). For recent literature and analysis of these women, see Chapter 6 below. 108.  Cf. Frédérique Marglin, Wives of the God-King: The Rituals of the Devadasis of Puri (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 109.  GB IV/1:61–64. Examples cited are from Tiru-kalli-kundram in Madras Presidency (61), Coimatore (62), and Travancore (63).



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allowance of rice, she must “sweep the temple, fan the idol, and confine her amours to the Brahmans.”110 The fact that a fee must be paid to the temple by women who choose not to reside there suggests that prostitution on the part of these temple servants was a significant source of revenue for the temple, which had to be compensated by women who chose to ply the trade elsewhere.111 Unfortunately, we learn nothing of the circumstances that determined their residence and other forms of temple service. It appears in any case that they engaged in a variety of services, some menial, and that their primary cultic or ritual service, if any, took the form of dancing and singing—activities that place them in the general class of entertainers or performers, roles often linked to prostitutes, as providing services to males outside the circle of the family.112 The primary identification of the devadasis as “dancing-girls” distinguishes this class of temple women from all of the examples cited by Frazer for the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, and highlights the distinct nature of the religious symbolism of India. In India, sacred dance was a highly developed form of religious expression, which has no clear counterpart in the religious traditions of Mesopotamia or Syria-Palestine. And erotic symbolism plays a central role in Indian religion, also lacking a Near Eastern counterpart. The closest parallel, in the Sumerian divine love lyrics, appears to be a primarily (if not exclusively) literary/ musical phenomenon, unaccompanied by the wealth of visual representations that characterize the sacred art of India. In India, Frazer found an example of a link within the indigenous culture between the language of prostitution and the language of sacred service, but the appellation “prostitute” is an alternate, and “popular,” designation in India, not the primary or “proper” title. And it does not appear to describe the devotee’s primary religious role, nor is it combined with terms for the sacred or the divine; the devadasi is not called a “sacred prostitute,” or “prostitute of the god.” The notion that the women dedicated to the temple are “brides” of the god finds its closest parallels in Herodotus’s and Strabo’s accounts of priestesses in Babylon and Thebes and among other classes of cult-identified women in Mesopotamia and elsewhere— but it is not a feature of the sacred prostitution texts cited by Frazer.

110.  Ibid., 1:63, citing Francis Buchanan, “A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara, and Malabar” (in J. Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels, 8 [1811]) 749. 111.  “Brahman women who do not choose to live in the temples, and all the women of the lower castes, cohabit with any man of pure descent, but they have to pay a fixed sum annually to the temple” (Buchanan, ibid., cited by Frazer, GB IV/1:63). 112.  Frazer (ibid., 1:62–63) also reports an example of belief that such a female devotee may become possessed by the god and consulted as an oracle—but this is a minor feature here, though it ties in to Frazer’s view of spirit possession as the primary phenomenon in the designation of “sacred men and women.” He also reports on the fate of the children born to the temple women in Tulava, another interest that runs through Frazer’s treatment of sacred prostitutes.

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The most striking difference, however, in Frazer’s description of the Indian practices is the absence of any “great goddess” (the deity is always male)113 or allusion to fertility rites. Frazer, like his predecessors, has found a place for prostitution in the service of the deity in India, at least as he understands his sources; but the practice he describes lacks essential features of the reported activity and reconstructed myth that defined the ancient Near Eastern phenomenon in his own analysis. Whether the Indian devadasis contribute to an understanding of the Hebrew qdšh is a question that must be explored apart from Frazer’s conception of sacred prostitution and with careful reassessment of the Indian evidence based on recent studies. Sacred Men and Women in West Africa

Continuing his search for modern practices that throw light on the ancient customs, Frazer finds certain West African customs “still more instructive” than the Indian ones. Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the “Slave Coast” (present-day Togo and Benin), he reports, young people of both sexes may be dedicated to a god as one means of recruitment into the priesthood.114 Of these dedicated persons, called kosio,115 the females become the “wives” of the god.116 Frazer’s description continues, in the words of A. B. Ellis: The chief business of the female kosi is prostitution, and in every town there is at least one institution in which the best-looking girls, between ten and twelve years of age, are received. Here they remain for three years, learning the chants and dances peculiar to the worship of the gods, and prostituting themselves to the priests and the inmates of the male seminaries; and at the termination of their novitiate they become public prostitutes.117 Children born from these unions belong to the god, according to Ellis. The women are not allowed to marry, he observes, “since they are deemed the wives of a god.”118 113.  There are female devotees of a goddess in South India (see Chapter 6, below), but not among the examples cited by Frazer and most treatments of the Indian devadasis. 114.  Ibid., 1:65. Frazer’s entire report on the Ewe customs is a direct quotation from A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (1890) (GB IV/1:66 n. 1). 115.  The term is explained as deriving from words for “unfruitful” and “run away,” implying that the child so dedicated is “lost” to his family (ibid., 1:65). 116.  Ellis comments that the term translated by Europeans as “wife” is not the normal term, but is used only of these dedicated women (ibid.). This raises the question of whether the concept of god’s “wife” is a European interpretation or accurately represents the Ewe understanding. 117.  Ellis argues that, “properly speaking, their libertinage should be confined to the male worshippers at the temple of the god, but practically it is indiscriminate” (ibid., 1:65–66). 118.  Ibid., 1:66.



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Of particular interest to Frazer are the female kosio of the python-god, Dañhgbi, whom Ellis describes as the “wives, priestesses, and temple prostitutes” of the god, who have their own organization, and generally live together.119 In addition to the common manner of recruitment by the affiliation of young girls, he reports that “any woman whatever, married or single, slave or free” might join the body immediately by “publicly simulating possession, and uttering the conventional cries recognized as indicative of possession by the god.”120 According to Frazer, the python-god marries these women secretly, fathering offspring on them—through the priests who consummate the union.121 Here again we encounter the theme of possession by the god, but Frazer’s primary interest in this cult is the “close connection [that] is apparently supposed to exist between the fertility of the soil and the marriage of these women to the serpent.”122 That connection appears to be almost entirely inferred, however, as further evidenced in his statement that “the marriage of wives to the serpent-god is probably deemed necessary to enable him to discharge the important function of making the crops to grow and the cattle to multiply.”123 Frazer notes that there are male as well as female kosio, emphasizing the similarity of customs. His description of male initiation into the priesthood is entirely dominated by the notion that the god takes possession of the youth, which is exhibited in convulsions and frenzy. Thereafter he is regarded as the priest and medium of the deity, and the words he utters are accepted as “the very words of the god.”124 Fertility interests seem to play no role here at all. Among the neighboring Tshi (Twi)-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast (Ghana) Frazer reports similar practices and beliefs, again drawing on Ellis.125 These center on the notion of possession by a god, associated with a trance state induced by music and dance. Both priests and priestesses are recipients of divine inspiration and are consulted as oracles. Priests, however, marry “like any other member of the community,” and purchase wives, while priestesses are never married, nor can “head money” be paid for them. The reason, Ellis surmises, is that “a priestess belongs to the god she serves.” But although she may not become the property of a man, she “is not debarred from sexual commerce.” 119.  Frazer’s long paragraph on the python-god is quoted from Ellis, but he adds references to Des Marchais, Voyage en Guinée et à Cayenne (1731) 2:144–151, and P. Bouce, La Côte des Esclaves (1885) 128 (GB IV/1:66 n. 3). The passage from Ellis provides no basis for distinguishing “wives,” “priestesses,” and “temple prostitutes.” 120.  GB IV/1:66. 121.  Ibid., citing Ellis and Des Marchais (n. 4). 122.  Ibid., 1:66–67 (emphasis added). 123.  Ibid., 1:67 (emphasis added). 124.  Ibid., 1:68. 125.  A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of West Africa (1887) 120–38 (GB IV/1:69 n. 3).

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Ellis adds that “priestesses are ordinarily most licentious, and custom allows them to gratify their passions with any man who may chance to take their fancy.”126 The asymmetry in the roles of these sacred men and women, as well as the male perspective of the observer, once again highlights the problems involved in assuming comparable male and female roles of sacred prostitutes. The examples of activity that might be defined as prostitution in the African cases refer only to females and have no counterpart among the males who are likewise dedicated to the deity. And the notion of possession by the deity has no link with the cases from classical antiquity, or the Bible, that these examples are meant to clarify. Sacred Women and Men in Western Asia

After examining cases from India and Africa judged to represent parallels to the sacred prostitution practiced in antiquity in Western Asia, Frazer returns to the evidence of the ancient Near East, focusing his attention on the personnel of the cult, the “sacred women” and “sacred men.”127 He begins with a summary of the ethnographic evidence, relating it to the evidence from the ancient Near East: Thus in Africa, and sometimes if not regularly in India, the sacred prostitutes attached to the temples are regarded as wives of the god, and their excesses are excused on the ground that the women are not themselves, but they act under the influence of divine inspiration. This is in substance the explanation which I have given of the custom of sacred prostitution as it was practiced in antiquity by the peoples of Western Asia.128 He continues by spelling out the implications: In their licentious intercourse at the temples the women, whether maidens or matrons or professional harlots, imitated the licentious conduct of a great goddess of fertility for the purpose of ensuring the fruitfulness of fields and 126.  GB IV/1:69–70. 127.  The evidence for Western Asia is divided into two sections, the first relating to “sacred women” (§4, pp. 70–72), the second to “sacred men” (§5, pp. 72–78). An additional section, §6 “Sons of God” (78–82), relates (assumed) beliefs concerning divine parentage to the reconstructed institution of sacred prostitution, while further notions of divine manifestations in human and material form are discussed in sections entitled “Reincarnation of the Dead” (§7, pp. 82–107) and “Sacred Stocks and Stones among the Semites” (§8, pp. 107–9). Here the generating idea seems lost in the elaboration, which is led on by loose associations of practices and concepts. 128.  GB IV/1:70–71. In fact, the notion of divine inspiration played no role at all in Frazer’s interpretation of the classical texts.



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trees, of man and beast; and in discharging this sacred and important function the women were probably supposed, like their West African sisters, to be actually possessed by the goddess.129 This hypothesis, he asserts, “at least explains all the facts in a simple and natural manner; and in assuming that women could be married to gods it assumes a principle which we know to have been recognized in Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt.”130 In defending this hypothesis Frazer now turns to a complex of evidence concerning priestesses and female votaries that played no role in his original references to sacred prostitution, and was treated as quite distinct by the ancient reporters. His first example, of the woman at Babylon who slept on the great bed of Bel, immediately presents problems, because, as Frazer notes, “unlike the Indian and West African wives of the gods, this spouse of the Babylonian deity is reported by Herodotus to have been chaste.”131 Frazer’s solution to this problem is to doubt Herodotus’s report on the woman’s chastity and to assume a class of women who performed this role, rather than Herodotus’s sole woman. Identifying these “wives or perhaps paramours” of Bel with the female votaries of Marduk mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi, he notes that some of the latter were known to have been mothers and might be married to men.132 He finds reinforcement for his interpretation in the fact that one name for these votaries was qadishtu, “the same word as qedesha, ‘consecrated woman,’ the regular Hebrew word for a temple harlot.”133 Thus a Hebrew cognate is invoked to interpret a Babylonian institution, although it does not apply to any of the examples he cites of votaries in the laws. Frazer’s only other example from the ancient Near East is the woman in the temple of Ammon at Thebes referred to by Herodotus (1.182) and Strabo (17.1.46).134 Frazer reports that she bore the title “divine consort” and in the “old days” was usually the Queen of Egypt herself.135 In the time of Strabo, however, 129.  Emphasis added. 130.  Ibid., 1:71. 131.  Ibid., citing Hist. 1.181f. 132.  Ibid. As evidence he cites H. Winckler, Die Gesetze Hammurabi (1903) 31 (§182), and C. H. W. Johns, Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts, and Letters (1904) 54–55, 59–61 (§§137, 144, 145, 146, 178, 182, 192, 193), as well as treatments of the female votaries in Johns, “Notes on the Code of Hammurabi” (AJSL 19 [1903]) 98–107, and S. A. Cook, The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi (1903) 147–150 (71 n. 3). 133.  Frazer (GB IV/1: 71 n. 5) cites LH §181 and commentary by Johns (“Notes,” 100f) and Cook (Laws of Moses, 148). In citing §181 alone as evidence that “a name for these Babylonian votaries was qadishtu,” he tacitly acknowledges that this was only one of the names of the votaries, several others of which are named in the paragraph; and it is noteworthy that this paragraph is not included in the list he cites from Johns’s edition of the laws (previous note). 134.  Diodorus Siculus 1:47 is also cited as a source for these “concubines of Zeus (Ammon)” (GB IV/1:72 nn. 5, 6). 135.  GB IV/1:72 n. 4, citing A. Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buch (1890) 268f.

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these “concubines of Ammon” were “beautiful young girls of noble birth, who held the office only till puberty . . . and prostituted themselves freely to any man who took their fancy” during their term of office.136 Frazer gives no further attention in this chapter to the Hebrew qdšwt, apparently considering their identification as “temple harlots” a “given” and their functions self-evident, though I can find no place where he spells out these functions. His next section, “Sacred Men in Western Asia,” begins by invoking the West African “parallel” in which “the dedicated women have their counterpart in the dedicated men.” In like fashion, he argues, the “sacred men (qedeshim)” or “sacred male slaves”137 of the OT “clearly corresponded” to the “sacred women” or “sacred female slaves.” Despite this assertion of correspondence, it is the African parallel, not the assumed attributes of the Hebrew qdšwt, that dominates Frazer’s interpretation of their primary nature and function: And as the characteristic feature of the dedicated men in West Africa is their supposed possession or inspiration by the deity, so we may conjecture was it with the sacred male slaves (the qedeshim) of Western Asia; they too may have been regarded as temporary or permanent embodiments of the deity, possessed from time to time by his divine spirit, acting in his name, and speaking with his voice.138 Frazer objects to the “usual rendering of qedeshim in the English Bible” (“sodomite” in the KJV), arguing that it is not justified by any of the passages in which it occurs.139 As evidence for the prophetic function of the qdšym, Frazer cites the sacred slaves of the sanctuary of the Moon among the Albanians of the Caucasus, who prophesied under the inspiration of the deity in a state of divine frenzy.140 Noting that the chosen mouthpiece of the male god was a man, not a women,141 he 136.  GB IV/1:72; emphasis added. Frazer, as usual, stays close to the language of the original text—and ventures no comment on the notion of prostitution on the part of prepubescent girls. 137.  Equated in a footnote (ibid., 1:72 n. 7) with the Greek hierodouloi. 138.  Ibid., 1:72–73; emphasis added. Frazer credits the Reverend Professor R. H. Kennett for “this important suggestion as to the true nature of the qedeshim” (73 n. 1). 139.  Ibid., 1:73. Frazer suggests that this rendering may find support from Eusebius’s reference to the “profligate rites observed at Aphaca,” but he thinks that Eusebius is probably speaking of “men who castrated themselves in honor of the goddess, and thereafter wore female attire,” citing Lucian, Syr. d. 51. 140. Ibid. 141.  Ibid. He adds a qualifying note on Strabo’s reference to the Albanian deity as a goddess, suggesting that this might be only an accommodation to Greek usage in which the moon is feminine (73 n. 4). In emphasizing the gender correspondence between deity and human vehicle or representative, Frazer sharpens the asymmetry between the sacred men and sacred women. Men consecrated to a male deity become the mouthpiece of the deity; women become the deity’s spouse.



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concludes that “It can hardly therefore be deemed improbable that at other sanctuaries of Western Asia, where sacred men were kept, these ministers of religion should have discharged a similar prophetic function.”142 With passing reference to a Syrian slave in Sicily who simulated prophetic ecstasy to foment rebellion,143 Frazer turns to the Hebrew prophets and evidence for ecstatic prophecy at Byblus (Wen-Ammon), concluding that originally no sharp line of distinction existed between the prophets and the qedeshim; both were “men of God,” as the prophets were constantly called; in other words, they were inspired mediums, men in whom the god manifested himself from time to time by word and deed, in short temporary incarnations of the deity.144 The distinction between the two classes of inspired mediums was in their differing relationships to the sanctuary and the attendant duties there: While the prophets roved freely about the country, the qedeshim appear to have been regularly attached to a sanctuary; and among the duties which they performed at the shrines there were clearly some which revolted the conscience of men imbued with a purer morality. What these duties were, we may surmise partly from the behavior of the sons of Eli to the women who came to the tabernacle, partly from the beliefs and practices as to “holy men” which survive to this day among the Syrian peasantry.145 It is not clear in Frazer’s example of the Syrian “holy men,” known as mejnûn (possessed by a jinn or “intoxicated by deity”), whether they were shrine personnel or itinerant seers, since they are described as “vagabonds” and compared with the prophets of Hosea’s and Jeremiah’s day who were characterized as madmen.146 Referring to the power of the mejnûn over “ignorant Moslem women,” Frazer argues that the women’s superstitious belief in the divine authority of the “holy men” made them vulnerable to their advances. He further conjectures that 142.  Ibid., 1:73. He notes, however, that they need not share the fate of the Albanian slave-prophet, whose recognition concluded with his being sacrificed. 143.  This example, which involved activity in the name of “the Syrian goddess,” does not fit the gender-coordinated pattern mentioned earlier (ibid., 1:74; cf. 73). 144.  Ibid., 1:76 (emphasis added). 145.  Ibid., 1:76–77. The reference to 1 Sam 2:22 (76 n. 3) is curious, since it involves priests, not prophets or “holy men,” and the action of the sons of Eli is deemed blameworthy. Strangely, he interprets the women as visitors to the shrine rather than as attendants serving there. 146.  Ibid., 1:77.

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with women a powerful motive for submitting to the embraces of the “holy men” is a hope of obtaining offspring by them. For in Syria it is still believed that even dead saints can beget children on barren women, who accordingly resort to their shrines in order to obtain the wish of their hearts.147 With the Syrian example, intended to explain an OT phenomenon, Frazer has found another link with sex, though it is clearly secondary to the primary identification of the “holy man” as an oracle of God. References to the Adonis cult, which prompted his initial attention to the qdšym, are totally lacking, as are allusions to agricultural fertility. In moving from a focus on female activity to male activity Frazer has shifted contexts and symbol systems and with them the motive and meaning of the sexual activity designated as sacred prostitution.148 Sympathetic magic is replaced by the notion of direct impregnation by a divine agent or incarnation.149 Further References to Sacred Prostitution in the Ancient World A final reference to sacred prostitution is found in Chapter 6, where Frazer treats deities other than Aphrodite/Astarte with similar cults/manifestations. In his analysis of the processional scene on the stone relief at Boghazköy, he interprets it as depicting “the divine Father, the divine Mother, and the divine Son” in a ceremony of Sacred Marriage, “copied” from a ceremony periodically performed at that place by human representatives of the deities.150 Repeating his view that the ruling family combined royal and priestly functions and “personated the gods whose names they bore,” Frazer surmises that the “chief pontiff ” and his family “annually celebrated the marriage of the divine powers of fertility . . . for the purpose of ensuring the fruitfulness of the earth and the multiplication of men and beasts.” The principal parts in the ceremony would “naturally” be played by the pontiff and his wife, he reasons, unless they preferred to delegate the “onerous duty” to others. In fact, he thought it probable that, “as elsewhere in Asia Minor, the Mother Goddess was personated by a crowd of sacred harlots, with whom the 147.  Ibid., 1:78. 148.  “Thus,” he argues, “in the Syrian beliefs and customs of to-day we probably have the clue to the religious prostitution practiced in the very same regions of antiquity” (GB IV/1:79). 149.  Frazer’s association of religious prostitution with women’s desire for children, coupled with his interpretation of theophoric names as signifying belief in the divine parentage of a child, has led him to include a further section (§6) entitled “Sons of God” (ibid., 1:72–82). 150.  Ibid., 1:140. For the interpretation of the scene as a sacred marriage, Frazer cites C. P. Tiele, Geschichte der Religion in Altertum (1896–1903) 1:255; Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums (2nd ed., 1908) 1:633f.; J. Garstang, The Land of the Hittites (1910) 238f.; and idem, The Syrian Goddess (1913) 7.



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spiritual ruler may have been required to consort in his character of incarnate deity.”151 The part of the “divine Son” (whose role is undefined) would “naturally” fall, he argues, to one of the priest-king’s sons. But here too a stand-in is envisioned. “If the personation of the Son of God at the rites laid a heavy burden of suffering on the shoulders of the actor,” the representation of the deity might be drawn, he suggests, from the “numerous progeny of the consecrated courtesans,” who as “incarnations of the Mother Goddess” would transmit some of their own divinity to their offspring. Here the notion of divine drama enacted through divinized human actors is highlighted as the central and distinctive feature of Frazer’s interpretation of sacred prostitution. A unique element in this example is the triad of divine father, mother, and son—apparently a fusion in a single model of the distinct myths and rituals of mating and mourning identified with Aphrodite and Adonis. Summary/Conclusions Frazer’s treatment of sacred prostitution repositions an older discussion by setting it in the context of a cultic drama designed to insure the renewal of nature and the blessings of fertility and order. Whether the action is understood to represent a “sacred marriage” or simply acts of sympathetic magic, the human actors are viewed as stand-ins for the gods, who may be variously understood as incarnations, semi-divine, or (temporarily) possessed by the deity. In this context, sacred prostitutes are women who play the part of a great “mother” goddess in fertilizing union with a god-king, or his representatives. Virgins or matrons, in temporary or life-long service, their status and relationship to the cult may vary according to local custom and/or reporter, but in Frazer’s view, their role and activity is always fundamentally religious. Frazer’s analysis marries classical references to female promiscuity in honor of a goddess of love with biblical references to holy or consecrated women and links both to an Adonis cult and a concept of divine kingship with only tenuous links in the classical references and none in the biblical texts. It is the Bible, ironically, that supplies fuel for Frazer’s most distinctive theories and emphases: (a) the notion of priest-kings and holy men as incarnations or offspring of deities,152 a notion he attributes to the ancient Semites, and extends to other “primitive” peoples, on the basis of a mistaken interpretation of Hebrew theophoric names; and (b) an emphasis on the male role in the cultic drama, based on the biblical references to qedešim, which remain unparalleled in the classical sources. When he moves beyond the sources from classical antiquity, his pursuit of holy men as well as holy women leads to ever looser connections with the 151.  GB IV/1:141; emphasis added. 152.  The notion of incarnation is much less frequently applied to the female actors.

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generating texts and ideas. His search for “living examples” also leads him, as his predecessors, to a fundamentally different model of sacred prostitution exemplified by the women dedicated to Hindu temples, who are viewed as concubines of a male god, not as agents or devotees of a “great goddess.” When Frazer’s full treatment of sacred prostitution is considered, it is evident that his influence on biblical interpretation rests on a very small segment of his work, a single paragraph, or two, in which he recapitulates, in abbreviated form, a series of ancient reports that had long since become conventional. The impact of that formulation may derive precisely from its succinctness, summarizing the “facts of the matter,” without elaboration—and providing a rationale that was religious in nature and drew upon equally well-known traditions and theories (of “nature religion” and “fertility cults”). For American biblical scholars in the latter half of the twentieth century, and especially students and laity who had not been immersed in the classics and had no first-hand knowledge of the catena of texts that provided the examples for earlier writers, Frazer’s compilation, and interpretation, became the authority. The older tradition can still be seen in scholars such as Albright and Morgenstern, who appeal directly to the ancient texts; but in more recent works, and especially textbooks, Frazer’s word suffices—or at least serves to orient the discussion. It is now time to examine the texts that generated the hypothesis of sacred prostitution, or at least provided the basis for modern constructions.

Chapter 4

Classical Sources in Constructions of Sacred Prostitution

as the preceding chapters have shown, a rhetoric of sacred prostitution had developed by the early nineteenth century, which had its foundation in Herodotus’s report on the sexual obligation of the Babylonian women, but found corroborating evidence in multiple accounts from diverse sites and reporters in the ancient Mediterranean world. Since Herodotus is the keystone to the theories associated with this terminology, and may even be the source of most, if not all, of the other accounts,1 he deserves special attention. But the belief that the Babylonian practice was characteristic of a cult or belief that was more widespread is so firmly established in the modern notion, and encouraged by Herodotus’s own reference to a “like custom” in Cyprus, that an examination of all of the ancient citations is required.2 In the following survey, texts are grouped by author in cases 1.  Oden, “Sacred Prostitution Accusation,” 146. Emphasizing the dependence of later sources on earlier ones, Oden concludes: “What appears to be a list of more than a dozen sources may in fact be a list of a couple of sources, perhaps even and ultimately a single source: Herodotus.” 2.  Oden’s review of “sacred prostitution according to classical and patristic sources” (“Religious Identity,” 140–44) served as a guide to the sources for my initial study. Because most of these sources are unfamiliar to contemporary American OT/HB scholars like myself who lack classical training, I have made a fresh examination of the texts and provided information on the literary and historical contexts of the citations, so that a wider audience can appraise them. Oden’s list of sources was based on Carl Clemen, “Miszellen zu Lukians Schrift über die syrische Göttin,” in Abhandlungen zur semitischen Religionskunde und Sprachwissenschaft: FS W. W. Graf Baudissin (ed. W. Frankenberg and F. Küchler; BZAW 33; Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1918]) 83–105, and is essentially that of Frazer’s famous summary (see Chapter 3, pp. 83–84, above). I have supplemented Oden’s list with a number of additional sources identified by other authors. Note: After I had completed the “final” draft of this chapter, Budin’s Myth appeared, offering a comprehensive study of these same texts, as well as others relevant to the subject. In reading her work, which must now be considered the definitive treatment of the relevant texts from classical antiquity, I found repeatedly that I had arrived independently at the same analysis, often involving observations and critique of earlier works that to my knowledge had not previously appeared in print. I have tried 105

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of multiple references by a single author, and treated in roughly chronological order, while texts concerning a single site or area are grouped by region (Lydia, Syria/Phoenicia, Carthage, Cyprus, and Italy3). Attention is given to the nature of the sources, the literary contexts of the citations, and the language of the accounts, with particular attention to the analogies or interpretive models employed by the reporter (for example, was the practice understood primarily as a religious act, a rite of initiation, a marriage-related custom, or simply a case of “sexual immorality”?). The results are summarized according to region.4 I. Earliest Sources Herodotus Babylon: Aphrodite-Mylitta

The key extra-biblical text from the ancient world for the subject of sacred prostitution prior to the decipherment of cuneiform texts from the ancient Near East was a description of Babylonian practice by the Greek historian and traveler Herodotus (ca. 485–425 BCE) contained in Book 1 of his History (ca. 430).5 The importance of this account, which may already have been cited (at least indirectly) in antiquity, can scarcely be overestimated.6 It stands at the root of every discussion of sacred prostitution in the ancient Near East, not only as the earliest of the classical sources, but as an account that had attained universal recognition in at points to insert references to her work and in a few places have made revisions based on her analysis (which sometimes confirmed instincts I had not trusted to record). While I approach the topic of sacred prostitution somewhat differently, treating it from the outset as an interpretive construct, I find myself in essential agreement with Budin’s overall assessment of the “evidence.” In addition, her view of the pre-Frazerian tradition also corresponds closely to my own, although the line of authors she traces is quite different from mine (see Chapter 2). 3.  References to practices in Sicily and Italy judged by some to represent sacred prostitution are found in a number of works focused on other areas. Initial mention is generally by author, but the references are assessed as a group in the summary by location. 4.  See Appendix A for a chronological list of the sources by author along with the essential data. 5.  Dates extrapolated from OCD, 508 (s.v. “Herodotus”). The text cited below is from the Loeb edition of A. C. Godley (Herodotus, History [London: Heinemann, 1920], 250–53). Comparative notes are added from the translation of Leslie Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic in Women,” Chapter 6 in Coins, Bodies, Games, and Gold: The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999) 228–29. 6.  On the influence of Herodotus, and this text in particular, see Wilhelm, “Marginalien zu Herodot Klio 199”; cf. Oden, “Religious Identity,” 141–42; Wacker, “Kosmisches Sakrament,“ 52–53; and Chapter 2 above, pp. 44 and 48. While Wilhelm (“Marginalien,” 506) notes that the passage is not mentioned expressis verbis by any ancient author, he suggests nevertheless that similar accounts in the Letter of Jeremiah and by Strabo may be dependent on Herodotus’s account.



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Enlightenment debate.7 It forms the concluding paragraph of Herodotus’s account of the “established customs” (νόμοι: nomoi) of the land, an ethnographic report that closes his “Babylonian logos.”8 The foulest (αἴσχιστος)9 Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman (πᾶσαν γυναῖκα) of the land once in her life to sit in the temple of Aphrodite (ἐς ἱρὸν Ἀφροδίτης) and have intercourse with some stranger (μιχθῆναι ἀνδρὶ ξείνῳ).10 Many women who are rich and proud and disdain to consort with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages drawn by teams, and there they stand with a great retinue of attendants. But most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite (ἐν τεμένεϊ Ἀφροδίτης), 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 stranger men (οἱ ζεῖνοι) pass and make their choice.11 When a woman has once taken her place there she# goes not away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap and had intercourse with her outside the temple (μιχθῇ ἔξω τοῦ ἱροῦ); but while he casts the money, he must say, “I demand thee in the name of Mylitta (Ἐπικαλέω τοι τὴν θεὸν Μύλιττα)” (that is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite). It matters not what be the sum of the money; the woman will never refuse, for that were a sin (οὐ γάρ οἱ θέμις ἐστί),12 the money being by this act made sacred (γίνεται γὰρ ἱρὸν τοῦτο τὸ ἀργύριον). So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects 7.  See Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 508–9. 8.  Herodotus’s description of the country and customs of the Babylonians (whom he calls “Assyrians”) and the city of Babylon is introduced into an account of Cyrus’s campaigns and combines first-hand observations with accounts provided by the local population and by earlier writers (in particular Hecataeus). The report begins with a description of the city of Babylon, its wall, palace and great staged tower with its shrine to “Zeus Belus” (Hist. 1.178–181). After relating local lore concerning the nature and use of the shrine and other installations at this site (1.182–183), Herodotus gives an extended account of two female rulers of the city, Semiramis (1.184) and Nitocris (1.185–187), returning to the subject of Cyrus and his taking of Babylon (1.188–191). He then describes the land and its produce, its marvelous skin boats and the people’s dress, concluding with his account of the “established customs” (1.196–199). 9.  Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 228: “most shameful.” 10.  Literally, “a foreign man.” I agree with Budin (Myth, 58 n. 1) that ξείνος as used here (and in other texts dependent on this passage or tradition) should be understood as foreigner or foreign, but I have as a rule opted to retain the translations of the editions I have employed, limiting piecemeal substitutions. 11.  Kurke (“Herodotus’s Traffic,” 229) heightens the sense of “traffic” with her translation: “straight lanes just like roads lead through the women, through which strangers, going through, pick out [women].” 12.  Godley’s translation of this phrase is problematic, giving an inappropriate theological sense to a term (θέμις) whose basic meaning is “established by custom” (LSJ 789). Kurke (“Herodotus’s Traffic,” 229) translates “since it is not lawful.” Cf. Stark, “Kultprostitution,” 11: “weil sie es nicht darf.”

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none. After their intercourse she has made herself holy in the goddess’s sight (ἀποσιωσαμένη τῇ θεῷ)13 and 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 (νόμον); for some remain for three years, or four. There is a custom like to this (παραπλήσιος τούτῳ νόμος) in some parts of Cyprus. (Hist. 1.199) The essential features of the account may be identified as follows: 1. It describes a custom (νόμος), not a particular event. Despite the vivid detail of the description and the lack of reference to sources, it does not claim to be an eye-witness account. 2. The practice described is associated with a local goddess, whom Herodotus identifies with Greek Aphrodite; it takes place at the site of her temple in Babylon. 3. The practice involves women who have intercourse with strangers on receipt of payment. Herodotus describes the intercourse with the same general term (μιχθῆναι) that he uses to describe the intercourse of man and wife in 1.198, and does not characterize the act as “prostitution.” Although it resembles prostitution in involving indiscriminate granting of sexual access for pay, it is a one-time act and is understood as an act of religious obligation.14 4. The economic motive associated with prostitution is not only absent here, but explicitly denied: the amount of the payment plays no role; the woman is obligated whatever the sum. 5. The action has lasting consequences for the woman, who receives a kind of protection against future attempts to lure her into extramarital relations. 6. The action is required of every woman, once in her lifetime. Although no age is specified, and the term γυνη is used, rather than παρθενος, the practice, as described, has features of an initiation rite, affecting the woman’s 13.  Here again Godley has introduced a theological concept of questionable appropriateness into his translation, suggesting that the woman acquires a degree of holiness through the act. The verb ἀποσιόομαι usually refers to an act of expiation or atonement, associated with purification from pollution or guilt, or the averting of a curse, and suggests rather the fulfillment of an obligation, though it may also describe an act of dedication or consecration (LSJ 293). Kurke (“Herodotus’s Traffic,” 229) translates “having discharged her sacred duty to the goddess”; similarly Stark (“Kultprostitution,” 11): “Pflicht gegen die Göttin erfüll[en].” 14.  Thus, in contrast to prostitution, it lacks the characteristic features of monetary motive and multiple partners. Herodotus does refer to prostitution elsewhere, without sacral associations, including prostitution among the Babylonians, as a practice of the poor (Hist. 1.196).



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future sexual relations. Yet the description of the “rich and proud” women suggests mature women in charge of their own affairs and overseeing large retinues of servants. 7. The intercourse does not take place within the temple, but outside the temple precincts.15 It is not presented as a cultic or ritual act. 8. The account focuses exclusively on the women, with the male actors described simply as “strangers” or outsiders (ξεῖνοι). No reference is made to the women’s husbands or fathers, who must have a critical role in these arrangements. 9. The practice, as Herodotus represents it, is repulsive to him. One must therefore ask what about this custom makes it particularly offensive? Is it the religious connection, or the demeaning nature of the act, emphasized by attention to the plight of the women who are not taken immediately and the efforts of the wealthy to distance themselves from the common lot, but also in the description of the paths laid out for buyers to inspect the wares? 10. The account clearly presents an “unreal” situation, not least in specifying that some women must remain there for three or four years—which assumes some type of semi-permanent presence at the temple and means of provision during that period. One might speculate that Herodotus (or his source) has combined elements of two different practices, an initiation rite or other special event involving all women, and the service of priestesses or hierodules resident in the temple complex. But whether the logical and logistical problems of this account are attributed to conflation, elaboration, invention, or simply misunderstanding, it cannot be treated as an historical report of late Babylonian practice. Preliminary Assessment Any assessment of this account as evidence for reconstructing historical practice must consider the nature and purpose of the work in which it appears, the interests, sources, and reputation of the author, and independent evidence from the region.16 Until the modern decipherment of cuneiform sources from the ancient Near East, there was no internal testimony from the region with which to compare the practices reported by Herodotus; and the reliability of Herodotus’s reports was 15.  It is not entirely clear where the women are seated; but ἱρὸν and τεμένος seem to be used interchangeably. 16.  Since primary evidence from Mesopotamia is presented only in Chapter 5, a final assessment of Herodotus’s Babylonian logos cannot be made until that examination is complete.

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debated from earliest times.17 At the very least his account must be recognized as the work of a foreigner who could not speak the language and was dependent on informants and earlier Greek sources. But how much is sound observation or faithful report and how much extrapolation, what is native legend and what elaboration or reconceptualization? Was the underlying practice characteristic of the period and culture or an aberration, the perversion of ancient practice or a faithful attempt to continue it under changed circumstances? Or was the account simply invention, a Greek construction of Oriental practice? Such questions have been debated wherever Herodotus’s reports have been approached as sources for the beliefs and practices of the peoples portrayed in the History. While it is generally recognized today that Herodotus’s ground-breaking work cannot be judged by modern canons of historiography, opinions differ markedly concerning the general trustworthiness of this account and its relevance for reconstructing ancient religious thought and practice. Modern Debate: Assyriology and Classical Studies In the field of Assyriology, according to Gernot Wilhelm, the dominant attitude was a general disposition to see in Herodotus a misunderstanding of temple prostitution, in which a practice exercised by a small number of specially designated women (variously identified) was extended to all of the women of the land. Franz Delitzsch (1915) limited the practice to priestesses of the Anu and Ishtar temple in Erech, and Bruno Meissner (1925) insisted that it was a reflex of cultic prostitution involving hierodules, and had nothing to do with the women of the land.18 Fifty year later, Wilhelm notes, H. W. F. Saggs offered an essentially identical analysis in his article, “Herodotus,” in Reallexikon der Assyriologie 4 (1972–75).19 A new phase in Assyriological discussion was initiated in 1972 17.  Wilhelm (“Marginalien,” 506–8) provides an informative sketch of the history of interpretation of this passage, with extensive bibliography. See above, Chapter 2, pp. 62–64, for the history through the eighteenth century. 18.  Ibid., 511, citing Franz Delitzsch, “Zu Herodots babylonischen Nachrichten,” in Festschrift Eduard Sachau (ed. G. Weil; Berlin: Reimer, 1915) 87–102, and Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien (2 vols.; Heidelberg: Winter, 1920, 1925) 2:435. 19.  RlA 4:331–33. An important study in the period between 1925 and 1972 was Walter Baumgartner’s “Herodots babylonische und assyrische Nachrichten” (ArOr 18 [1950] 69–106, 297–98; republished in Baumgartner, Zum Alten Testament und seiner Umwelt: Ausgewählte Aufsätze [Leiden: Brill, 1959], 282–331), which assessed the geographical and historical knowledge of the whole Babylonian logos, as well as the ethnographic reports. While Baumgartner finds accurate observations of physical features presented in garbled mixtures that might be explained by writing from memory, he argues that “everything” Herodotus related concerning particular customs of the inhabitants was apparently taken from Hecataeus (319; cf. 294, 296 n. 5). In comparison to Strabo, whom he views as dependent on the same source, he argues that Herodotus often expanded his Vorlage, but he cites as examples only Herodotus’s reports on the Babylonian marriage practices and treatment of the ill (1.196, 197), not the custom relating to the Mylitta temple, which is closely paralleled in Strabo.



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by Daniel Arnaud in a lecture entitled “La prostitution sacrée en Mésopotamie, un mythe historiographique?”20 Arnaud denied that sacred prostitution had ever existed at any period in the ancient Near East and explained Herodotus’s report as evidence for the semantic degradation of a title once applied to priestesses of high status but used in late texts to designate women of low social status and lax morals. Babylonian intellectuals attempted to explain the disparity, he suggested, by “inventing ‘sacred prostitution.’”21 The debate following Arnaud’s declaration has tended toward dismissal of Herodotus’s account, according to Wilhelm, who contests this dismissal with a new version of the older view. Citing evidence for prostitutes (ḫarimtu) within the temple organization in the late OB period, he argues that Herodotus’s account represents a misunderstanding of Babylonian “temple prostitution.”22 In Wilhelm’s review of the reception history of Hist. 1.199, he highlights the diversity of interpretations23 that accompanied the rise of the modern academic disciplines, noting that outside of Assyriology other interpretations prevailed. Classical-philological interpretation especially held on to the notion of a general obligation of “prostitution” (Prostitutionspflicht), he reports, but interpreted it as a sacrifice or an initiation rite24—a view also adopted by some Orientalists, such as Baumgartner,25 and, with variations, W. G. Lambert (who connects it with an early custom of ius primae noctis), Ilse Seibert, and Wolfgang Helck (who views it as a ritualized relic of an original practice of free spouse choice by the woman).26 Among non-philologists in the humanities, Wilhelm finds that many have remained unaffected by the historical-critical debate concerning Hist. 1.199, with the result that many reference works in the final decades of the twentieth century still cite this passage under the title “Prostitution” as uncontested “fact.” As evidence he cites the latest (at the time) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in which “the ‘Myletta’ rite of ancient Babylon, wherein every female was required 20.  Published in RHR 183 (1973) 111–15, cited by Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 513. 21.  “[E]n inventant ‘la prostitution sacrée’” (cited by Wilhelm, ibid.). 22.  Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 524. 23.  “[A]usserordentlich verzweigte Rezeptionsgeschichte” (ibid., 505). 24.  Wilhelm (ibid.,” 512 n. 38) cites H. Stein, Herodotos (1901) 226 n. 16; P.-E. Legrand, Hérodote (1932) 192 n. 1; and O. E. Ravn, Herodotus’s Description of Babylon (1942) in addition to the literature given in W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus (6th ed., 1961) 1:151. 25.  Baumgartner’s 1950 appraisal followed Meissner in connecting the practice to the hierodules of Ishtar, but noted features corresponding to initiation practices attested elsewhere (“Herodots babylonische und assyrische Nachrichten,” 297–98). 26.  Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 512, citing Wilfred C. Lambert, “Morals in Ancient Mesopotamia,” JEOL 15 (1957–58) 196; Ilse Seibert, Die Frau im Alten Orient (Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1973) 39; and Wolfgang Helck, Betrachtungen zur grossen Göttin und den ihr verbundenen Gottheiten (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1971) 236–37. For connection with an original state of female dominance, see Chapter 2 above. Wilhelm makes no mention of Frazer, whose influence was most notable among biblical scholars and historians of religion.

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to sit in the temple of the goddess Ishtar and accept coitus from the first male who threw a silver coin in her lap” is cited as an example of “prostitution as a temporary rite.”27 Assyriological debate has focused on the historicity of Herodotus’s account of the Mylitta obligation and the activities and institutions that might underlie it—while generally ignoring or dismissing his accounts of the other Babylonian customs (bride market, treatment of the sick, and burial of the dead) as unattested in ancient sources.28 In contrast, classical scholarship, at least in recent years, has tended to view the Mylitta account in the context of a broader analysis of the History’s composition and rhetoric, with attention to the author’s aims and audience as much as his sources. Thus classicists have approached the report on the Babylonians’ “customs” as a rhetorical unit, noting the framing device of polar judgments (“wisest” and “foulest”) and asking how the contrasted customs reveal the rhetor’s interests and the purpose of his ethnography.29 As noted above, Herodotus’s account of the Mylitta obligation concludes a series describing notable customs (nomoi) of the Babylonians. The five highlighted nomoi are ranked, with the wisest (σοφώτατος, 1.196) first and the “foulest” (αἴσχιστος) last. The framing accounts are of disproportionate length and both are concerned with sex/marriage—which is also the subject of the fourth (purification customs following intercourse). Thus sexual mores appear to dominate Herodotus’s interest in his portrait of the “laws” that govern this fabled, but fallen, eastern monarchy.30 Yet the common subject of the lauded and despised customs is not simply “sex,”31 but sex linked to commerce, 27.  Encyclopedia Britannica, Macr. 15 (1980), 76b; cited by Wilhelm, “Marginalien,” 512–13 n. 42, with a note indicating the influence of Van Gennep’s Les rites de passage (1909, 1981) on the article. 28.  Martha T. Roth, “Marriage, Divorce, and the Prostitute in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World (ed. Christopher A. Faraone and Laura K. McClure; Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006) 22. 29.  Mary Beard and John Henderson, “With This Body I Thee Worship: Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity,” in Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean (ed. M. Wyke; Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) 56–79, and Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic.” 30.  Although Herodotus mentions the royal palace at the center of one half of the divided city (Hist. 1.181), his primary interest is the temple complex of the national god “Zeus Belus,” which dominates the other half of the city (Hist. 1.181–183). And while he promises to give a history of its kings, his account treats only two queens (1.184–187). Thus he depicts the center of Eastern culture as the inverse of the Greek ideal, a megalopolis where gods and women rule. See Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 232–33, 235, 237. 31.  On sex, death, and illness as the “hot topics” of travel literature depicting exotic foreigners—with sex clearly ranking first—see Roth, “Marriage, Divorce, and the Prostitute,” 22; cf. Stark, “Kultprostitution,” 14 n. 47, who cites Reinhold Bichler, Herodots Welt, der Aufbau der Historie am Bild der fremden Länder und Völker, ihrer Zivilisation und ihrer Geschichte (Berlin: Akademie, 2000) 79, on Herodotus’s “fast obsessives Verhältnis zu Berichten und Geschichten über sexuelle Gewohnheiten und Ausnahmezustände”; and Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 175–76.



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and the rules by which goods (women and money) circulate—among men. The symmetry of the paired accounts goes beyond the shared subject of sex to include a market of available females and pointed attention to the differing fates of the more and less attractive. The two must therefore be considered together. The custom Herodotus judges the “wisest” is described as follows:32 Once a year in every village all the maidens (παρθένοι) as they came to marriageable age were collected and brought together into one place, with a crowd of men (ὅμιλος ἀνδρῶν) standing round. Then a crier would display and offer them for sale one by one, first the fairest of all; and then when she had fetched a great price he put up for sale the next comeliest, selling all the maidens as lawful wives. Rich men . . . would outbid each other for the fairest; the commonalty, who desired to marry but cared nothing for beauty, could take the ill-favoured damsels and money therewith; for when the crier had sold all the comeliest, he would put up her that was least beautiful, or crippled, and offer her to whosoever would take her to wife for the least sum, till she fell to him who promised to accept least; the money came from the sale of the comely damsels, and so they paid the dowry of the ill-favored and the cripples. But a man might not give his daughter in marriage to whomsoever he would, nor might he that bought the girl take her away without giving security that he would indeed make her his wife . . . . Men might also come from other villages to buy if they so desired. (Hist. 1.196) Herodotus concludes by noting that this, “their best custom (κάλλιστος νόμος),” did not continue at the time, adding that they had invented a new one lately:33 “since the conquest of Babylon made them afflicted and poor, everyone of the commonalty that lacks a livelihood makes prostitutes of his daughters34 (καταπορνεύει τὰ θήλεα τέκνα)” (1.196). In a recent study of these texts Leslie Kurke analyzes the paired narratives as ethnographic fantasies embodying projections of Greek ideals and their antitypes on a foreign people. Her analysis involves the total portrait of the city, 32.  Herodotus adds that he has “heard” that this is also a custom of the Eneti in Illyria (Hist. 1.196). Stark (“Kultprostitution,” 12, 15) observes that this note, like the reference to a similar practice in Cyprus that Herodotus adds to his account of the Mylitta custom, serves to strengthen his argument by insisting that it is not an isolated instance (“if you don’t believe this, just look at XX”). 33.  See Godley, History, 248 n. 1, for the placement of the final phrase; cf. Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 228. 34. Lit., female children. Note the male subject of the verb.

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including its immense size and internal figuration, as an antitype of the Greek polis,35 but it is focused on the exchange of women as a key to social, political, and economic relations in the contrasting civic orders. Noting the common features of the two narratives (“both concern the exchange of women for money, and in both Herodotus goes to great lengths to differentiate the experiences of rich and poor, attractive and ugly”), she asks: “What is it precisely that makes them polar opposites?”36 and “What finally is the purpose of the entire account, with its programmatic oppositions projected onto the customs of Babylon? . . . What function did these fantasized Eastern customs play within the Greek imaginary?”37 Kurke’s answer highlights the theocratic character of Babylonian law as inimical to civic order and virtue, which is exemplified by the outlying villages—though only in memory, as war has exposed the impotence of the megalopolis, leaving the impoverished citizens to resort to their own devices (namely prostituting their daughters). Kurke reads Herodotus’s construal of the Babylonian Other against the backdrop of the sixth- and fifth-century effort of the Greek city to “displace the divine as the apex of the transactional order”—which also formed the context for the invention of coinage. In this connection she sees Herodotus’s depiction of temple prostitution as an attempt “to envision a long-term transactional order utterly antithetical to the Greek civic ideal.”38 Here . . . the circulation of goods in what looks like common space negates community. The arbitrary and random exchange of women and money as universal equivalents produces atomization and alienation instead of the commonality their circulation is intended to forge in Greek civic space. Thus the possibility of universal temple prostitution (where the circulation of women and money figure each other) affords Herodotus the context for fantasizing the workings of money without a civic framework . . . . In this scenario the amount of money is irrelevant; money has become a pure sign, yet the civic community cannot regulate it. Worse than that, universal circulation exacerbates preexisting division within the community, as each group serves its own private interests. At the same time, this custom 35.  Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 232–37. She notes the description of the city: its immense size, impeding communication between the center and the periphery; its division by a river, and lack of a public square, the essential civic space of a democracy; the connection of its two halves by a bridge—that is taken up at night to prevent those on either side from crossing over and stealing from each other. 36.  Ibid., 229. She rightly insists that the contrasting judgments prohibit a reading of the narratives as simply condemnation of the “Oriental subjection of women” (230). 37.  Ibid., 229–30. 38.  Ibid., 238.



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also alienates groups with different natural gifts, liberating the attractive women quickly, while the ugly ones must wait in isolation to fulfill the divine ordinance.39 Against this “nightmare scenario” Herodotus sets his highly appreciative account of the custom of bride auction, which he locates in the outlying villages, not in the city of Babylon. In contrast to temple prostitution, this practice does not enact random, anonymous sex with strangers but promotes legitimate marriage (Herodotus is very emphatic that no one can lead a girl away without providing surety that he will marry her). And where temple prostitution atomizes the different groups of women—rich, poor, attractive, and ugly—the village practice brings together the women and the whole community through their circulation ( . . . no man is allowed to give his daughter away privately).40 Kurke’s analysis of Herodotus’s best-known account places it in the context of the whole Babylonian logos and more particularly the ethnography, understanding it, in tandem with the lauded bride auction, as a form of political philosophy in which the terms are defined by Greek ideals and Greek history, rather than the indigenous culture of Mesopotamia.41 Whether her “allegorical”42 reading convinces in all of its details, it surely points in the right direction in looking to the “Greek imaginary” for its primary clues, rather than Mesopotamian archaeology—which thus far has failed to produce evidence of any of the reported customs. And it incorporates more of the narrative details than previous 39. Ibid. 40.  Ibid., 239. The marriageable girls are not simply brought together and sold, as in Strabo’s simplified version of the account, Kurke argues; rather, there is a “communal regulation of the circulation of goods and value so as to distribute resources equitably. The men who are rich contribute lavishly from their private fortunes in order to secure wives whose attractiveness befits their standing; in exchange, the poor get financial assistance from the community as well as partners whose appearance is commensurate with their lowly position . . . . [T]he city exploits the rich and their competition for prestige in the service of the whole community. (240) 41.  Ibid., 229–30. Dismissing the debate about whether Herodotus had ever been in Babylon as irrelevant to her discussion, Kurke insists that “whether Herodotus’s account was based on autopsy, cribbed from an earlier description (e.g. Hekataios), or simply invented, his narrative is informed by—and revelatory of—Greek interests and obsessions (230 n. 14). She finds parallels in the political theory of Aristotle and Phaleas (240–44), arguing that “Herodotus, Phaleas and, of course, Aristotle are all engaged in the same debate—on the nature of the ideal city and the circulation of goods and honors within it—ranging through the fifth century and into the fourth” (241 n. 37). 42.  Kurke’s designation (ibid., 231).

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interpretations, which have tended to dismiss them as either misunderstandings or pure fantasy. Mary Beard and John Henderson arrive at similar conclusions in a study focused more broadly on sacred prostitution as variously conceived by ancient and modern writers. They begin, not with Babylon, but with Corinth, known already in the fifth century for its temple of Aphrodite and its throng of harlot hierodules and viewed by the rest of Greece as a foreign city within their midst.43 Thus at the time Herodotus composed his Babylonian ethnography an association of prostitutes with Aphrodite was already established—on Greek ground, but as an “unhellenic” institution. It is against this background, they argue, that Herodotus “think[s] out the paradigmatic dynamics of ‘Babylon’—this once independent hegemonic Eastern Other, but now long-conquered and subject to the Persians.”44 With attention to the history of scholarship they note that efforts to understand the sacred harlots of Corinth have typically looked to the East, rather than to internal Greek realities.45 In this search for origins, they suggest, Herodotus provides the Ur-narrative, with an account of universal, though limited, prostitution.46 43.  Beard and Henderson, “With This Body,” 56–57. Cf. Kurke, “Pindar and the Prostitutes, or Reading Ancient ‘Pornography,’” Arion 4.2 (1996) 49–75. Budin (Myth, 112–209) argues that Pindar did not describe prostitutes performing in a sacral role and that the notion of hierodule hetairai, first used by Strabo, is the result of Strabo’s misunderstanding of Pindar. The question her analysis raises here is whether Herodotus had an association of prostitutes with Corinthian Aphrodite in mind when he composed his Babylonian account. The fact that he points to Cyprus, rather than Corinth, for an analogy suggests that Corinth may not have played the role in Herodotus’s account of the Babylonian Mylitta cult that Beard and Henderson, and Kurke, suppose. 44.  “He must excogitate a distinctive niche for Babylon in his cabinet of ways to be un-Greek which explains how Cyrus’s Persia conquered and supplanted it; and in so doing put his finger on the strengths and weaknesses, socio-political, customary-religious, solidary-hierarchical, of their culture as a system—in heyday, and in eclipse” (Beard and Henderson, “With This Body,” 64). The authors also give pointed attention to the role of money in Herodotus’s distinctions between the worlds of East and West (ibid., 75 n. 33), citing D. T. Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) 165. 45.  Noting that “none of the ancient evidence [on Corinth] offers a narrative of any encounter within the institution it envisages” and the failure of modern discussions to provide one, they highlight the search for eastern origins: In almost every modern account, understanding the prostitutes of Corinth is not part of our understanding of classical Greek sexualities; not one of a loaded set of variants on the norms governing the exchange of sex, money and civic space in the classic(al) polis (“city-state”). Instead, Corinth figures in a wider arena of similarly labeled practices and institutions among the cultures of the Near East. The prostitutes of Corinth, in fact, are one component of a story about the service of women’s bodies that leads ultimately to the origins of human culture itself. (Beard and Henderson, “With This Body,” 58) 46.  Beard and Henderson credit Herodotus’s pairing of bridal market and temple prostitution with greater influence on nineteenth-century speculation concerning the origins of marriage, civilization, and sacred prostitution than this single source will bear (ibid., 60–61). See Chapter 2 above.



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Whether Herodotus’s account of the Mylitta cult can be linked to any historical practice, sacred or secular, in his time or before, cannot be answered apart from assessment of archaeological and linguistic data from Mesopotamia that are treated in Chapter 5, but the general consensus of modern scholarship is that it cannot be used as historical evidence in the absence of independent testimony from the East.47 Babylon: Zeus Belus

Before other testimony from classical antiquity is examined, a further text requires attention. Despite the primacy of Hist. 1.199 in modern theories of sacred prostitution, it lacks key features of the concept of sacred prostitution perpetuated in our textbooks. What is missing is any association with agricultural fertility rites or identification of the “prostitution” with the “sacred marriage” rite or ideology. Yet this latter rite, or belief, is treated by Herodotus—but in connection with a different Babylonian cult. In his description of the city of Babylon, Herodotus gives particular attention to the sacred enclosure of “Zeus Belus” with the great eight-stepped tower at its center.48 Its final stage is described as follows: In the last tower there is a great shrine; and in it a great and well-covered couch is laid, and a golden table set hard by. But no image has been set up in the shrine, nor does any human creature lie therein for the night, except one native women (γυνὴ μούνη τῶν ἐπιχωρίων), chosen from all women by the god, as say the Chaldaeans, who are priests of this god. (Hist. 1.181) These same Chaldaeans say (but I do not believe them) that the god himself is wont to visit the shrine and rest upon the couch, even as in Thebes of Egypt, as the Egyptians say (for there too a woman sleeps in the temple of the Theban Zeus, and neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian woman, it is said, has intercourse with men [ἀνδρῶν οὐδαμῶν ἐς ὁμιλίην φοιτᾶν]). (1.182)49

47.  Cf. Stark, “Kultprostitution,” 15–16. 48.  Hist. 1.181. Herodotus locates this complex of the national god Bel at the center of one half of the divided city and the royal palace (which receives only passing notice) at the center of the other. No location is given for the temple of Aphrodite/Mylitta, which is mentioned only in his concluding comments on local customs. In the case of the Zeus/Bel temple, Herodotus makes pointed reference to the fact that the enclosure wall, measuring two stadion square, “is still [there] to this day (καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ ἔτι τοῦτο ἐόν),” but he makes no such claim for the tower, despite detailed description, and cites local informants for his account of affairs in the upper room. 49. Godley, History, 227. Herodotus’s own report on the temple cult at Thebes (Hist. 2.42) contains no reference to this practice, but Strabo relates a tradition that corresponds closely to this account.

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Herodotus does not describe the woman in the shrine as a “priestess,”50 but presents her, in the indigenous interpretation, as the god’s spouse, whose claims upon her exclude sexual relations with mortals. Although he registers disbelief in the claim of divine activity, he does not speculate about a substitute, such as a priest or king. What deserves emphasis in Herodotus’s presentation of women’s sexual service in the two Babylonian cults is their separation and distinction; they are treated as wholly unrelated, with no attempt at comparison or contrast.51 Two different deities and temples are involved, and the women have different status and roles in each. At the temple of Zeus, a single select woman plays her role in the service of a male deity; at the temple of Aphrodite, the entire female population is engaged in the service of the female deity. In the one case, intercourse with men is proscribed; in the other it is demanded, indiscriminately. Herodotus, as the earliest Greek interpreter of Mesopotamian cults and customs, provides no ground for modern construction of sacred prostitution as an expression of the ideology of sacred marriage, but rather undermines it. Lydia

A further passage in Herodotus has been cited as a source for the practice of sacred prostitution. In a description of the great tomb of Alyattes, father of Croesus, Herodotus reports that it was built by the “men of the market,” the “artificers,” and the “prostitutes” (αἱ ἐνεργαζόμεναι παιδίσκαι, lit. young girls working for hire), with the prostitutes (παιδισκέων) contributing the greatest share of the work. Here he introduces a note on Lydian prostitution and marriage customs before continuing his description of the tomb and its lakeside setting. The ethnographic parenthesis reads as follows: 50.  The fact that Herodotus does not identify the woman as a “priestess,” although he does speak of “priests” of this god, may reflect the fact that for Herodotus the role of this woman did not correspond to his understanding of the duties or office of a female priest. Elsewhere, in describing the Egyptian customs as contrary to those of other peoples, he asserts that “No woman is dedicated to the service of any god or goddess; men are dedicated to all deities male or female” (Hist. 2.35). It would appear that he exempts the “woman who sleeps in the temple of the Theban Zeus”—or is simply inconsistent, relying on different sources. 51.  The differing presentation of the two cases also includes their differing historiographical character. In the account of the Zeus temple, its location is fixed within the city, together with a detailed description of its precincts and architecture (whatever the accuracy). More importantly, the account of the activity is attributed to local informants (“Chaldean” priests). In the case of the Mylitta temple, no location is given or description of the temple. In fact, it is not entirely clear where the activity takes place, since the women are first said to “sit in the temple” (ἱζομένην ἐς ἱρὸν), but then are described as sitting down “in the sacred plot of Aphrodite” (ἐν τεμένεϊ Ἀφροδίτης), with the intercourse taking place “outside the temple” (ἔξω τοῦ ἱροῦ); and no source is cited for the circumstances and activity described.



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All the daughters of the common people (δήμου) of Lydia ply the trade of prostitutes, to collect dowries (αἱ θυγατέρες πορνεύονται πᾶσαι, συλλέγουσαι σφίσι φερνάς), till they can get themselves husbands; and they offer themselves in marriage (ἐκδιδοῦσι δὲ αὐταὶ ἑαυτάς). (Hist. 1.93) The subject is resumed, but not elaborated, in the following paragraph comparing the Lydians with the Greeks: “The customs (νόμοι) of the Lydians are like those of the Greeks, save that they make prostitutes of their female children (τὰ θήλεα τεκνα καταπορνεύουσι)” (1.94).52 Nothing in these statements suggests a religious or cultic association, and the economic motive is highlighted, as in Herodotus’s observation about the impoverished Babylonians (Hist. 1.196), where identical language is used.53 It is not clear how Herodotus understood this temporary prostitution in relation to the “working girls” who contributed to the tomb’s construction and who are described by distinct terminology.54 But the added word on the daughters’ giving themselves in marriage points to broader sexual anomalies characterized by men’s abdication of their traditional roles of protecting their daughters’ virginity55 and overseeing marriage arrangements.56 This is echoed, and magnified,

52.  For further aspects of Herodotus’s comparison of the Lydians with the Greeks, see Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 1–6, 175–76, 220, who takes the subject, and title, of her study from this passage (Hist. 1.94). 53.  See above, p. 113. 54.  Mark Munn (The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia: A Study of Sovereignty in Ancient Religion [Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006] 148) appears to equate them, interpreting the note on the custom of general prostitution as an explanation for the fact that the largest contribution came from the “working girls.” He also interprets their work as religiously motivated: “The Lydian custom of prostituting their daughters before marriage, which Herodotus identifies as the single most obvious difference between the Lydian and the Greek way of life, is another example of the manner in which the rites of Aphrodite commanded a prominent place in the lives of the Lydians” (emphasis added). He continues: “Sexual initiation and the golden tokens that the Lydian girls received through the grace of Aphrodite all signified their participation in the ritual that justified sovereign tyranny at Sardis. Their contribution from the largesse of Aphrodite to the memorial of Alyattes should be understood as a record of their devotion to the goddess of tyranny and their sacrifice on the occasion of Alyattes death.” Behind this construction of their act is Munn’s view of the king’s marriage as a sacred marriage, in which Aphrodite is the king’s mate, embodied in his wife (132–44). This may in fact describe the thinking behind the reported acts, as scholars who find such activity incomprehensible without religious motivation have long insisted. My analysis, however, is bound to the language used in the passage and its immediate context, and the absence of religious language is noteworthy in relation to other passages considered above and treated below. 55.  Instead they induce their transgression; note καταπορνεὐω, with masculine subject, in 1.94 and 1.196, despite feminine πορνευονται in 1.93. 56.  See ibid., 173 n. 132 for the interpretation of a law of Solon as stating essentially that “if a man prostitutes his daughters or sisters ( … [as] Herodotus says is common among the Lydians), he forfeits the right to offer them for marriage, hence for the procreation of legitimate children.” Abhorrence

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in other traditions that associate the Lydians with reversal of gender roles and “feminization” of society, including female rule.57 It has no connection, however, with sacred prostitution. Epistle of Jeremiah The next reference, in point of time, is found in the Epistle of Jeremiah, a Jewish tractate dating somewhere between 317 and 100 BCE and purporting to be a letter of Jeremiah to the Babylonian exiles, exhorting them not to fear the idols of Babylon.58 While the work consists primarily of satirical polemic against the idols, it includes a number of passages describing the immoral behavior of the idol worshippers. One of these, in v. 43, appears to be a reflex of Herodotus’s Hist. 1.199. The verse is introduced without obvious connection to the theme of the idols’ powerlessness developed in the preceding and following verses: And the women, with cords around them, sit along the passageways (ἐν ταῖς ὁδοῖς), burning bran for incense (ἐγκάθηνται θυμιῶσαι τὰ πίτυρα). When one of them is led off (ἐφέλκυσθεῖσα)59 by one of the passers-by and is taken to bed by him (κοιμηθῇ), she derides the woman next to her, because she was not as attractive (οὐκ ἠξίωται)60 as herself and her cord was not broken. (Ep Jer 42–43)61 of women taking the lead in marriage arrangements is attested in contemporary Pakistan, where an extreme case was reported in the Chicago Tribune (August 30, 2008). According to the report, five women in Baluchistan were beaten, shot, and buried alive, because “they wanted to choose their own husbands in defiance of tribal elders.” 57.  See below on Athaenaeus. Budin (Myth, 67–69) sees the inversion of gender roles in Herodotus’s treatment of the Lydians as an example of a theme found throughout his History—and more widely in Greek views of “barbarians.” 58.  For date and audience, see George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jewish Literature Between the Bible and the Mishnah: A Historical and Literary Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 38, who posits Jewish origins, although the text is extant only in Greek. Oden (“Religious Identity,” 190 n. 32), following C. J. Ball (trans. and ed., “The Epistle of Jeremy,” in APOT 1:596), dates the tractate to the fourth century BCE. He notes that it played a minor role, in relation to Herodotus and Strabo, as a source in both ancient and modern discussions of sacred prostitution.” 59.  Stark (“Kultprostitution,” 19 n. 76) notes that this word choice “wirkt im Griechischen recht salopp [‘slovenly’].” 60.  ἀξιόω, “deem worthy,” “esteem,” “value” (LSJ 171). Cf. Ball (“Epistle,” 606): “not as worthy”; Stark (“Kultprostitution,” 19): “nicht … gewürdigt.” 61.  The translation is from the NRSV (AP); the Greek is from Alfred Rahlf, ed., Septuaginta (7th ed.; 2 vols.; Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1962). Commentary in The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books (NRSV; ed. B. M. Metzger and R. E. Murphy; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) points to “a similar Babylonian practice” described by Herodotus, according to which “cult prostitutes sat among roped-off passageways” (171).



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The reference to the burning of incense has no parallel in Herodotus’s account, and no temple location is apparent, but the references to cords and passageways, though differently conceived, suggest a shared source if not dependence on Herodotus. The highlighting of the distinction between the “chosen” and the less “favored,” however, picks up a distinctive feature of Herodotus’s narrative, which favors dependence in an account that is notably spare (lacking specification of location, occasion, or identity of male actors).62 What is clear, in any case, is that the practice as reported here shows no connection with the cult of the goddess (the immediately preceding verse refers to Bel), though the burning of incense suggests some religious association;63 and there is nothing to suggest that the women were either prostitutes (referred to explicitly in the indictment of the priests, Ep Jer 11) or hierodules. It is cited simply as an example of the immorality of the idol-worshippers. Strabo The next references cited as sources for sacred prostitution are from the Greek historian and geographer Strabo (64/3 BCE–at least 21 CE), whose Geography, written more than four centuries after Herodotus’s History, constitutes the second most frequently cited classical source on the subject.64 The references concern multiple sites from Babylon to Corinth and Armenia to Thebes and describe a variety of practices, most of which are treated independently, without reference to other sites. I begin with Strabo’s account of Babylonian customs, to facilitate comparison with the earlier accounts, and then follow the sequence of the Geography from Corinth onwards.65 62.  So Stark (“Kultprostitution,” 20), who concludes that “literary inspiration” from Herodotus is “obvious” (offensichtlich). She also points to the accusation in Ep Jer 10–11 (v. 9 in Rahlf ’s LXX) that the priests take gold and silver from their gods and give it to prostitutes as another instance of polemic against the sexual immorality of the Babylonians that shares this literary inspiration from Herodotus (19–20). Ball (“Epistle,” 606) states that the verse “seems to describe something similar [to Hist. 1.199] but not identical,” commenting on various differences and speculating about connections; and Wilhelm (“Marginalien,” 506) suggests dependence on Herodotus, without attempting to explain the differences. In contrast, Baumgartner (“Herodots babylonische und assyrische Nachrichten,” 296) describes Ep Jer 42–43 as “completely independent,” noting as new features the burning of chaff, the disdain for the less desired, and the breaking of the cord (297). He offers no hypothesis concerning the source or historicity of the account, though he views Hecataeus as the common source of both Herodotus’s and Strabo’s accounts (284 n. 5; 294). 63.  Baumgartner (ibid., 297 n. 1) denies any religious associations in the present account, understanding the burning of incense as love magic (though he assumes it was “originally” an offering to a deity). 64.  Oden, “Religious Identity,” 141–42. 65.  The seventeen books of the Geography move from west to east and then south, with the first seven treating matters of introduction and Europe from Spain and Britain to the northern

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Babylonia

Strabo’s account of Babylonian customs includes the following report:66 And in accordance with a certain oracle (κατά τι λόγιον) all the Babylonian women have a custom (ἔθος) of having intercourse with a foreigner (ξένῳ μίγνυσθαι), the women going to a temple of Aphrodite (Ἀφροδίσιον) with a great retinue and crowd; and each woman is wreathed with a cord round her head. The man who approaches a woman takes her far away from the sacred precinct, places a fair amount of money upon her lap, and then has intercourse with her (ὁ δὲ προσιὼν καταθεὶς ἐπὶ τὰ γόνατα, ὅσον καλῶς ἔξει ἀργύριον, συγγίνεται, ἄπωθεν τοῦ τεμένους ἀπαγαγών);67 and the money is considered sacred (ἱερὸν) to Aphrodite. (Geogr. 16.1.20) The account is generally viewed as dependent on Herodotus, or a common source,68 and is introduced as a digest of earlier reports.69 Though much shorter than Herodotus’s ethnography, it preserves the same group of customs, rearranging them to bring the three having to do with marriage and intercourse together and moving the account of the treatment of the ill to the end. Thus the contrast between the “best” and the “worst” is lost—and with it the moral judgment characteristic of Herodotus. Kurke highlights this loss in her comparison of the Herodotean and Strabonian accounts, beginning with the bridal auction, which Strabo relates as follows: Balkans. Books 8–10 treat Greece; 11–14 Asia Minor (including Cyprus and Armenia); 15 India and Persia; 16 Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Arabia; and 17 Egypt, Ethiopia, and North Africa (OCD 1017, s.v. “Strabo”; Daniela Dueck, Strabo of Amasia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome [New York: Routledge, 2000] 174–78). 66.  Greek text and translation from the Loeb edition of Horace Leonard Jones (The Geography of Strabo [8 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924–32]) 7:226–27. 67.  Jones’s translation displaces the payment, until after the woman has been led away, and blunts the indeterminacy of the amount. Cf. Kurke (“Herodotus’s Traffic,” 232): “But a man, approaching and having deposited on her knees however much money is acceptable, has sex with her, leading her away from the precinct.” 68.  Baumgartner viewed Hecateus as the common source (n. 62 above). Dependence on Herodotus is favored by Walter How and Joseph Wells (A Commentary on Herodotus, with Introduction and Appendixes [2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928] 1:150); and Kurke (“Herodotus’s Traffic,” 231 n. 17). Cf. Stark, “Kultprostitution,” 17. On Strabo’s citation of Herodotus and general view and use of his work, see Johannes Engels, Augusteische Oikumenegeographie und Universalhistorie im Werk Strabons von Amaseia (Geographica Historica 12; Stuttgart: Steiner, 1999) 123–26, who believes that Strabo’s dependence on Herodotus was considerably greater than suggested by the few places where he is cited by name, since he received much of the material through intermediate sources. 69.  “I shall next describe Mesopotamia and the tribes of the south, after briefly going over the accounts given of the customs of Assyria (τὰ λεγόμενα περὶ τῶν ἐθῶν τῶν παρὰ τοῖς Ἀσσυρρίοις)” (Geogr. 16.1.19). Strabo, as Herodotus, identifies the country as Assyria and reserves “Babylonia(n)” for the city and its inhabitants.



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It is a custom peculiar to them [the “Assyrians”] to appoint three men who are wise rulers of each tribe, who lead together the marriageable girls and auction them off to bridegrooms, always [selling] the more highly prized first. (Geogr. 16.1.20)70 In this lapidary account, she notes, “Strabo has preserved nothing of what Herodotus seems to find particularly appealing about this custom: the complex system whereby the pretty girls dower the ugly ones by an elaborate calculus of communal exchange.” Furthermore, Strabo describes this in the present tense, while Herodotus “adumbrates a whole narrative of change and decline through the shift from public auction to private prostitution.”71 Strabo’s account of “temple prostitution” exhibits similar loss of distinctions. Kurke notes that Strabo has “generalized one characteristic of Herodotus’s ‘wealthy’ (a large crowd of attendants) to all the women,” while eliding the “elaborate fourway distinction of women as wealthy or demotic, attractive or ugly.” He has also changed Herodotus’s random amount of money (“however much the men offer, it will not be refused”) to “however much is acceptable,” a formulation she understands as “almost implying a standard price.”72 In each of these changes, she observes, the painful inequality of resources (money and looks) and the lack of correlation between the amount of money and the quality it buys is lost in the later account.73 Kurke’s analysis underscores the derivative nature of Strabo’s account. In general he stays close to the language of Herodotus (thus he does not describe the temple activity as prostitution), eliminating “unnecessary” details (such as the name Mylitta and the distinctions noted by Kurke) and introducing few new elements (the initiating oracle74 and emphasis on the distance of the intercourse from the temple precinct). This is in keeping with the broad scope of his work and his stated aim to “deal . . . with the facts about large things only, and wholes, except as some petty thing may stir the interest of the studious or the practical man” (Geogr. 1.1.23).75 Thus he eliminates most of the ethnographic details and excurses in which Herodotus delighted.76 70.  Translation from Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 225; cf. Jones, Geography 7:225. 71.  Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 231. 72.  Ibid., 232. 73.  Ibid. Kurke interprets the loss as reflecting an age and author with different sensibilities. Even if Herodotus and Strabo are drawing on Hekataios, she argues, each account, in its distinct choices and emphases of elements, is “symptomatic of its own historical and cultural context” (Kurke, “Herodotus’s Traffic,” 231 n. 17). 74.  This new detail led Baumgartner (“Herodots babylonische und assyrische Nachrichten,” 296 n. 5) to speculate whether this was already in Hecataeus. 75.  Cited by Dueck, Strabo of Amasia, 161. 76.  This may be one reason that he cites Herodotus so rarely. See Engels, Augusteische Oikumenegeographie, 123 n. 12, for a list of all of the citations of Herodotus in the Geography. Engels (124–25)

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Whatever his source, Strabo’s account of Babylonian custom offers no new evidence for sacred prostitution. Rather, the close correspondence of his digest with the general outlines of Herodotus’s account, including the same cluster of customs, reinforces the perception that Herodotus was the sole authority on ancient Babylonian culture. Despite the timeless present of Strabo’s narration, he is relaying tradition of a past civilization from a territory he never visited.77 Since the main purpose of his Geography was to present the new knowledge of the oikoumene increased by recent Roman conquests by updating and supplementing the work of his predecessors, he often cuts short a description as containing too many details for the nature of his work.78 Corinth

Strabo’s account of Corinth emphasizes its wealth, which he attributes to maritime commerce from its two ports linking Italy and Asia and the crowds attracted to the Isthmian games. As his crowning example of its wealth he lifts up the temple of Aphrodite, whose special endowment was both a symbol and a source of its wealth. And the temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it owned more than a thousand temple-slaves, courtesans, whom both men and women had dedicated to the goddess (χιλίας ἱεροδούλους ἐκέκτητο ἑταίρας, ἃς ἀνετίθεσαν τῇ θεῷ καὶ ἄνδρες καὶ γυναῖκες). And therefore it was also on account of these women that the city was crowded with people and grew rich. (Geogr. 8.6.20) Strabo continues with an example and a proverb, concluding with an anecdote concerning one of these courtesans:

argues that a decisive factor in Strabo’s low esteem for Herodotus was the latter’s technique of weaving ethnographic and mythic-folklorical excurses into his history. History and myth, Strabo argued, should be sharply distinguished (Geogr. 11.5.3, cited by Engels, 125). 77.  According to his own account, in which he claims to have traveled over a greater area than any previous writers of geographies, he traveled “westward from Armenia [i.e. the border between Pontus and Armenia] … and southward from the Black Sea as far as the frontiers of Ethiopia” (Geogr. 2.5.11; cited by Dueck, Augusteische Oikumenegeographie, 15–16). On the extent of his travels and his failure to record travel notices in his description of sites, see Dueck, ibid., 15–30. His treatment of points further east and of Syria-Palestine, which he did not visit, are oriented to conditions after Alexander’s conquests and more especially to the new conditions obtaining after the recent Roman conquests. 78.  Dueck, ibid., 157–58, cites the following statement as an example: “I must begin with Thessaly, omitting such things as are very old and mythical … as I have already done in all other cases, and telling such things as seem to me appropriate to my purpose” (Geogr. 9.4.18; Dueck, 159).



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For instance, the ship-captains freely squandered their money, and hence the proverb, “Not for every man is the voyage to Corinth.” Moreover, it is recorded (μνημονεύεταί) that a certain courtesan (ἑταίρα) said to a woman who reproached her with the charge that she did not like to work or touch wool: “Yet, such as I am, in this short time I have taken down three webs.” (Geogr. 8.6.20) The hetaira’s rejoinder, which involves the wordplay “lowered three masts” (i.e. “debauched three ship-captains”),79 together with the reference to squandered money, makes the secular nature of the activity clear, at least in Strabo’s understanding. There does not appear to be anything in this account to suggest that these courtesans had any function other than to service the large class of itinerant merchants and sailors in this port city, increasing the temple’s wealth through their trade. The context and the anecdotal nature of the account emphasize the mercenary character of the phenomenon and give no suggestion of cultic significance.80 The hetairai belong here to the general class of “temple slaves” (hieroduloi), but do not define it.81 Strabo’s account of the temple courtesans of Corinth differs in a number of significant ways from his report on Babylonian custom. It forms part of a firsthand report on the city, one of the few (some would say only) Greek cities that Strabo actually visited;82 but the temple account clearly refers to past glory and includes mythical attributes83 and legend that Strabo elsewhere eschews. This combination of autopsy and legend is explained by the purpose and plan of the Geography and the provincial author’s esteem for Greek culture.84 Intending to 79. Jones, Geography 4:190–91 n. 3. 80.  Presumably this is why Oden does not include this reference in his review of classical sources for sacred prostitution. 81. Cf. OCD 426, s.v. “Hieroduloi.” In Kurke’s analysis of Pindar’s poems on Xenophon’s dedication of hierodules to Aphrodite at Corinth, she argues for a dual role for these temple prostitutes in which they assist in the thanks-offering to the goddess and then assume their place as hetairai with the guests at the banquet (“Pindar and the Prostitutes,” 50, 58). Cf. Budin, Myth, 165–79, who argues that Strabo misunderstood his sources and anachronistically attributes ownership of hierodules (understood as freed slaves manumitted to the temple) to the cult of Pindar’s time. 82.  According to Jones (Geography, 1:xxiv), there is no positive evidence that he saw any other place in Greece. 83.  See Beard and Henderson (“With This Body,” 58) on the “thousand” courtesan hierodules and the problem of placing them on the heights of the Acrocorinth—or in the city below. 84. Dueck, Augusteische Oikumenegeographie, 1–8. Strabo was a native of Pontus in Asia Minor, born in Amasia, the largest inland city, where his family belonged to the Hellenistic elite surrounding the Pontic rulers. He was educated by Greek teachers and deemed Greek culture superior to all others, but he also admired the accomplishments of the Roman Empire and moved to Rome (a meeting place for scholars from the entire Greek world) at an early age. Although he returned to Amasia (for the

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update and extend knowledge of the known world, Strabo stuck (more closely) to the “facts” in reporting on regions outside the Hellenic heartland. On the old, known world of Greece (Books 8–10), however, his approach is “very antiquarian and mythological.”85 Armenia (and Lydia)

Strabo’s account of Armenian practice related to the temple of Anaitis in Acilisene is the first to describe cult-related sexual activity as prostitution—in a passive verbal construction that accents the women’s lack of agency in this normally stigmatized sexual activity. The account concludes Strabo’s treatment of Asia with a note on the prevalence of Persian religion in the region and the special popularity of Anaitis among the Armenians.86 In highlighting the prostitution associated with her cult in Acilisene, however, Strabo appears to understand it as a distinctive local feature. Here they dedicate to her service male and female slaves (δούλους καὶ δούλας). This, indeed, is not a remarkable thing; but the most illustrious men of the tribe actually consecrate to her their daughters while maidens (θυγατέρας οἱ ἐπιφανέστατοι τοῦ ἔθνους ἀνιεροῦσι παρθένους); and it is the custom for these first to be prostituted in the temple87 of the goddess for a long time (αἷς νόμος ἐστὶ καταπορνευθείσαις πολὺν χρόνον παρὰ τῇ θεῷ) and after this to be given in marriage; and no one disdains (οὐκ ἀπαξιοῦντος) to live in wedlock with such a woman. (Geogr. 11.14.16) Strabo continues by noting a “parallel”: Something of this kind is told also by Herodotus in his account of the Lydian women (τοιοῦτον δέ τι καὶ Ἡρόδοτος λέγει τὸ περὶ τὰς Λυδάς), who, one and all, he says, prostitute themselves (πορνεύειν γὰρ ἁπάσας). last 26 or so years of his life, according to Jones [Geography, xxiii]), Dueck (Augusteische Oikumenegeographie, 3) argues that he died in Rome and also composed his Geography there. 85.  OCD 1017 (s.v. “Strabo”). Dueck (ibid., 174) describes the main emphasis of Book 8 (on Western Greece) as on “the ancient past of the region, connected to mythological situations and stories.” 86.  “Now the sacred rites of the Persians, one and all, are held in honor by both the Medes and the Armenians; but those of Anaitis are held in exceptional honor by the Armenians, who have built temples in her honor in different places, and especially in Acilisene” (Geogr. 11.14.16). Anaitis (Anahita) was the Persian goddess of the fertilizing waters, whose cult spread to Armenia, Cappadocia, Pontus, and especially Lydia, where she was assimilated to Cybele and Artemis Ephesia (OCD 47, s.v. “Anahita”). 87.  Or “before the goddess” (παρὰ τῇ θεῷ), as Budin (Myth, 199, 204) suggests. Cf. LSJ 1302–1303. Strabo’s language appears to be deliberately imprecise with regard to the details of place, duration, and financial transactions.



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This reference to Herodotus (Hist. 1.93) is striking for the differences in the accounts.88 Herodotus makes no religious association in his reference to the Lydian custom and interprets it as a means for the “common people” (δήμος) to earn dowries for the women. In contrast, Strabo emphasizes that the Lydian practice involves “one and all” (ἁπάσας),89 corroborating Kurke’s analysis of his indifference to the economic disparity that Herodotus highlights in his version of the Babylonian customs. The Lydian analogy is also striking, and illuminating, for the rejected alternative. Strabo does not connect the cult-related practice of Achilisene with the cultic practice of Babylon—either as reported by Herodotus or as he himself recorded it. By aligning the Armenian practice with the Lydian, rather than the Babylonian, Strabo suggests that the feature of the Armenian cult practice that he finds most remarkable is the condoned sexual activity of virgin daughters, prior to marriage and for sufficient time (“a long time”) that it resembles prostitution rather than an initiation rite. The activity is described, uniquely, as taking place within the temple(?), or “before the goddess,”90 but it is not clear how this is understood. There does not appear to be any religious symbolism attached to the sexual activity. The clearly religious action is the men’s consecration of their daughters, paralleling the dedication of slaves.91 In this androcentric account in which the daughters are denied agency (they are “prostituted” [καταπορνευθείσαις], as they are later “given in marriage”), the issue of concern to the author appears to be male honor, which is violated by men of standing who submit their daughters to prostitution, and by men of the community who feel no shame in marrying such women.92 Strabo’s first-century CE account of prostitution in the cult of Anaitis in Armenia has no antecedent. The cult and the goddess are identified as Persian in 88.  Jones (Geography, 5:340–41 n. 1) cites Hist. 1.93 and 1.199 for the reference to Herodotus, despite the lack of any reference to Lydians in the latter text, which points instead to a practice in Cyprus. 89.  The following sentence refers to women from wealthy families, but this appears to be a resumption of his description of the Armenian custom, where he emphasized participation by the “best” families. Thus the practice is further distinguished from “normal” prostitution: They are so kindly disposed to their paramours (τοῖς ἐρασταῖς) that they not only entertain them hospitably but also exchange presents with them, often giving more than they receive, inasmuch as the girls from wealthy families are supplied with means. However, they do not admit any man that comes along, but preferably those of equal rank with themselves. (Geogr. 11.14.16) 90.  See n. 87, above. 91.  Though with distinction of verbs: ἀνατιθημί for the slaves and the rarer ἀνιερόω for the daughters. 92.  The issue of male honor is also behind the account of the Lydian practice, though there the women are the initiators of the action, even selecting their lovers and engaging in exchange of gifts—in an inversion of the normal roles of sexual interaction.

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origin, but the practice of dedicating daughters for prostitution is presented as a local custom, whose closest parallel is found elsewhere in Asia Minor (Lydia). Strabo makes no attempt to identify the Persian goddess with Aphrodite (either of Babylon or Corinth),93 or with the Corinthian tradition of dedicating courtesan hierodules to that goddess. For him the practices are conceptually distinct. While the Babylonian activity was a one-time affair involving all women and the Corinthian practice involved a class of women who performed sexual services as a profession (hetairai), the Armenian case involved temporary, premarital intercourse—as in Lydia.94 Comana Pontica

A further reference to prostitution associated with religion comes from Comana in Pontus, a city which Strabo describes as “copied after” the city of the same name in Greater Cappadocia and consecrated to the same goddess (Geogr. 12.3.32). The goddess in the Cappadocian account is identified as “Enyo [Greek goddess of war], whom the people call ‘Ma’” (Geogr. 12.2.3). A secondary identification of the rites with Artemis appears to have arisen from an association with the name Comana, related in an etiology that concludes the account of the Cappadocian city. Whatever the name and origin of the goddess, her cult dominated that city, which Strabo describes as inhabited mainly by “divinely inspired people” (θεοφορήτων) and hierodules, who numbered more than six thousand “men and women together” at the time of his sojourn there.95 No hint of prostitution appears in reference to the Cappadocian cult; it occurs only in the account of Pontic Comana, introduced as a final note to an extended description of the city and its cult festivals. Strabo’s description of the city begins as follows: Above Phanaroea is the Pontic Comana, which bears the same name as the city in Greater Cappadocia, having been consecrated to the same goddess and copied after that city (τῇ αὐτῇ θεῷ καθιερωμένα, ἀφιδρυθέντα ἐκεῖθεν);96 93.  Budin (Myth; and The Origin of Aphrodite [Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2003]), who underscores the strangeness of attributing sacred prostitution to Anaitis, notes that only one ancient source, Berossus, syncretized Anaitis with Aphrodite, apparently on the basis of cult statues erected to both, rather than any shared attributes. 94.  Is there also a hidden cultic connection? The cult of the Persian goddess Anaitis is said to have spread especially to Lydia, where it was assimilated to local goddesses (n. 86 above). 95.  On the temple estates of Anatolia, see Stephen Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor (2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 1:81–82, 176–77. 96.  “Copied after that city” ( Jones); lit. “transferred from there” (ἀφιδρυθύω, “remove to another settlement, transport”; pass. “to be transferred, of a cult” [LSJ 289]). The n. pl. participle is determined by τὰ Κόμανα.



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and I might almost say that the course they have followed in their sacrifices, in their divine obsessions (θεοφοριῶν), and in their reverence for their priests, are about the same, and particularly in the times of the kings who reigned before this, I mean in the times when twice a year, during the “exoduses” of the goddess, as they are called (τὰς ἐξόδους λεγομένας τῇς θεοῦ), the priest wore a diadem and ranked second in honor after the king.” (Geogr. 12.3.32) What follows is an extended account of the political history of the city and its priesthood (including references to Strabo’s own ancestral ties) from the time of the Pontic kings through the reigns of Pompey and Caesar Augustus (12.2.33–35), concluding with an account of the cultic and commercial life of the city (12.3.36): Now Comana is a populous city and is a notable emporium for the people from Armenia; and at the time of the “exoduses” of the goddess97 people assemble there from everywhere, from both the cities and the country, men together with women, to attend the festival (ἑορτήν). And there are certain others (ἄλλοι), also, who in accordance with a vow are always residing there, performing sacrifices in honor of the goddess (θυσίας ἐπιτελοῦντες τῇ θεῷ). And the inhabitants live in luxury, and all their property is planted with vines; and there is a multitude of women who make gain from their persons (πλῆθος γυναικῶν τῶν ἐργαζομένων ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος), most of whom are dedicated [to the goddess] (ὧν αἱ πλείους εἰσὶν ἱεραί).98 Here Strabo adds an analogy to Corinth, repeating the proverb he quoted earlier in his account of that city:99 For in a way the city is a lesser Corinth (τινα μικρὰ Κόρινθός), for there too, on account of the multitude of courtesans (διὰ τὸ πλῆθος τῶν ἑταιρῶν) who were sacred to Aphrodite (αἳ τῆς Ἀφροδίτης ἦσαν ἱεραί), outsiders resorted in great numbers and kept holiday. And the merchants and soldiers who were there squandered all their money, so that the following proverb arose in reference to them: “Not for every man is the voyage to Corinth.” (Geogr. 12.3.36) 97. Cf. Geogr. 12.3.32. 98.  “Dedicated” (ἱεραί) here is identical to “sacred” (ἱεραί) in the following sentence (“sacred to Aphrodite”), but without reference to the goddess. Budin (Myth, 179–84) understands this term as a designation of a “manumitted slave under the protection of a deity to whom, possibly, some manner of service was required” (182), arguing that prostitution was not (necessarily) implied as this service and that the women were not owned by the temple, but were self-employed individuals who may or may not have been prostitutes (183–84). 99. Cf. Geogr. 8.6.20.

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With this Strabo concludes: “Such, then, is my account of Comana.” Strabo’s account of prostitution in relation to the cult of Comana Pontica is curious in a number of ways. First, it is peripheral to the main account of the temple cult, an incidental note on a local curiosity tacked onto a description of the wealth and luxury of the city derived from its twice-yearly festival of the goddess. The women are not called prostitutes, or even hetairai, but described by a circumlocution; and although “most” are said to be “consecrated” (ἱεραί), they are not identified as hierodules, nor are they introduced in relation to the goddess.100 They are also not identified with those performing sacrifices in fulfillment of a vow. Rather they are associated with vines/wine and luxurious living; thus pleasure, not piety, is the context in which they are understood. The goddess remains unnamed in the entire account of Pontic Comana, and the first mention of her cult festivals (12.3.32) clearly sets them in the past (“in the times of the kings who reigned before this”). More attention is given to the Corinthian “prototype” than to the Pontic “replica,” despite the fact that Strabo was a native of Pontus and could be expected to have first-hand knowledge, or access to first-hand knowledge, of the local practices. It appears that the whole account, as regards the cult and its festivals, has been constructed on analogies from other sites and traditions of past celebrations—with no identification of sources (amply cited elsewhere). Behind this account, with its Armenian connection, and the account of the cult in Acilisene there does appear to be some kind of tradition associating prostitution with the cult of a local goddess, but in Strabo’s own attempts to describe the two cults he employs analogies to different deities and different social models (Lydian premarital prostitution and Corinthian temple courtesans). He clearly has no firsthand knowledge of either101 and no general model (of sacred prostitution or any other institution) for interpreting the traditions. 100.  One might speculate that Strabo’s indirection in identifying “women who make gain of their persons, most of whom are consecrated” suggests unease on his part in attributing religious prostitution to a cult of his homeland, whose power and prestige he acclaims as represented by priestly prerogatives. Budin (Myth, 183–84) notes that Strabo does not call the women hetairai, or hierodules, as he does at Corinth, but the fact that he interprets the Pontic practice by citing the Corinthian indicates that he does equate them. Thus, despite Budin’s informative discussion of hierodules as manumitted slaves of a temple or temple state, I still find Strabo’s unusual language here suggestive of avoidance rather than precision. 101.  The present-tense description in the case of the key passage on Comana Pontica may indeed represent first-hand observation, as Budin (Myth, 179) emphasizes, though no activity is actually described. But the time framework is confused by the analogy with Corinth, where the action is described in the past, and by the description of the festivals of the goddess at Comana, which are presented as the occasion for attracting crowds of foreigners to the city and which are set in the past in Geogr. 12.3.32. In the case of Corinth, Strabo connects the crowds with the presence of the prostitutes at the temple; so his analogy with Corinth makes one expect a connection of the women who make gain from their bodies with the occasion of the festivals of the goddess. And in fact these festivals are highlighted as the setting for the description of life in the city in 12.3.36. Were they still going on in Strabo’s day? And why is the description of these women separated from the account of the festival?



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Thebes

A further reference that has been cited as evidence of sacred prostitution is Strabo’s report of a practice in Thebes, to which Herodotus referred in connection with the Zeus temple of Babylon (Hist. 1.182).102 Strabo’s more detailed account concludes his description of the city, which recalls its past glory, great size, and wealth as contrasted with its present reduced and mutilated state.103 Describing its kings’ past dominion and wealth, its astronomer-priests, and its solar calendar, Strabo identifies Hermes as the god associated with such wisdom and concludes with a note on Zeus: To Zeus, whom they hold highest in honor, they dedicate a maiden (παρθένος ἱερᾶται) of greatest beauty and most illustrious family (such maidens are called “pallades” by the Greeks);104 and she prostitutes herself (παλλακεύει), and cohabits with whatever men she wishes (καὶ σύνεστιν οἷς βούλεται) until the natural cleansing of her body (κάθαρσις τοῦ σώματος) takes place; and after her cleansing she is given in marriage to a man (δίδοται πρὸς ἄνδρα); but before she is married, after the time of her prostitution (παλλακείας), a rite of mourning is celebrated for her (πένθος αὐτῆς ἄγεται).105 (Geogr. 17.1.46) Jones’s translation employs language of prostitution for both the verb παλλακεύω and the noun παλλακείας; but the Greek terms refer to concubinage and describe the woman’s relational status, not her activity.106 It is the following phrase, “cohabits with whatever men she wishes,” that describes activity of a prostitute.107 But the girl is not yet sexually mature, and at menarche is “married to a man (ἄνδρα)”—in explicit contrast to the god. Thus the “sexual relations” are apparently regarded by Strabo, and/or the Thebans, as activity performed in the role of god’s spouse or concubine, and are not understood as “prostitution,” 102.  See above, p. 117. 103.  Strabo personally visited the site, which he describes as consisting only of a “collection of villages” and the remains of several temples “mutilated” by Cambyses (Geogr. 17.1.46). 104.  Parenthesis in Jones’s translation; Grk: ἃς καλοῦσιν οἱ Ἕλληνες παλλάδας. Jones (Geography, 8:125 n. 2) supplies a note to his transliteration “pallades” as follows: “i.e. ‘virgin priestesses,’ if the text is correct.… Diodorus Siculus (1.47.1) calls these maidens ‘pallacides’ (i.e. concubines) of Zeus.” In his critical note to the Greek (8:124 n. 3), he records Xylander’s conjecture of παλλακίδας. See LSJ 1293: παλλάς and παλλακίς, and Budin Myth, 192–99. 105.  πένθος, “grief, sorrow,” is used more specifically of mourning for the dead, but it can also mean simply “misfortune” (LSJ 1360). 106.  LSJ 1293, citing this passage, translates παλλακεύω, “to be a concubine, esp. for ritual purposes.” 107.  As in the case of the women dedicated to the temple of Anaitis, Strabo emphasizes the woman’s choice of partners.

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even though they are described as promiscuous.108 The normal language of prostitution, used elsewhere by Strabo, is lacking here, together with any reference to payment. Here again we encounter hearsay, more specifically, a report of a curious sexual custom “said” by an unidentified source to have been practiced at some unspecified time in the past.109 In this case the tradition is also attested by Herodotus, who refers to it only as an analogy to the Babylonian custom. Thus it is independent of both authors who report the tradition. The attribution of a select virgin consort to the chief gods of Babylon and Egypt (both identified with Greek Zeus) invites the question whether a common tradition has been adapted to two different sites of ancient Oriental power. The Mesopotamian “sacred marriage” tradition provides an obvious source for the Babylonian example, but Egyptian parallels are lacking in indigenous sources. Whatever the origin(s), the custom involving a single female consort of a male deity is conceptually and institutionally distinct from those involving hierodules, or lay counterparts, in the service of a female deity of love. Eryx

A passage cited by some authors as evidence of sacred prostitution is found in Strabo’s description of Eryx in Sicily.110 Eryx, a lofty hill, is also inhabited. It has a temple of Aphrodite that is held in exceptional honor, and in early times (τὸ παλαιόν) was full of female temple-slaves (ἱεροδούλων γυναικῶν πλῆρες), who had been dedicated in fulfillment of vows (ἃς ἀνέθεσαν κατ’εὐχὴν) not only by the people of Sicily but also by many people from abroad; but at the present time, just as the settlement itself, so the temple is in want of men, and the multitude of temple-slaves111 has disappeared (λειπανδρεῖ τὸ ἱερόν, καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν σωμάτων ἐκλέλοιπε τὸ πλῆθος). (Geogr. 6.2.6)112

108.  Cf. Herodotus, Hist. 1.182 (cited above) for the view that the woman who slept in the temple of the Theban Zeus did not have intercourse with men. 109.  As with other passages in the Geography cited as references to sacred prostitution, it is Strabo’s final word on the site, providing a “memorable or entertaining” note on which to conclude (see Geogr. 1.1.23, where Strabo defends the scope and aims of his monumental work). 110.  Included by Stark, “Kultprostitution,” 16. Oden, following Clemen, “Miszellen,” does not include this passage. 111.  Here without specification of gender (lit. “sacred bodies/persons”). 112.  Mt. Eryx (modern Monte San Giuliano) in the northwest corner of Sicily was renowned in ancient times for its isolated grandeur and its temple of Aphrodite/Venus, associated in legend with Aeneas (and Trojan origins).



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A concluding note adds that “in Rome, also, there is a reproduction (ἀφίδρυμα) of this goddess . . . called that of Venus Erycina (Ἀφροδίτης Ἐρυκίνης λεγόμενον).”113 Although this passage does not describe the activities of the hierodules or employ any language of prostitution, the specification of female hierodules suggests an assumption of activity attributed to them at Aphrodite temples elsewhere, particularly in Corinth.114 At this point in the Geography, however, the “defining” analogies have yet to appear, and Strabo makes no reference to Eryx in any of his subsequent accounts of Aphrodite temples or hierodules. As in the other citations from Strabo, the reported (and assumed) activity is entirely in the past—here specifically the ancient past (τὸ παλαιόν)—although other sources report cultic activity at the site as late as the early third century CE.115 The cult at Eryx is generally thought to have originated with a local Elymian goddess, identified with Phoenician Ashtart by the Carthaginians,116 who dominated the western end of the island from the late fifth to the mid-third century BCE, when it fell under Roman control. But the cultural history of the site and its goddess is complex and poorly documented for pre-Roman times.117 Despite 113.  Strabo locates this temple “before the Colline Gate,” commenting on its remarkable shrine and surrounding colonnade. This was actually the second temple to the goddess of Eryx at Rome. 114.  Stark (“Kultprostitution,” 16–17) suggests that Strabo’s reference to “vows of dedication” plays on the understanding that such vows meant sexual availability (“das Weihegelübde [bedeutet] sexuelle Verfügbarkeit”), but this is a problematic inference, requiring the vows to be understood as those of the women themselves. On the practice of dedicating slaves to temples as hierodules, see above on Corinth and Pontic Comana. 115.  See below. According to Diodorus Siculus, the cult at Eryx was flourishing in his day (first half of the first century BCE, i.e. some 60–80 years before Strabo’s report). 116.  The name Ashtart appears in Phoenician and Punic inscriptions from Eryx (CIS 136, 135), and a Punic dedication to Ashtart of Eryx was found in Sardinia (CIS 140). Stéphane Gsell, Histoire ancienne de l’Afrique du nord (8 vols.; Paris: Hachette, 1913–28; repr. Osnabrück: Zeller, 1972) 4:348. On the name of the goddess at Carthage, see below. 117.  Although the town of Eryx, on the flanks of the mountain, was uninhabited from the time of its capture by the Romans during the Second Punic War (249 BCE), the heavily fortified temple mount retained strategic importance and the sacred precinct continued to attract notice for several centuries more. It is alluded to by Cicero (d. 43 BCE) and Pliny (d. 79 CE) and represented on a coin of the first century BCE (“Eryx [Sicily],” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eryx_[Sicily]). The early history of the temple is poorly documented, although the lower city has yielded more evidence. Punic legends were found on coins from the fourth century, and Phoenician mason’s marks on the “Cyclopian” foundation walls (OCD 339, s.v. “Eryx”). V. Tusa dates the first building phase of the city’s circuit fortifications to the eighth to mid-sixth century BCE and the upper courses to the mid-sixth to mid-third century BCE, the period of greatest Punic influence (“ERYX [Erice] Sicily,” Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites [ed. Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, and Marian Holland McAlister; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976] 317–18). He reports “few remains of the sanctuary” and these from the Roman Imperial period, except for “sporadic fragments of the 6th–5th c. B.C.” (ibid.). Thus, although Phoenician presence is documented in coastal settlements from the tenth century BCE, it was transient until the main period of Punic control, and efforts to identify the goddess worshipped there do little more than suggest Cypro-Phoenician influences before the Hellenistic and Roman periods. On the goddess of Eryx and her cult, see Robert Schilling, La religion romaine de Vénus, depuis les origines jusqu’au temps d’Auguste (BEFAR 178; Paris: Boccard, 1955)

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Punic military-mercantile control of the city, the dominant and persistent cultural influence was Hellenism, evident in the Greek foundation legends reported by the Sicilian author Diodorus in his Bibliotheca Historica (ca. 60 BCE).118 From mythic foundations Diodorus traces the history of the cult through successive politico-cultural regimes: The Sicanians paid honor to the goddess for many generations and kept continually embellishing it with both magnificent sacrifices and votive offerings; and after that the Carthaginians, when they had become masters of that part of Sicily, never failed to hold the goddess in special honor. And last of all the Romans, when they had subdued all Sicily, surpassed all other people who had preceded them in the honors they paid to her . . . . The consuls and praetors . . . and all Romans who sojourn there clothed with any authority, whenever they come to Eryx, embellish the sanctuary (τὸ τέμενος) with magnificent sacrifices and honors, and laying aside the austerity of their authority, they enter into sports and have conversation with women (μεταβάλλουσιν εἰς παιδιὰς καὶ γυναικῶν ὁμιλίας)119 in a spirit of great gaiety, believing that only in this way will they make their presence there pleasing to the goddess. (Bib. Hist. 4.83.4–6) Oldfather’s bowdlerized translation cannot disguise the fact that the activity deemed appropriate to please the goddess involved sexual interaction of male visitors with unspecified females (Grk: “girls and women”).120 The sanctuary is called a temenos, which, far from neglected, was the object of special attention by 233–66, and O. Jessen, “Erycina (Erucina, Ἐρυκίνη),” PW 6:563–65. See also G. Karl Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) 63–65, 68–76, 172–76, and passim, who points to Mycenaean elements in the earliest stages of the cult (88) and finds the closest parallels in Cyprus (75–76). 118.  M. I. Finley, A History of Sicily: Ancient Sicily to the Arab Conquest (London: Chatto & Windus, 1968) 134; see also 24, 64. According to Diodorus, Eryx, the son of Aphrodite and an indigenous King Butes, established the city bearing his name and also a shrine of his mother on the highest point of the city, which he “embellished with a beautifully built temple,” and with the “multitude of his dedications.” Diodorus highlights the special status of this temple, proclaiming that “this is the only temple which, founded as it was at the beginning of time (ἐξ αἰῶνος ἀρχὴν) … has never failed to be an object of veneration but … ever continued to enjoy great growth.” As evidence of its growth in veneration he cites Aeneas’s attention, claiming Trojan patronage of the shrine (Bib. Hist. 4.83.1–4; citation from the Loeb edition of C. H. Oldfather, Diodorus of Sicily, vol. 3 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939]). Strabo also reports a tradition connecting Aeneas to the site (Geogr. 13.1.53); and Vergil (Aeneid 5.759–760) makes Aeneas the founder of the sanctuary (Andrew Erskine, Troy between Greece and Rome: Local Tradition and Imperial Power [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001] 200). See also Finley, History of Sicily, 9–10, and Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome. 119. Finley, History of Sicily, 137: “enter into play and intercourse with women.” 120.  They are not called hierodules, or hetairai, and the source and identity of these women is unknown.



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the Roman Senate.121 Thus Romans, who had imported her cult to Rome (where she enjoyed two temples by 181 BCE122), continued to honor the goddess at her home sanctuary, in a manner to which she was apparently accustomed there. None of the references to the cult of Aphrodite at Eryx mention prostitutes or prostitution explicitly, but at Rome, where the founding of the temple of Venus Erycina at the Colline Gate was celebrated on April 23, prostitutes “foregathered” for the holy day,123 and the days following her festival were designated feast days of the female prostitutes (meretrices, April 24) and male prostitutes (pueri lenonii, April 25) in the Praenestine calendar (ca. 10 BCE).124 Here is clear recognition of Venus Erycina as patroness of prostitutes; but she is not reduced to that role, and prostitutes are not a part of her temple personnel at Rome.125 A further, more tenuous, connection of prostitution with the goddess of Eryx has been forged by linking a tradition of an annual flight of the goddess to North Africa to an account of women prostituting themselves for dowries at a temple of Venus in Sicca Veneria on the western border of Carthage.126 The tradition of the North African sojourn is found in three versions, all in publications from the beginning of third century CE. But the age of the tradition is difficult to determine, since it appears only in compilations of excerpts and epitomes from earlier works—along with contributions by the compilers. All record the tradition 121.  Diodorus reports that the Senate had “so zealously concerned itself with the honors of the goddess” that it decreed that the seventeen cities of Sicily most faithful to Rome should pay a tax in gold “to Aphrodite” and two hundred soldiers should guard her shrine (hieron) (Bib. Hist. 4.83.7). 122.  The first temple, vowed by the dictator Q. Fabius Maximus in 217 during a desperate time in the First Punic War, was situated on the Capitol itself, and thoroughly Romanized. The second, at the Colline Gate, “preserved the oriental features of the Sicilian cult,” according to Galinsky (Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, 179), and became far more popular. On the transformation of the Carthage-oriented Sicilian goddess into a Roman goddess by exploitation of her Trojan associations and the Aeneas legend, see Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, 173–78; Schilling, La religion romaine de Vénus, 244; and Erskine, Troy between Greece and Rome, 198–205. 123.  Robert E. A. Palmer, Rome and Carthage at Peace (Historia 113; Stuttgart: Steiner, 1997) 121, citing Ovid, Fasti 4.866. 124.  Palmer (ibid.), emphasizing (n. 12) that the festum of the meretrices was distinct from the state holy day. 125.  Ovid’s summons to the prostitutes makes this clear: “Girls of the street, worship the power of Venus Erycina / Venus helps business for licensed working girls // With a gift of incense ask for beauty and your public’s patronage . . . . Now you should pack the temple right next to the Colline Gate / which gets its name from a mountain in Sicily” (Fast. 4.866–872, cited from the translation of Betty Rose Nagle, Ovid’s Fasti / Roman Holidays [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995]). Cf. Finley, History of Sicily, 135–36: “temple prostitution apparently continued at Eryx, though it was not repeated in Rome where the rites were fully Romanized.” 126.  Valerius Maximus, Fact. et dict. 2.6.15. The text is analyzed below (pp. 170–73) following evidence for Phoenicia, because it concerns Punic practice in the Phoenician colony of Carthage. The text reads as follows: “At Sicca there is a temple of Venus where married women (matronae) used to gather and issuing thence for gain to collect dowries by outraging their bodies.” The identification of the women as married is related to the context in which the statement appears.

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among anecdotes and observations on various kinds of birds, in this case pigeons (περιστεραὶ); all describe a festival of departure (and return) of the pigeons of Eryx, interpreted as evidence of the goddess’s departure and return; and all name “Libya” (Λιβύη, the Greek name for the whole continent of Africa) as the destination, without further specification of place. The three versions appear to be closely related, with Athenaeus providing the most complete account:127 In Eryx in Sicily there is a time of year known as the Festival of the Departure when, they claim, the goddess leaves for Libya. The pigeons in the area disappear at that point, as if they were accompanying the goddess on her journey abroad. After nine days, at the so-called Festival of the Return, a single pigeon flies in from the sea in advance of the others and alights in the temple, and afterward the rest arrive. At that point the rich people in the region have a feast; the rest use clappers to express their joy; and the whole area smells like butter, which they regard as evidence that the goddess has returned. (Deipn. 9.394–395) An abbreviated account appears in Aelian’s Historical Miscellany (Varia Historia)128 and an elaborated version in his work On the Characteristics of Animals (De natura animalium).129 Both, I believe, can be understood as derived from 127.  On Athenaeus of Naucratis, see below, p. 143. The text is cited from the Loeb edition of S. Douglas Olson, Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters [Deipnosophistai], vol. 4 (= Books 8–10.420E; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 128.  On Aelian and the Varia Historia, see below, pp. 146–47. The text is cited from the Loeb edition of Nigel Guy Wilson (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997): At Eryx in Sicily, where the holy and venerable temple of Aphrodite stands, the inhabitants of Eryx at a certain season of the year celebrate with sacrifice the Anagogia [“embarkation”], and they say that Aphrodite departs from Sicily to Libya. At that time the pigeons, found in the temple the rest of the year, disappear from the place as if they were departing with the goddess.” (V.H. 1.15) 129.  Here Aelian expands the account with commentary and literary allusions, but no new information about the celebration: At Eryx in Sicily there is a festival which … [they] call the “Festival of the Embarkation.” And … they say that during these days Aphrodite sets out thence for Libya. They adduce in support of their belief the following circumstance. There is there an immense multitude of pigeons. Now these disappear, and the people of Eryx assert that they have gone as an escort to the goddess, for they speak of Pigeons as “pets of Aphrodite”…. But after nine days one bird of conspicuous beauty is seen flying in from the sea which brings it from Libya: it is not like the other Pigeons in a flock but is rose-colored, just as Anacreon of Teos describes Aphrodite, styling her somewhere “roseate.” And the bird might also be compared to gold, for this too is like the same goddess of whom Homer sings as “golden.” And after the bird follow the other pigeons in clouds, and again there is a festal gathering



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Athenaeus,130 whose account is frequently, but inaccurately attributed to Aristotle (and hence to the fourth century BCE).131 Without the link to Aristotle we cannot be certain that the tradition of the Libyan flight antedated the second to third centuries CE, though the association with “doves” is documented by a coin from Eryx of 490–450 BCE,132 and epigraphic evidence from Carthage (not Sicca) of the third century BCE attests Punic veneration of the goddess of Eryx in North Africa as well as Sicily—and Sardinia.133 But it is the connection with Sicca that is generally highlighted, because of the “common” feature of sacred prostitution at both sites—although the sojourn tradition lacks any hint of sexual activity associated with the festivities,134 and no reference to Eryx appears in evidence for the cult at Sicca. There is ancient testimony linking the two cults, but this sole explicit link is of uncertain historical value. It appears in the Collectanea rerum memorabilium of the third-century CE Roman author, Caius Julius Solinus, a work described by for the people of Eryx, the “Festival of the Return.” (Nat. an 4.2; cited from the Loeb edition of A. F. Scholfield, On the Characteristics of Animals [De natura animalium], vol. 1: Books 1–5 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958]). 130.  See below, p. 146, for the view that Aelian frequently borrows from Athenaeus. In the case of V.H.1.15, he cites the same fragment of Charon in the same order preceding the Eryx account as Athenaeus in Deipn. 9.394 and follows it with the same tradition about Zeus turning himself into a pigeon as in Deipn. 9.395. 131.  So Palmer, Rome and Carthage at Peace, 120; Schilling, La religion romaine, 238; Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, 71 n. 26. The passage occurs in a lengthy treatise on the characteristics of various species of birds, with detailed observations and citation of multiple authorities. The preceding lines, attributed to Aristotle, describe how pigeons prepare their hatchlings to accept food by chewing up salty earth, prying open their beaks, and spitting it in. The Eryx account is of an entirely different character from this “scientific observation.” A self-contained etiology for a popular Sicilian festival, it appears to have been introduced by Athenaeus because of the prominent role of pigeons in the festival. Stylistic judgment is confirmed by source analysis; the Aristotelian original (Historia animalium 613a.2–5) contains no reference to the Eryx tradition, but continues uninterrupted to describe the ejection of the fledglings from the nest. Cf. Erskine (Troy between Greece and Rome, 202 n. 17), who confirms that the attribution to Aristotle is incorrect. 132.  Edward Lipiński, Dieux et Déesses de l’univers phénicien et punique (Studia Phoenicia 14; Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 64; Leuven: Peeters, 1995) 146. The coin depicts the seated (and clothed) goddess holding a dove, with a quadriga of victory on the reverse (see Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, pl. 130). 133.  See discussion of the evidence from Carthage below. The third-century BCE inscription from Sardinia dedicating a bronze altar to “Lady Ashtart of Eryx” (CIS 1.140) has led some to believe that she had a sanctuary of her own in Sardinia (Sabatino Moscati, The World of the Phoenicians [New York: Praeger, 1968] 228). See the photo and discussion in Moscati, I fenici e Cartagine (Società e costume 8; Turin: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1972) 538–39; cf. idem, “Sulla diffusione del culto di Astarte Ericina,” Oriens antiquus 7 (1968) 91–94. 134.  The absence of sexual allusions may reflect the period of the texts (see below), or the particular occasion, or aspect of the goddess, highlighted in this tradition. Note that the coin with the dove is associated with martial imagery, and Ashtart/Aphrodite is often identified as a warrior (see Budin, Origin, 27–30, 101–2, 276–77).

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a modern editor as “a strange hotchpotch of a few facts and scores of fictitious statements.”135 In his account of the lands and peoples of his day, Solinus describes the coastal plain of North Africa, noting that it was so fertile that foreigners were attracted to settle there. As “proofs” he cites the Greeks who established Hippo Rhegius on the Boreon Promontory; the Sicilians who built Clypea (on the Cap Bon peninsula); and the Achaeans who gave the name Tripoli to the three cities they inhabited (Solin. 27.7–8). In this series of coastal cities a further site is attributed to Sicilian founding, awkwardly introduced after Clypea. The text reads as follows: Clypeam civitatem Siculi extruunt et Apsida primum nominant, Veneriam etiam in quam Veneris Erycinae religiones transtulerunt. (Solin. 27.8) The Sicilians built the City Clypea, and named it first Apsis; also Veneria, to which they transferred the religion of Venus of Eryx.136 In this context, Veneria (for Sicca Veneria) clearly stands out for its location and point of attraction. An inland site some 80 miles SW of Carthage, it marked the western frontier with Numidia when it was founded by Carthaginians extending their control into the interior between the mid-fifth and third centuries BCE137— hardly a site that would have attracted the seafaring Sicilians of Eryx and clearly not founded by them. Solinus’s sole interest is to register a cultic colonization— which has led most scholars to speak of a “daughter cult” in Sicca.138 But what is the source of Solinus’s claim, and what were the time and circumstances of the 135.  George Kish, in his introduction (n.p.) to a facsimile edition of the 1587 edition of Arthur Golding (the only English translation of the work), published as The Excellent and Pleasant Worke of Julius Solinus Polyhistor (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1955). Kish further characterizes the work as “an inferior compilation” by ancient as well as modern standards, dating it to the middle years of the third century CE. Cf. OCD 847, s.v. “Solinus,” which places it ca. 200 CE. 136.  The Latin text is from the 1864 edition of Theodor Mommsen (C. Julius Solinus, Colectanea Rerum Memorabilium [Berlin: Nicolai]). The English is based on Golding (Excellent and Pleasant Worke) whose different numbering places this passage in Chapter 39 (without paragraph numbers). 137.  A. Ennabli, “Sicca Veneria (Le Kef) Tunisia,” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (ed. Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, and Marian Holland McAlister; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 834. Most scholars point to the third century, recognizing earlier Numidian occupation. It fell to Numidia after the treaty of 201 BCE, but was (re)founded by Augustus, probably as a veteran colony, immediately after 31 BCE, becoming a major center of the Roman province of Nova Africa. See Dictionnaire de la Civilisation Phénicienne et Punique (ed. Edouard Lipínski; Turnhout: Brepols, 1992) 410, s.v. “Sicca Veneria”; J. B. Rives, Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995) 136. 138.  Finley (History of Sicily, 135) refers to a “daughter-shrine” at Sicca Veneria, and Palmer (Rome and Carthage at Peace, 120) writes “when the cult of Venus of Eryx was adopted at Sicca … its women prostituted themselves.” Galinsky (Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, 70) speaks more circumspectly of a “sister sanctuary.”



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transfer? Solinus’s leaves these questions unaddressed, and above all the question: Why Sicca? Like the accounts of the goddess’s annual Libyan sojourn, Solinus’s note on Sicilian-Siccan cultic relations belongs to the period when the temple at Eryx had been restored by Rome139 and Carthage was a thriving Roman province with Venus cults attested at a number of different sites. The one at Sicca Veneria was the most celebrated and perhaps the most ancient, and Solinus would certainly have known Valerias’s account of more than a century earlier. Thus he may simply have been “putting two and two together” in light of the “common” tradition of prostitution associated with both cults.140 That is also the reasoning of most modern scholars, who assume that Sicca was the destination of the goddess’s flight, observing that Valerius’s account of prostitution in honor of the Siccan Venus is the only reference to sacred prostitution in North Africa.141 It should be noted, however, that the prostitution reported at Sicca is of an entirely different nature than that associated with the cult of Eryx: temporary prostitution for dowries rather than the activity of hierodules permanently attached to the sanctuary. And, as noted above, there is no evidence from Sicca linking it to Eryx.142 139.  The temple was apparently in ruins or disrepair in Strabo’s time, although he only describes it as wanting in men and devoid of hierodules (Geogr. 6.2.6). A revival of interest in the Aeneas legend by the Julian emperors appears to have been accompanied by renewed attention to the Sicilian sanctuary. Tacitus’s Annals for the year 25 CE record that the city of Segesta petitioned Tiberius for the restoration of the shrine on Mount Eryx and Tiberias “gladly undertook the task as a family matter” (Cornelius Tacitus, Annals IV 4.43.5, cited from the edition of D. C. A. Shotter [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1989]). Suetonius (Claud. 25.5), however, attributes the restoration to Claudius (41–54 CE), reporting that “when the temple of Venus Erycina in Sicily had collapsed through decrepitude, it was rebuilt at the expense of the Roman treasury on Claudius’s initiative” (Catharine Edwards, trans. and ed., Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 184). Cf. Donna W. Hurley, Suetonius, Divus Claudius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 179, and archaeological evidence cited in n. 117 above. The revival of the cult at Eryx is already signaled by the dedication there in 20 CE of a statue of Tiberius to the goddess under the name Aeneadum alma parens (Schilling, La religion romaine, 264). The dedication was made by the future consul, L. Apronius Caesianus, in thanksgiving for a victory over the Numidians (in whose territory Sicca originally lay). 140.  So Gsell, Histoire ancienne, 349. 141.  Emphasized by Finley, History of Sicily, 135. 142.  It is possible that there was a colony of Erycinians, or Sicilians, at Sicca, since the Carthaginians settled rebellious foreign mercenaries there whom they were unable to pay after their defeat (241 BCE) in the First Punic War (International Dictionary of Historic Places [ed. Trudy Ring et al.; Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1994] 456 s.v. “Sicca”). Valerius, however, appears to be unaware of any connection of the Siccan Venus with Eryx. He does not call her Venus Erycina, a name he would certainly have known from Rome, and he identifies her worshippers as “Punic matrons” (see below on Valerius). Whatever the nature of the pre-Roman cult and original identity of the goddess worshipped at Sicca, the several inscriptions referring to temple personnel there (sacerdotes Veneris [CIL 8.15879, 15882], actor Veneris [CIL 8.15894], Venerii [ILS 5505], libertus Veneris [CIL 8.27580], and servus Veneris [CIL 8.15946]) are all Roman, and the personnel all male—at least as cited by Rives, Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage, 137 n. 58. However, Zeïneb Ben Abdullah (Catalogue des inscriptions

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Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

In contrast to Sicca, Carthage provides specific reference to the goddess of Eryx, as well as evidence of a local cult in her name—or at least cultic action directed to the Sicilian goddess. It also provides evidence of the hierodules that Strabo highlighted in his account of the Sicilian sanctuary. A Punic inscription from the tophet of Carthage records a dedication made by a woman named Arishutbaal (‫)ארשתבעל‬, who is further identified as “servant of Ashtart of Eryx” / ‫( עמת שעשתרת ארך‬CIS 3776), the standard formula for a temple slave, or hierodule.143 She is first identified, however, by the matronymic, “daughter of Amatmelqart,” which strongly suggests that she was born into this service.144 The dedication, however, was made to the Carthaginian “national” gods Tannit and Baal-Hammon (standard in tophet dedications) and thus provides no evidence latines païennes du Musée du Bardo [CEFR 92; Rome: École française de Rome, 1986] 140) reads serva [fem.] Veneris in CIL 8.15946, which Lipiński (Dieux et Déesses, 487) cites as the title of a hierodule, equivalent to Punic ‫ ]אמת =[ עמת‬in CIS 3776 (treated below). Schilling (La religion romaine, 239) sees evidence of a connection with Eryx in the mention of a “college” of Venerii at Sicca (CIL 15881/ ILS 5505 = Ben Abdullah, Catalogue, 140 no. 366: [statuam] Venerii), a name Finley (History of Sicily, 134) explains as a Roman appellation of the slaves belonging to the temple of Eryx. Cf. Ben Abdullah (Catalogue, 140), who identifies them as “membres du college chargé du culte de Vénus.” Is this the same body that Gilbert Charles-Picard (Les religions de l’afrique antique [Paris: Plon, 1954] 116) refers to when he writes “qu’il existait encore tardivement des esclaves de la déesse”? The late date of most of the Latin inscriptions bears note in attempts to trace Punic origins. 143.  The full text of the inscription is as follows: .‫[לרב]ת לתנת פן בעל ולאדן לבעלחמן אש נדרא ארשתב[ע]ל בת עמתמלקרת בת עבדמל‬ ‫עמת שעשתרת ארך‬

These inscriptions are generally dated to the third century BCE; note the use of ‫ ש‬for the genitive relationship. 144.  The mother’s name contains the same term for “female servant,” but this a common element in theophoric personal names, where it is found most frequently combined with the names of male deities (Frank L. Benz, Personal Names in the Phoenician and Punic Inscriptions [Studia Pohl 8; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1972] 226). Cf. the corresponding male term ‫ עבד‬in the mother’s patronymic ‫( עבדמלר‬and Benz, ibid., 225–27; on the misspelling ‫ מלר‬for ‫מלך‬, see ibid., 348). The CIS translator questioned whether “servant of Ashtart” described the mother or the daughter, since it follows the mother’s name. Lipiński (Dieux et Déesses, 488) understands both mother and daughter as hierodules of the sanctuary at Eryx and the Carthaginian matronyms (especially Arishutbaal, “desired object of Baal” or “de l’Époux [divin]”) as evidence of sacred prostitution at Carthage. Whether the name alone can sustain this interpretation seems problematic; Benz (Personal Names, 69) lists 19 occurrences of the name ‫ ארשתבעל‬and 71 of ‫ארשת‬. Lipiński offers no supporting argument, but simply adds (Dieux et Déesses, 488 n. 432) that Sicca Veneria was renown for its “rites of sacred prostitution” and surmises (following Ben Abdullah [Catalogue, 253 no. 5]) that it was probably from Sicca that the cult of the goddess of Eryx spread in North Africa—to Carthage (for which he cites CIL 8.24528), Vicus Augusti, Cirta, Madure, and Thibilis, all sites of Venus cults known from Latin inscriptions—and all lacking any reference to Eryx (except our text) or evidence of sacred prostitution. Elsewhere (p. 145) he cites “two Punic inscriptions” from Carthage as “attesting the presence of prostitutes consecrated to Ashtart of Eryx,” adding CIS 1.4910, an inscription in which the dedicator is identified as ‫ארשת בעלת ארך בת‬ ‫עזמלך‬, “Arishata lady of Eryx daughter of Ozmilki.”



Classical Sources in Constructions of Sacred Prostitution 141

of cultic activity directed to the goddess of Eryx. But a Latin inscription from Carthage (CIL 8.24528) records a dedication to “Venus Erycina,” confirming the presence of a daughter cult, or at least veneration of the Erycine goddess in Carthage, during the period of Roman occupation and suggesting a connection with the earlier testimony.145 The presence of a hierodule of Ashtart of Eryx in third-century BCE Carthage need not imply a sanctuary with hierodules in Carthage itself, since this is the period when Carthage lost control of Sicily, and Punic hierodules at Eryx might be expected to return to their homeland.146 But the loss of this popular sanctuary may well have prompted the founding of a daughter cult in the home territory.147 Whether the cult at Carthage was also characterized by hierodules, and whether they continued under Roman rule, is impossible to determine from our limited evidence. It may be that in Roman Carthage, from which most of our evidence derives, the cult of Venus Erycina, like the sister cult at Rome, did not include hierodules. That might account for Valerius’s specification of Punic matrons in describing the practice at Sicca. At both Sicca and Carthage, sexual activity associated with the goddess Ashtart or Venus is identified solely with Punic practice.148 Returning to Strabo’s account of the cult of Aphrodite at Eryx, it appears that although it lacks explicit reference to sexual activity, allusions to such activity are a recurrent feature of traditions concerning this site and the cult of Aphrodite/ Venus Erycina. What Eryx contributes to the reports of sacred prostitution in the ancient Mediterranean world is a westward extension of the area associated with the practice, and a multicultural site with a long history of veneration of a goddess characterized at some point by cult-related sexual activity.149 To what cultural layer or milieu does this association belong? Does it originate with the indigenous goddess, or is it an “oriental” trait, imported by the Phoenicians or Carthaginians who recognized their Ashtart in the goddess of Eryx? Or was it introduced by Cyprians, independently, through Phoenician intermediaries, or as part of the Hellenizing 145.  The text is not dated by Ben Abdullah (Catalogue, 253 no. 5), who describes it as inscribed on the base of a broken statuette dedicated in fulfillment of a vow: Veneri Erucinae Aug(ustae) s[ac(rum)]. 146.  Strabo emphasizes not only the abundance of hierodules at Eryx, but the fact that they were dedicated by “many people from abroad” (Geogr. 6.2.6). While this might simply refer to the widespread veneration of Erycine Aphrodite in the Hellenistic world, Carthaginians must also have dedicated their daughters to the sanctuary in Eryx during their control of the area. 147.  Whether at Sicca, as Ben Abdullah (Catalogue, 253) supposes, or at Carthage, where the only references to Eryx are found, can only be speculated. On the question of an Ashtart cult in the Phoenician colony independent of the Sicilian goddess, see below. 148.  Romanization of the cult might also account for the absence of sexual allusions in the tradition of the Anagogia, which is only attested in texts from the period following the Roman restoration of the temple at Eryx in the first century CE. One may surmise that the restoration did not include restoration of the hierodules, which had disappeared in Strabo’s time and did not follow the cult to Rome. 149.  Cf. Finley, History of Sicily, 135.

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Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

of the island culture that made Eryx one of the major sites of Cypro-Greek Aphrodite? Sicily, like Cyprus, was a place where eastern and western cultures met and intermingled. Thus the goddess of Eryx is identified with “the Cyprian” in an Adonis hymn from third-century BCE Egypt,150 endowed with hierodules like the Corinthian Aphrodite, and identified with doves/pigeons like numerous Aegean and Syro-Phoenician goddesses.151 The question of origins may be unanswerable, but the traditions of sexual activity associated with the cult appear to be a fitting expression of affinity with the goddess Aphrodite in one of her primary aspects. Concluding Assessment of Strabo as a Source for Sacred Prostitution

Perhaps the most important contribution of Strabo to the investigation of ancient sources for sacred prostitution is the number of cases he describes, coupled with the absence of unifying conception or language. It is clear that Strabo had no concept of sacred prostitution in the sense that Frazer or modern biblical scholars use the term, although he may have regarded prostitution by female hierodules as a feature of the cult of Aphrodite. He is also removed in time from most of the practices he describes; with the exception of his report on Pontic Comana, all of his accounts of the noteworthy sexual practices of foreigners are located in an otherwise undocumented and unrecoverable past. Nowhere but Comana do we gain access in his reports to actual contemporary practice, and what is reported for Comana is tantalizingly vague. Of further note, especially in view of the comprehensive aims of the Geography, is the absence of any reference to comparable practices in Palestine, Phoenicia, or Cyprus. This silence is especially surprising in the case of Cyprus, whose shoreline, major cities and points of interest he describes in detail, including references to four different Aphrodite sanctuaries (Geogr. 14.6.3).152 While he does mention 150. Theocratis, Id. 15.100 (where Aphrodite is addressed as “lover of Golgoi and Idalion and craggy Eryx”); see below, p. 151. Cf. Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, 75–76. Galinsky (74–75) argues that the closest parallels to the peculiarities of the Eryx cult are found on Cyprus, citing in particular her worship on altars under the open sky, attested at Paphos and described at Eryx by Aelian (N.A. 10.50). Erskine (Troy between Greece and Rome, 200 n. 7) also notes a Cyprian connection in Vergil’s account of Aeneas’s founding of the sanctuary at Eryx, in which he calls the goddess Venus Idalia (Aen. 5.759–60), alluding, Erskine suggests, both to Idalion on Cyprus and Mount Ida of the Troad. 151.  Schilling (La religion romaine, 236–37) notes that many fifth-century BCE coins contain representations of the goddess of Eryx “surrounded” by doves, and exhibits a coin showing the goddess holding a single dove (Pl. XXVII, 2 = Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily, and Rome, pl. 130, n. 132, above). The association with doves is so widespread that it is impossible to identify this feature with a particular goddess, much less as distinctive of “fertility goddesses.” 152.  These are the temple of Aphrodite Acraia on a peak called Olympos; a “rugged, high, trapezium-shaped” hill “sacred to Aphrodite” above the promontory Pedalium (presumably there was some sort of shrine there); “an ancient temple of the Paphian Aphrodite” at Palaipaphos; and a temple of Aphrodite and Isis at Soloi (founded by Athenians). Although he identifies the city and harbor of



Classical Sources in Constructions of Sacred Prostitution 143

an “ancient temple of the Paphian Aphrodite” at Palaipaphos (ancient Paphos), he makes no mention of sacred prostitution there, despite the fact that this is the explicit or assumed focus of references to the practice in Cyprus by all other writers. It can hardly be the case that Strabo was uninterested in religious practices and traditions associated with the site, since he reports founding traditions and noteworthy features relating to other sites, including the temple of Aphrodite Acraia, which, he says, “cannot be entered or seen by women” (Geogr. 14.6.3). He does report an annual procession on the road from Paphos to Palaipaphos involving “men together with women, who also assemble here from other cities.” But he provides no information about the occasion for the procession or the activity on arrival at the ancient temple. II. Further Sources by Regions Alleged witnesses to sacred prostitution, with or without the terminology of prostitution, mount in the first centuries of the Common Era, accounting for 12 of the 17 ancient “authorities” cited by Oden.153 Most concern practices in Phoenicia and Cyprus, with one Punic reference and two relating to Lydia. I begin with the Lydian references, both of which derive from extracts taken from earlier works and thus repeat earlier charges. Despite some novel features, these references to Lydian practices, like those already considered, lack any cultic associations.154 Lydia Athenaeus/Clearchus

Athenaeus of Naucratis (Egypt) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian who was active around 200 CE. His best-known work, The Deipnosophists, or “The Learned Citium (Kition), which was the main center of Phoenician settlement on the island, he mentions no temple there, or Phoenician connection, and he likewise reports nothing but the location of Amathus, noted in other sources for its Adonis-Aphrodite temple (e.g., Homer, Od. 11.327, and Pausanias, Descr. 9.41). 153.  Oden mentions “at least fifteen authors” (“Religious Identity,” 144) and “approximately fifteen sources” (145) as comprising the “full list” of ancient sources. He cites 17 ancient authors (141–44), of whom only Herodotus and Strabo involve multiple references. Most fall in the first to the fifth centuries CE, with only Herodotus, Strabo and the Epistle of Jeremiah in the period BCE. All are treated in this chapter. 154.  A possible exception occurs in a comparison with Cyprian custom. See below, pp. 144–45 and 176.

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Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

Banquet” (Deipnosophistai), is an example of symposium literature, containing excerpts from some 1,500 authors treating a great variety of topics, but especially “all the materials and accompaniments of convivial occasions.”155 The reference cited as evidence of sacred prostitution occurs in an excerpt from the third-century BCE writer Clearchus describing the Lydians’ love of luxury and their sexual perversions (Deipn. 12.515e–516c).156 It forms a postscript to an aetiological tale of sexual “outrages” (ὕβρις) describing the rise and rule of the mythical Lydian queen Omphale.157 According to this account, she avenged herself for the outrages previously done to her by forcing the virgin daughters of the slave masters to lie with their slaves in the very place where she had been “outraged” (12.516a). To this account Clearchus adds the following note: But it is not merely the women of Lydia who were allowed free range among all comers (οὐ μόνον δὲ Λυδῶν γυναῖκες ἄφετοι οὖσαι τοῖς ἐντυχοῦσιν), but also those of the Western Locrians,158 also those of Cyprus and of all tribes 155.  OCD 139 s.v. “Athenaeus”; cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanaeus_of_Naucratis. Citations below are from the Loeb edition of Charles Burton Gulick (Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, vol. 5 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963]). 156.  The excerpt is identified by Athenaeus as taken from the fourth book of Clearchus’s Lives. Clearchus was a Cyprian polymath, whose writings were “learned but sensational” and whose attacks on luxury reveal a Peripatetic background (OCD 199 s.v. “Clearchus”). The excerpted passage is itself composite, including two distinct etymologies for a place name (Gulick, The Deipnosophists, 5:321 n. a; n. c). Thus it already had the character of an assemblage of traditions about the Lydians. 157.  According to Clearchus, “they would gather the wives and maiden daughters of other men into the place called … the Place of Chastity, and there outrage them (ὕβριζον).” Continuing, he reports: And finally, after becoming thoroughly effeminate in their souls, they adopted women’s ways of living (καὶ τέλος τὰς ψυχὰς ἀποθηλυνθέντες ἠλλάξαντο τὸν τῶν γυναικῶν βίον), whence this way of life earned for them a woman tyrant (γυναῖκα τύραννον), one of those who had been outraged, named Omphale; she was the first to begin that punishment of the Lydians which they deserved. For the fact that they were ruled with outrage by a woman is a proof of their own violence [or, reading textual variant, “of the kind of life they lived” (Gulick, The Deipnosophists, 5:321 n. b)]. (Deipn. 12.515f) Cf. Munn, Mother of the Gods, 153, for an unconvincing attempt to relate this account to sacred marriage traditions. 158.  Gulick (The Deipnosophists, 5:321 n. 9) locates them in “south-eastern Italy.” The western Locrians are generally identified as the western branch of an ancient Greek tribe, situated on the Corinthian Gulf and separated from the eastern Locrians, on the eastern coast of Greece, by Mt. Parnassus. The western Locrians were represented as still a semi-barbarous people at the time of the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 1.5). Although they are reported to have lost their distinct identity after their defeat by Corinth, a Locrian colony was established in southern Italy in the seventh century BCE (“Locrians,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locrians). A tradition of vowed prostitution to Aphrodite by Italian Locrians is related by Justin (see below, p. 203).



Classical Sources in Constructions of Sacred Prostitution 145

in general which dedicated their daughters to prostitution (πάντων ἁπλῶς τῶν ἑταιρισμῶ τὰς ἑαυθτῶν κόρας ἀφοσιούντων);159 these cases seem to be, in point of fact, a reminder of some ancient outrage and revenge. (Deipn. 12.516b) This concluding generalization is striking for a number of reasons, especially when read in the context of the preceding account. First is the equation of sexual violence using women (to avenge sexual violence against women) with letting women loose, or as Gulick translates, “allowing women free range.”160 Second, and even more startling, is the further identification of the Lydian practice with the practice of “dedicating daughters to prostitution.” Linking traditions concerning the Lydians, which have no religious associations in any source, with a tradition that has been understood in modern times as distinctively religious necessarily raises the question of what these cases have in common. The answer appears to be socially sanctioned female promiscuity—whether as a sign of “national” culture and character, or as a feature of a particular cult.161 What the author finds noteworthy, and abhorrent, in all of these cases is the abrogation of the “normal” gender rules that dictate male control of female sexual activity. Such violation of gender norms can only be explained, he suggests, as revenge for some earlier sexual outrage. The new note in this passage, especially within its larger context, is the persistent note of violence—associated with luxury and an effeminate male lifestyle, and revealing an underlying fear of an order in which men’s honor and authority is threatened. 159.  The Greek lacks “tribes” and is not in the past tense. See Budin, Myth, 213–18. 160.  ἄφετος, “let loose,” “ranging at large” (LSJ 286). 161.  Oden and others who fail to connect this generalizing note to the preceding account likewise fail to note the tensions within the passage and treat the religious association as the defining element. Thus Oden describes this passage as “a piece of symposium literature … [which] repeats the charge that the Lydians and the Cyprians both give up their daughters to prostitution as part of a sacred rite” (“Religious Identity,” 142, assuming that his citation of Deipn. 12.515d [n. 36, p. 190] intends 12.516d; emphasis added). Oden reads the religious motive of the Cyprians back onto the Lydians (while ignoring the Locrians), while Gulick (The Deipnosophists 5:321 n. d) extends the analogy by citing Hist. 1.199 for “similar Babylonian customs” (emphasis added); he also compares Plato, Rep. 589e (selling a son or daughter as slaves). Cf. Budin, Myth, 215–17, who does set this passage in the light of the whole preceding paragraph—and argues that what the three areas had in common was “a story of violent sexual impropriety (rape or otherwise) that found vengeance in the violent rape or enforced sexual impropriety of women/girls” (217). This interpretation is based on an analysis of a tradition concerning an incident of rape and vengeance among the Locrians that is reported, with variations, by four different authors: Clearchus himself (Athenaeus, Deip. 12.541c–e), Strabo (Geog. 6.1.8), Aelian (V.H. 9.8) and Justin (21.3, treated below) (Budin, Myth, 212–28); but it does not fit any tradition concerning the Cyprians. Budin’s translation of Clearchus’s phrase comparing the three groups as “all those expiating their own girls by ‘companionship’” (213) is not compelling.

146

Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

This passage attests a belief in some Greek-speaking circles of the third century BCE that a practice of “dedicating daughters to prostitution” was common to a number of peoples, with Cyprus and Sicily providing the prime examples.162 It also points to an understanding of this practice as concerned primarily with the surrender of male control over daughters’ sexual activity,163 with or without a religious motive. In the final analysis it is the men’s behavior that is viewed as problematic, not the women’s. As in other reports on the Lydians, a broader theme of exchange or inversion of gender roles is also present here.164 Language of prostitution is not used to describe any of the Lydian actions; it appears only in the added generalization, as haetairism.165 Aelian

The Historical Miscellany or Varia Historia (Ποικίλη ἱστορία) of Claudius Aelianus (ca. 170–235 CE) is a collection of excerpts and anecdotes, containing, among other things, biographical sketches, pithy maxims, and descriptions of natural wonders and strange local customs, largely derived from intermediate sources.166 Composed in Rome in the first decades of the third century CE by a Roman pontifex and teacher of rhetoric, it was written in Greek for a cultivated audience nostalgic for the lost glory of Greece.167 The passage cited as evidence of sacred prostitution occurs in a series of abbreviated reports of the peculiar customs of various peoples, beginning with the Lucanians and ending with the Lydians.168 The report on the Lydians is as follows:

162.  The formulation of this extension (“and all generally”) suggests a belief that there must be a whole class of peoples who practice this custom, providing a foundation for the kind of generalizing that has characterized modern discussions of sacred prostitution. 163.  Note the emphatic possessive pronoun: τὰς ἑαυτῶν κόρας: “their (own) daughters.” 164.  Here a woman tyrant, “feminized” men, and women “ranging free”; in Strabo (above), Lydian women choosing their own spouses. 165.  Cf. (κατα)πορνευειν in Herodotus and Strabo. 166.  Nigel Guy Wilson, transl. and ed., Aelian, Historical Miscellany (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), “Introduction,” 10–12; cf. OCD 13 s.v. “Aelianus [1]”; and http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudius_Aelianus. According to Wilson, a particularly close relationship is apparent between Aelian and Athanaeus, which suggests borrowing (with simplification) from the Deipnosophists, though some believe both were drawing on a common source. 167.  OCD 13; Wilson, Historical Miscellany, 1–3. 168.  There appears to be no common theme, or value judgment. Thus in his first four entries Aelian reports that a law in Lucania decrees punishment for anyone who fails to offer hospitality for a traveler arriving after sunset, that the Dardanians are washed only three times in the course of their lives, that the Indians do not lend money, and that it was a custom in Sardinia for the children of aged parents to beat them to death with clubs (V.H. 4.1).



Classical Sources in Constructions of Sacred Prostitution 147

It was the custom (ἔθος) in Lydia for the women to live as courtesans (ἑταιρεῖν)169 before setting up house with their husbands; once married, they behaved correctly (σωφρονεῖν170). The woman who misbehaved (ἁμαρτάνουσαν) with another man had no chance of being forgiven. (V.H. 4.1)171 The report combines the language of Athenaeus/Clearchus (ἑταιρεῖν, as in Deipn. 12.516b) with a theme from Herodotus’s account of the Mylitta custom (emphasis on the women’s faithfulness after marriage, Hist. 1.199). But the latter note is detached from its context in the Babylonian logos, having no cultic associations.172 Aelian’s source(s) cannot be determined with any certainty, and he gives no new information about sacred prostitution—in fact, no information on the subject at all. What is new here is the transfer of an interpretive motif from the cultic practice of Babylon to the marital customs of the Lydians: premarital “prostitution” rids the women of any tendency to promiscuity and guarantees marital fidelity. Syria/Phoenicia Lucian of Samosata

One of the most important sources for the interpretation of the religion of ancient Syria is a second-century “travelogue” known as The Syrian Goddess (De Syria dea) and attributed to the satirist and rhetorician Lucian of Samosata (ca. 120–after 180 CE).173 The greater part of the account is devoted to the history of the temple 169.  Lit. “be a companion to men” (ἀνδράσιν ἑταιρεῖν). 170.  LSJ 1751: “be sound of mind; show self-control; come to one’s senses.” 171.  Text and translation from Wilson, Historical Miscellany. 172.  Aelian does not appear to draw on Herodotus directly, since his one report of Babylonian customs, in this same paragraph of Book 4, is an account of the bride sale of Hist. 1.93, succinctly formulated as follows: “The Assyrians collect in one city all the girls of marriageable age and announce a sale. Each man takes away as his bride the one he has bought” (V.H. 4.1). 173.  OCD 621 s.v. “Lucian”; Harold W. Attridge and Robert A. Oden, Jr., trans. and ed., The Syrian Goddess (De Dea Syria) Attributed to Lucian (SBLTT 9, Graeco-Roman Religion Series 1; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976) 1–3; Stark, “Kultprostitution,”18. On the disputed attribution to Lucian, see Oden (Studies in Lucian’s De Syria dea [HSM 15; Missoula, MT: Scholars Press for Harvard Semitic Museum, 1977] 4–46), who points to evidence of intimate knowledge of the Hierapolis cult (Lucian was a native of the region) and clear evidence of satire in the work (Lucian was a well-known satirist). Cf. Wolf Wilhelm Baudissin, “Die Quellen für eine Darstellung der Religion der Phönizier und der Aramäer” (ARW 16 [1913]) 414. The most important study of this work, and the only full commentary, is that of J. L. Lightfoot, Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), which came to my attention only after I had completed this section. I have

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Harlot or Holy Woman? A Study of Hebrew Qedešah

and description of the religious rites of Hierapolis in Northern Syria. This is prefaced by a report on other “Syrian” temples and an introductory word on the origins of religion in Egypt and “Assyria.”174 Although most of these temples are identified with Astarte or Aphrodite, Lucian’s sole reference to a practice interpreted as sacred prostitution is located at Byblos, where it is associated with mourning rites for Adonis, an association unique to this site—and this source. I cite the passage in full, because it plays a key role in Frazer’s reconstruction of the ritual context of sacred prostitution, and is one of the most frequently cited sources.175 I did see, however, in Byblos a great sanctuary of Aphrodite of Byblos in which they perform the rites (ὄργια) of Adonis, and I learned about the rites.176 They say, at any rate, that what the boar did to Adonis occurred in their territory. As a memorial of his suffering each year they beat their breasts, mourn, and celebrate the rites. Throughout the land they perform solemn lamentations. When they cease their breast-beating and weeping, they first sacrifice to Adonis as if to a dead person, but then, on the next day, they proclaim that he lives and send him into the air.177 They also shave their heads, as do the Egyptians when Apis dies. The women who refuse to shave (γυναικῶν δὲ ὁκόσαι οὐκ ἐθέλουσι ξυρέεσθαι178) pay this penalty (ζημίην): introduced notes from Lightfoot’s work into my discussion, but was unable to recast my account to integrate her contributions more fully. On the question of Lucianic authorship, see her review and assessment of arguments (184–221). 174.  Lucian begins by identifying himself as an Assyrian (Syr. d. 1), a term used broadly in antiquity for the region from Syria to Babylonia, and declares that what he relates he learned firsthand, or from priests concerning what happened before his time. He then presents the generally held view that the Egyptians were the first to form a conception of gods, establish sanctuaries, and tell sacred tales, but reports that the Assyrians soon learned from them and began to build temples, being the first to install images in them (Syr. d. 2). In Syria too, he maintains, there are sanctuaries almost as old as the Egyptian ones, most of which he claims to have seen. His catalogue begins with a temple of Heracles [Milqart/Baal] at Tyre (Syr. d. 3), followed by a “great sanctuary in Phoenicia” belonging to the Sidonians, who say it is a temple of Astarte. Lucian suggests that the goddess is really Selene [moon goddess], but relates a variant tradition identifying her as Europa (Syr. d. 4). He next reports that the Phoenicians have another “large and ancient” sanctuary, which he has not seen and which is “not Assyrian but Egyptian,” having come from Heliopolis [in Egypt] (Syr. d. 5)—presumably a reference to the prominent temple of Jupiter at Heliopolis (Baalbek). His account of the Byblos temple follows (6), together with additional traditions relating to Adonis and Osiris (7–8) and a concluding note on a visit to a sanctuary of Aphrodite in the Lebanon (9). 175.  The text and translation are cited from Attridge and Oden, Syrian Goddess, 13–15. Variants are noted where relevant from Lightfoot’s translation and new critical edition of the text (on the text, see Lightfoot, Syrian Goddess, 222–45). 176.  Lightfoot, ibid., 251: “I also learnt the rites.” 177.  On this most commented upon feature of the account, which has no parallel in the Greek Adonis rites but appears to reflect Tammuz and/or Osiris traditions, see ibid., 309–19. 178.  ξυρέεσθαι: typographical error? Cf. Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 250): ξύρεσθαι.



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For a single day they stand offering their beauty for sale (ἐπὶ πρήσει τῆς ὥρης ἵστανται). The market (ἀγορὴ), however, is open to foreigners (ξείνοισι) only and the payment becomes an offering to Aphrodite (ὁ μισθὸς ἐς τὴν Ἀφροδίτην θυσίη γίγνεται).179 (Syr. d. 6) The final segment of this account bears a striking resemblance to Herodotus’s description of the women at the Aphrodite (Mylitta) temple in Babylon,180 but here the practice is linked to mourning rites for Adonis. The linkage, however, appears tenuous and secondary.181 The women’s action is interpreted as a penalty (ζημίη)182 for not observing the normal mourning practices and has no symbolic role in the cult, and the gift to Aphrodite, who is mentioned here for the first time,183 is completely unmotivated. The practice also makes no sense in an annual ritual, since women could not be expected to shave their heads annually. In fact, Lucian’s entire description of the mourning rites at Byblos makes no specific mention of women, except in the Herodotean allusion. Rather, the references appear to be to the general population—despite the fact that women are elsewhere identified as the sole or primary participants in Adonis mourning rituals.184 Lucian’s interest here appears to be the “resuscitation” of Adonis (the focus of most later commentary) and other 179.  Lightfoot (ibid., 250–51) reads θωϊὴ for θυσίη and translates “their fee becomes forfeit to Aphrodite.” 180.  Like Herodotus, Lucian does not specify the age or marital state of the women, although the use of ὡρη (“beauty,” “springtime”) suggests youth—a factor, perhaps, in interpretations that view this as a reference to a pre-nuptial rite (see below). 181.  The reference to head shaving, a sign of mourning, is separated from the reference to breast-beating and weeping and follows the account of rejoicing on the following day. It appears as an addendum, which serves either as a link to the notice concerning the women’s practice (an unparalleled association) or as an introduction to the following paragraph which continues the theme of the Egyptian connection of the Byblian Adonis rites with a report of a miraculous “proof ” (Syr. D. 8). The entire account of the Byblos rites is focused on Adonis and associations with Osiris. 182.  Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 251): “fine.” 183.  Although the Adonis rites are said to take place in the temple of Byblian Aphrodite (ἱρὸν Ἀφροδίτης Βυβλίης ἐν τῳ καὶ τὰ ὄργια ἐς Ἄδωνιν ἐπιτελέουσιν), no mention is made of the goddess’s role in any of the activity. 184.  The plural verbs continue throughout the paragraph without an expressed subject, until the disjunctive γυναικῶν δὲ ὁκόσαι. There is no indication in Lucian’s entire account of Adonis rites at Byblos that mourning for Adonis was, or included, a specifically female practice—in contrast to Mesopotamian and biblical traditions of Tammuz rites, with which it is often identified. One could argue that Lucian assumed that this was a well-known female rite, requiring no specification, and the location of the Adonis rites in the temple of Aphrodite might be understood to indicate that the participants were women, but such an assumption also creates problems (see below). In paragraph 8, Lucian refers to the reddening of the water in the river as a “signal for lamentations to the inhabitants of Byblos (τοῖς Βυβλίοις, lit. Byblians [m.pl.]).” Cf. Lightfoot, Syrian Goddess, 306: “there is nothing here about another famous feature of the Greek god’s rites, their special association with (if not restriction to) women.”

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“miraculous” occurrences associated with the celebration (Syr. d. 7, 8), as well as claims to be the original site of the events behind the legend of Adonis’s death, and connections with Egyptian Apis (Osiris) rites. Sacred prostitution plays no role in Adonis rites elsewhere. How then is this account to be assessed? Commentary on this passage as evidence of sacred prostitution has typically isolated the women’s sexual service from the larger account or attempted to explain the connection with head shaving in terms of “alternative” forms of offering or sacrifice. Thus Frazer, positing an earlier requirement that every woman “sacrifice her virtue in the service of religion,” suggested that a mitigating practice developed in which “the offering of a woman’s hair was accepted as an equivalent for the surrender of her person.”185 But shaving the head in mourning is not an offering, or a sacrifice.186 And it is not a woman’s practice.187 Instead, mourning women in the Levant from Greece to Egypt are described, and depicted, as unbinding their locks so they hang loose and long—and loosening their garments to bare their breasts. Exactly this action is described in a third century BCE account of a Greek Adonia in Alexandria. In Idyll 15 of the Sicilian poet Theocritus,188 the author portrays two Alexandrian women (of Syracusan origins) in their preparations and attendance of an Adonis celebration 185. Frazer, GB IV/1:38; cf. his opening recapitulation of Lucian’s report: “Women who refused to sacrifice their hair had to give themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival.” His theory of hair magic and hair offerings is developed elsewhere, in The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings (= GB I) 1:30–34 (cited at GB IV/1:38 n. 3). Frazer’s argument ignores the mourning context of the head shaving and makes the sexual service the primary obligation, with the hair “offering” a concession to desire for a less demanding alternative. Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 324) alone of interpreters surveyed notes the incongruity in this connection, describing the Byblian prostitution as “bizarrely presented as a penalty imposed on those women who do not want to have their heads shaved, that is in lieu of a mourning rite.” See Clemen, “Miszellen,” 87–95 for a wide-ranging, but dated, review of interpretations of this text, including interpretations of hair offerings and “sacrifice”/“consecration” of virginity as prenuptial rites. 186.  Lucian is familiar with hair-offering rituals—as a premarital practice in Hierapolis in which he himself participated. As Lucian describes the practice (Syr. d. 60), it is clearly distinct from the head-shaving associated with mourning: “The young men make an offering of their beards, while the young women [Lightfoot, Syrian Goddess, 281: ‘youths’] let their ‘sacred locks’ grow from birth and when they finally come to the temple thy cut them,” placing them in containers that they nail to the temple. “When I was still a youth,” Lucian adds, “I, too, performed this ceremony and even now my locks and name are in the sanctuary.” See ibid., 281, 531–36, for problems of text and interpretation. 187.  Cf. Oden, “Religious Identity,” 142, who appears to make women the subject of the whole account—while displacing the activity (inadvertently) to Hierapolis. Thus he writes: “In the Syrian Goddess, a second-century A.D. text … descriptive of the religious rites at the city of Hierapolis near the Euphrates River, we read that the women of the city ‘shave their heads, as do the Egyptians when Apis dies’” (emphasis added). The quotation, which continues to the end of the paragraph, is correctly attributed to Syr. d. 6 in the bibliographical note (190 n. 34). 188.  The work is published as “The Women at the Adonis-Festival” in the Loeb Library edition of J. M. Edmonds (The Greek Bucolic Poets [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960] 175–95). Cf. A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus, edited with a Translation and Commentary (2 vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), and Anna Rist, The Poems of Theocritus, Translated with Introductions (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1978).



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held by the queen in the palace courtyard.189 In the “dirge” (actually a marriage hymn) that accompanies the tableau of the marriage scene, the female singer addressees Aphrodite as “lover of Golgoi and Idalion and craggy Eryx” (Id. 15.100), and also as “Cypris, Dione’s daughter” (l. 106).190 Continuing with a description of the marriage bed, offerings, canopies of greenery, and “coverlets which enwrap the effigies of Adonis and Aphrodite,”191 the hymn climaxes with the nuptial embrace,192 and concludes with an evocation of the scene on the following day: Ah, no sooner shall the dew at dawn have fallen tomorrow, but in cortège forth we’ll bear him to where the waves disgorge upon the shore: hair unpinned, robes let fall to the ankle, breasts bared, we’ll raise the shrill dirge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Be gracious, dear Adonis: till next year. Adonis, our love waits on your return. (Id. 15.132–36, 145–46)193 It is clear from this composition, in which the celebration of the Adonia forms the setting for a domestic sketch, that women were the primary participants—and that the mourning rites did not entail shaving their heads, but rather “unpinning” their hair. But men’s participation is also attested in this female-centered composition, as armed escorts of the male god (ll. 6, 51) and as spectators. It is also evidenced by a roughly contemporary papyrus from the Fayyum recording household expenses for the days of the festival. These included a barber’s fee six times the normal amount—suggesting a special ritual shaving, and pointing specifically to a male devotee.194 189.  Internal evidence points to the reign of Ptolemy II and the period ca. 275–270 BCE. There is no reference to a temple as the locus for any of the ceremonies. Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 306) notes that Lucian’s location of the Adonis rites within the temple was “unlike the Greek rites,” where the cult was unofficial and mostly took place in private houses.” 190.  Gow (Theocritus, 1:117) notes that Golgi and Idalium were Cyprian seats of Aphrodite worship and surmises that Eryx may have been named as the opposite extremity of the goddess’s domain—and famed for its founding by Aphrodite’s own sons (2:292–93; see above, n. 118). However, the Sicilian Theocritus may have had personal reasons for these identifications, or at least the evocation of Eryx. 191. Edmonds, Greek Bucolic Poets, 175. 192.  “Lovely Adonis.… / Cypris holds him: his rosy arms are round her; / eighteen or nineteen years of age the bridegroom: / his kisses prick not; the down on his lips is golden. / And now fare Cypris well: she has her man” (Id. 15.127–31 [Rist, Poems, 142]). Cf. Gow (Theocritus, 1:119): “And now farewell to Cypris as she clasps her lover.” 193. Rist, Poems, 142 (emphasis added). 194.  Ibid., 135; see Gow, Theocritus, 2:262–64, for the text of the papyrus together with detailed discussion.

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This evidence of Greek Adonis rites in Egypt differs from Lucian’s account of the Byblian rites in assuming a day of feasting (celebrating the nuptials) preceding the day of mourning, and knows no “resurrection.” But it does attest male participation, including shaving of the head, and female participation in the mourning ritual characterized by loosened locks. In light of this corroboration of common mourning practices in the Adonis cult, it is difficult to see Lucian’s introduction of the women’s “alternative service” at Byblos as anything but an import from a distinct tradition, and more specifically a paraphrase and parody of Herodotus. In fact, clues to such a reading abound in the composition and are favored by Lucian’s reputation as a satirist.195 The paragraphs following the account of the sex market for foreigners are obvious examples of the genre—and equally evocative of Herodotus’s style. Paragraph 7 reports that “some inhabitants of Byblos . . . say that the Egyptian Osiris is buried among them,” recounting the evidence they offer in support of this claim. “Each year,” he reports, “a head comes from Egypt to Byblos, making the voyage in seven days, and the winds carry it by divine guidance.” Declaring this “quite miraculous (σύμπαν θωῦμα),” Lucian adds “indeed, it happened while I was present in Byblos and I saw the ‘Byblian’ head.”196 The following paragraph (Syr. d. 8) is even more reminiscent of Herodotus in reporting differing local interpretations for “another marvel (ἄλλο θωῦμα)” in the land of Byblos, when each year a river from the Lebanon becomes blood red, signaling the time for the lamentations to begin. The inhabitants, Lucian reports, “tell the story (μυθέονται) that on these days Adonis is being wounded up on Mt. Lebanon and his blood . . . goes into the water.” But, he adds, “a certain man of Byblos, who seemed to me to be telling the 195.  See Oden, Studies, 16–24, for identification of the “dozen or more examples of satire so glaring that to ignore them is to give a forced reading of the text” (16). More specifically he adds that “beyond cataloging transparent examples of humor in the D. S. D … the work is best read along with Herodotus. The verbal and thematic parallels … are many and striking.” See further evidence and arguments below. As striking as the Herodotean parallels and other examples of satire assembled by Oden is the absence of the Byblian women’s sexual service from his list. 196.  Wolf Wilhelm Baudissin (Adonis und Esmun: eine Untersuchung zur Geschichte des Glaubens an Auferstehungsgötter und an Heilgötter [Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1911] 186), who describes Lucian’s testimony as presented “mit spöttischem Ernste,” explains the statement as an “ironic pun” in which the Greek expression κεφαλὴν Βυβλίην can be understood either as “head that came from Byblos” or “the head made of papyrus (βύβλος)”; cf. Austin Morris Harmon, trans. and ed., Lucian with an English Translation, vols. 3, 4 (LCL; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960, 1961) 3:343 n. 4; Attridge and Oden, Syrian Goddess, 15 n. 1. This is not the only pun in the paragraph, according to Oden (Studies, 18–19), who argues that the phrase σύμπαν θωῦμα “carries both the meaning ‘totally miraculous’ and also ‘quite a deception’” (LSJ 785: θαῦμα as “wonder” and “trick”). Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 326–27) finds the placement and syntax of the adjective odd and the point of the pun unclear, preferring to interpret the term as a marginal variant from the line below that intruded into the text. On the traditions behind Lucian’s account and the connections between Adonis and Osiris, see Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun, 185–202, and, for a recent assessment, Lightfoot, Syrian Goddess, 305–23.



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truth (ἀληθέα δοκέων λέγειν), recounted another reason for the phenomenon,” namely that the strong winds deposited the red soil in the river. Nevertheless, he concludes, “even if his version is correct, I consider the chance intervention of the wind quite divine.”197 The echoes of Herodotus in Lucian’s “travelogue” have been long recognized, though variously assessed. And Lucian’s opinion of the “Father of History” is stated explicitly in one of his satirical dialogs entitled The Lover of Lies, or the Doubter (Φιλοψευδὴς ἢ ἀπιστῶν), in which Herodotus heads his list of “men of renown, who made use of the written lie, so that they not only deceived those who listened to them then, but transmitted the falsehood from generation to generation even down to us, conserved in the choicest of diction and rhythm.”198 In De syria dea, Herodotean parody, or at least imitation, is signaled by the language of the composition. As A. M. Harmon notes, it was not written in Lucian’s customary Attic, but in the Ionic dialect, “after the manner of Herodotus, which Lucian counterfeits so cleverly and parodies so slyly that many have been unwilling to recognize him as the author.”199 In view of this recognition of parody that targets Herodotus specifically, it is noteworthy that neither Harmon nor Oden identify the account of the Byblian women’s penalty for refusing to shave their heads as an example, despite the unmistakable allusion to Hist. 1.199.200 Searching out subtle linguistic and stylistic parallels, they are blind to this glaring example. It would appear that sacred prostitution with its canonical texts, including De Syria dea 6, was so much a “given” that this account could not be submitted to the same linguistic and literary analysis as the surrounding text. The isolation of the passage within the larger account,

327.

197.  For the method of argumentation and its Herodotean model, see Lightfoot, ibid., 168–70,

198. Harmon, Lucian 3:321–23. I am indebted to Stark (“Kultprostitution,”18 n. 66) for calling my attention to this text. Cf. Lucian’s Herodotus or Aëtion (Loeb edition of K. Kilburn, Lucian [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959] 6:143–51) for a parody on Herodotus’s fame. 199. Harmon, Lucian 4:337 (introduction to “The Goddesse of Surrye”). See Oden, Studies, 21, for others who recognized the author of De Syria dea as “exaggerating and thus parodying the methods, eccentricities and language of Herodotus,” including Jakob Burckhardt (Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen [1853]), and Francis G. Allinson (Lucian: Satirist and Artist [Boston: Marshall Jones, 1926]). The latter describes The Syrian Goddess as “flaunting her oriental nakedness through the diaphanous Ionic dress,” with “touches of humor that suggest a deliberate satire on the naïveté of Herodotus” (120). Lightfoot is less inclined to find parody in Lucian’s mimicry of Herodotus, citing differences of genre (here a type of ethnography) as a factor in the use of satire, and she insists that recognition of parody does not ipso facto impugn the evidential value of the report of cultic practices (Syrian Goddess, 86–87). Her entire study, however, is conceived as an investigation of the “Herodotean imitation” in the treatise (characterized as “a periegetical text that sets out to imitate the dialect, language, style, and mannerism of Herodotus,” ix) and is characterized by constant comparisons with the Father of History. 200.  Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 325) notes the dependence, but focuses on the question of underlying local practice. See below.

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as well as in critical commentary, is noteworthy. Although Lucian is intent on exposing all of the curious and outrageous religious customs of his Syrian countrymen and women, especially those associated with the goddess of Hierapolis, the Byblian account is his sole reference to a practice understood as sacred prostitution.201 That is especially striking in view of the fact that he reports on another Aphrodite sanctuary in the region (Aphaca, Syr. d. 9) without mention of cultic practices, although later tradition viewed it as the site of lewd sexual rites.202 And he provides no details of rites or deity for the sanctuary at Heliopolis (Syr. d. 5), despite the identification of the city in later sources as a site of sacred prostitution associated with Aphrodite.203 Oden suggests that this silence is pregnant; both texts, he argues, are examples of Lucianic parody of “Herodotus’s habit of dropping the discussion of religious customs mid-stream” and thereby upsetting the audience’s expectations.”204 But the earliest mention we have of sexual rites at both Aphaca and Heliopolis is by Eusebius in the fourth century CE, more than a century after Lucian. And neither of Lucian’s brief notices in paragraphs 5 and 9 appears to “drop . . . the discussion of religious customs mid-stream” or display “reticence concerning those customs about which the audience has been made to feel most eager to learn more.”205 Even if the practices reported by later authors were known to Lucian, however, one 201.  Thus Lucian, a native of the region, clearly does not associate sacred prostitution with “oriental goddesses” in general, or with Atargatis (the goddess of Hierapolis) in particular. 202.  The site is unnamed in Lucian’s account, which reads as follows: “Then I went up into the Lebanon, a day’s journey from Byblos, upon learning that an ancient sanctuary (ἀρχαῖον ἱρὸν) of Aphrodite, which Cinyras founded, was there. I saw the sanctuary, and it was an ancient one” (Syr. d. 9). While Cinyras is connected with the cult of Aphrodite in Paphos (see below, on Cyprus), other traditions make him king of Byblos, a city sacred to Adonis (Strabo, Geogr. 16.2.18), understood as Cinyras’s son. It is likely that Lucian’s interest in the site is motivated by his desire to confirm the origins of the Adonis legend in this location (cf. Syr. d. 8). 203.  See below on Eusebius, Socrates, and Sozomen. The full text is as follows: “The Phoenicians have yet another sanctuary, not Assyrian but Egyptian, which came to Phoenicia from Heliopolis. I have not seen it, but it is both large and ancient.” Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 303) notes that this non-coastal city was the only one not written into Greek mythology and that it received few visitors in antiquity from further than the Bekaa. Lucian’s admission of lack of first-hand knowledge has the effect, she suggests, of enhancing the reader’s faith in his visits to Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos. The claim to antiquity is an apologetic one; the great sanctuary of Heliopolis was the temple of Jupiter, constructed in the first three centuries CE. And the city itself seems to have been founded only in Hellenistic times (NIDB 1:370–71, s.v. “Baalbek”), though the modern name of the nearby city Baalbek points to a tradition of worship of Syrian Baal in the area, and with him presumably Anat or Ashtart. On the question of Egyptian connections and Phoenician influences on the triad of deities associated with the site, see Lightfoot, ibid., 302–5, and below. 204. Oden, Studies, 22, 19–20, citing Harmon on Syr. d. 5 (Lucian 4:349 n. 1): “Lucian’s amusing reticence is by way of parody on Herodotus, and derives its point from the fact that his reader, knowing the reputation of the place (Euseb., Vit. Constant. 3, 55), is all agog to hear about it.” 205. Oden, Studies, 22 (emphasis added). Lightfoot finds no withholding of details in these references, and notes the conventional language and interest (namely, asserting the antiquity of the sites).



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would have to conclude that he understood them as distinct from the prostitution he reports at Byblos during the Adonis rites. We are left with an account of a major Aphrodite temple in Phoenicia where Adonis rites were celebrated and Egyptian connections emphasized. With the reference to the women’s service to Aphrodite, Lucian has introduced a connection to “Assyrian” rites as well, rites known from the great Aphrodite temple of Babylon.206 Byblos is the only religious site in Phoenicia whose rites are described by Lucian,207 and while Adonis-Osiris traditions dominate his treatment,208 the presence there of a major temple identified with Aphrodite provided an opportunity to align the cult of the Phoenician goddess with its Babylonian prototype as described by Herodotus. But how could the theme of sacred prostitution, which defined the Eastern cult, be combined with a mourning rite? Clearly Lucian does not conceive the practice as part of the nuptials that precede the mourning in some Greek celebrations of the Adonia (Theoc. 15.100–128). The notion of a penalty for refusing to submit to a mourning practice is “bizarre,” as Lightfoot rightly observes; but the notion of sexual service to a stranger as a penalty is not so far removed from Herodotus’s construal of the act as a universal obligation that was clearly onerous for many women forced to remain on public display for many days. Lucian humanely limits the service to one day—and although he relates it, obliquely, to the mourning ritual, he removes it from the temple precinct to the marketplace, maintaining the religious connection only through the dedication of the earnings. Surely this is a case of Herodotean parody.209 Lucian’s reference to prostitution in honor of Aphrodite at Byblos is the sole source for sacred prostitution at this site, and in view of its obvious dependence on Herodotus’s Hist. 1.199, no underlying local practice is required to account for the report.210 The Byblian Aphrodite is a faithful representative of her Babylonian 206.  Cf. para. 2. 207.  It is worth noting that the other site that receives extended treatment, Sidon (Syr. d. 4), is identified with a distinct goddess (Astarte/Selene/Europa) and cult. Lucian, unlike Frazer, knows of no all-embracing Great Mother Goddess, worshipped under different names, but having a common cult characterized by sacred prostitution, and he does not identify Aphrodite with Astarte. 208.  Strabo (Geogr. 16.2.8) calls Byblos “sacred to Adonis” (Lightfoot, Syrian Goddess, 307 n. 12). On Adonis’s associations with Byblos and relation to the temple there, see ibid., 306–9. 209.  See now Bird, “Lucian’s Last Laugh: The Origins of ‘Sacred Prostitution’ at Byblos,” in “My Spirit at Rest in the North Country”(Zechariah 6.8): Collected Communications to the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010 (ed. Hermann Michael Niemann and Matthias Augustin; BEATAJ 57; Frankfurt: Lang, 2011) 203–12. 210.  Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 325) speculates that Lucian “includes sacred prostitution as a Greek ethnographical sine qua non in writing about the Near East,” noting that he had the “notorious part-precedent of Herodotus’s Babylon (1.199).” Although she cites Walter Burkert’s view of literary dependence (n. 86; Burkert, “Herodot als Historiker fremder Religionen,” in Hérodote et les peoples non grecs: neuf exposés suivis de discussions [ed. Giuseppe Nenci and Olivier Reverdin; Entretiens sur l’Antique Classique 35; Geneva: Fondation Hardt, 1990] 24 n. 54), she focuses her attention on the “bizarre causal connection” between mourning rites and prostitution, arguing that the lack of a

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prototype—and Lucian relates no local traditions about the goddess, in contrast to his treatment of Sidonian Astarte.211 All other accounts of sacred prostitution in Syria/Phoenicia relate to Heliopolis or Aphaca, or refer to “Phoenicia” in general; and all date from the fourth and fifth centuries CE. The earliest is from Eusebius, who appears to be the source for at least some of the subsequent reports. Eusebius of Caesarea

Eusebius (ca. 260–340 CE) is best known for his Ecclesiastical History, but it is his Life of Constantine (Vita Constantini [VC], ca. 339), a combination of panegyric and narrative history, that is the source of his most commonly cited references to activity understood as sacred prostitution.212 The two accounts relate to Aphaca and Heliopolis, and both have forerunners in Eusebius’s earlier works. The paragraph on Aphaca is part of a segment lifted from a eulogy, In Praise of Constantine (De Laudibus Constantini [LC]), delivered on the thirtieth anniversary of the emperor’s reign (335 CE); and a distinct account of sacred prostitution at Heliopolis appears in a treatise on the incarnation, Theophania (dated between 325 and 335).213 None of the accounts cite sources for the reported activity or contain first-person references, although they are generally assumed to rest on Eusebius’s own knowledge of customs in his native region. While the date and place of his birth are unknown, he is presumed to have been a native of Palestine, having studied under Pamphilus at Caesarea, where he was appointed bishop ca. 314. Aphaca (VC 3.55.1–5; LC 8.4–8) Book 3 of the Life of Constantine opens with a summary of Constantine’s pro-Christian policies and continues with an account of the Council of Nicea, Constantine’s program of church building and campaign against pagan cults, literary model does not guarantee that the account is invention, rather than “some version of the truth, however misunderstood or deformed.” Her survey of other references to sacred prostitution, however, emphasizes common themes that are absent in this case. The anomaly of this account among other sources, and its clear dependence on Herodotus, distinguish this account. 211.  Cf. also his note on the founding of the Aphrodite temple at Aphaca, which links it to local myth. 212.  Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall, Eusebius: Life of Constantine; Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1999) v, 1–39. 213.  This work was preserved only in fragments in Greek, but is complete in a Syriac translation of the early fifth century, first published in 1843 (Samuel Lee, trans. and ed., Eusebius, On the Theophania or Divine Manifestation of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: Translated with Notes and a Preliminary Dissertation [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1843]). The Syriac manuscript, dated 411 CE, is the sole copy, and Lee’s original publication the only English translation. Cf. Hugo Gressmann, trans. and ed., Eusebius Werke, III.2: Die Theophanie: Die griechischen Bruchstücke und Übersetzung der syrischen Überlieferungen (GCS; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1904). See OCD 423 s.v. “Eusebius.” Oden does not cite this work.



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his resolution of further conflicts in the church, and his suppression of heresy. Although the building account of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem refers to a sanctuary of Aphrodite as previously occupying the site (VC 3.26.3), sexual allusions are lacking, or impossible to link to any specific activity.214 It is only with the report on the sanctuary at Aphaca that sexual associations are present—and foremost. The passage occurs in the section devoted to pagan temples (VC 3.54–58), which begins with a general account of the removal of doors and roofs from temples “in every city” to expose their contents, display their statues in public for ridicule, and strip precious metals from the “dead idols.”215 The emphasis is on opening the dark secret places to the daylight,216 a theme continued in the following chapter (55), on the cult at Aphaca, which begins with a vivid imperial metaphor: (1) The Emperor, having in these ways kindled a sort of radiant lamp, lest any secret relic of error might lie undetected, cast an imperial eye about him. As some high-soaring sharp-eyed eagle might from high above see things far off upon the earth, so as he patrolled his imperial home in his own fair city, he perceived from afar a dire trap for souls lurking in the province of Phoenicia. (VC 3.55.1)217 It continues with a description that emphasizes the hiddenness of the cult site and the unspeakable nature of the practices. (2) This was a grove and precinct (ἄλσος . . . καὶ τέμενος),218 not at a city center nor among squares and streets, such as frequently adorn the cities for decoration, but it was off the beaten track away from main roads and 214.  The account describes the extensive excavations of the site to remove the pagan edifices erected to hide the holy cave. According to Eusebius, the pagans covered the cave with imported soil and paved it over, whereupon “they constructed a terrible and truly genuine tomb, one for souls, for dead idols, and built a gloomy sanctuary to the impure demon of Aphrodite” (emphasis added), offering “foul sacrifices there upon defiled and polluted altars.” Here Aphrodite appears to be the representative deity of Phoenician paganism. 215.  Elaborating, Eusebius reports that the emperor’s emissaries, without need of arms or military force, visited “populous communities and nations, and city by city, country by country, they exposed the long-standing error, ordering the consecrated officials themselves to bring out their gods with much mockery and contempt from their dark recesses into daylight” (VC 3.54.5–6). 216.  The rhetoric of light plays on Eusebius’s identification of Constantine with the sun. 217.  The translation is from Cameron and Hall, Eusebius, Life of Constantine. The Greek text (as cited below) is from the edition of Friedhelm Winkelmann (Eusebius Werke, I.1: Über das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin [2nd ed.; GCS; Berlin: Akademie, 1991]), which indicates variants in LC (on the use of LC in VC, see ibid., 13–16). The variants are insignificant for my purposes. 218.  Cf. H. A. Drake, In Praise of Constantine: A Historical Study and New Translation of Eusebius’ Tricennial Orations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), LC 8.5: “a sanctuary within a grove.”

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junctions, founded for the hateful demon219 Aphrodite (αἰσχρῷ δαίμονι Ἀφροδίτης) in a mountainous part of Lebanon at Aphaca. (3) This was a school of vice (σχολή τις ἦν αὕτη κακοεργίας) for all dissolute persons (πᾶσιν ἀκολάστοις) and those who had corrupted their bodies with much indulgence (πολλῇ τε ῥᾳστώνῃ διεφθορόσι τὰ σώματα). Womanish men, who were not men but had rejected the dignity of their nature (γύννιδες γοῦν τινες ἄνδρες οὐκ ἄνδρες τὸ σεμνὸν τῆς φύσεως ἀπαρνησάμενοι), propitiated the daimon220 with their sick effeminacy (θηλείᾳ νοσῳ τὴν δαίμονα ἱλεοῦντο), and unlawful intercourse with women (γυναικῶν τ’αὖ παράνομοι ὁμιλίαν),221 stolen and corrupt sexual relations, and unspeakable, infamous practices (κλεψίγαμοί τε φθοραί, ἄρρητοί τε καὶ ἐπίρρητοι πράξεις) went on at this shrine (νεὼν) as in some lawless and ungoverned (ἀνόμῳ καὶ ἀπροστάτῃ) place. There was no one to find out what was being done because no respectable man dared to set foot there. (4) But what was practiced there could not also escape the notice of the great Emperor. Having observed even these things for himself with imperial forethought, he decided that such a shrine was not fit to see the sun’s light, and ordered the whole to be entirely demolished, dedications and all. (5) On the Emperor’s command the devices of licentious error (τὰ τῆς ἀκολάστου πλάνης μηχανήματα) were at once destroyed, and a detachment of soldiers saw to the clearing of the site. Those who had hitherto indulged themselves (οἱ μέχρι τοῦδ’ ἀκόλαστοι) learned chastity (σωφρονεῖν) from the Emperor’s menace. (VC 3.55.2–5) This passage differs from the others considered thus far in its compounding of the language of licentiousness, foregrounding of male homosexual activity, and emphasis on “lawlessness.” It is difficult to identify any reference to “simple” female prostitution, not least because the usual terminology is lacking. Sexual depravity and “ungoverned” sex are targeted here, not religiously sanctioned 219.  Cf. την δαιμονα (fem.), VC 3.55.3, where it is translated “spirit.” English “demon” distorts the sense of the Greek cognate, for which, unfortunately, there is no good English equivalent. Although Eusebius refers elsewhere to pagan gods (θεοι) (e.g. VC 3.54.6, 7, where they are brought out of their temples and led captive), they are generally classified as “demons,” as all of the references to Aphrodite. On Eusebius’s use of the term elsewhere, see Drake, ibid., 168.1 (on LC 9.4). 220.  My substitution for Cameron and Hall’s “spirit” (see previous note). 221.  Cameron and Hall’s translation makes this appear to be a reference to heterosexual relations. Cf. E. C. Richardson (Eusebius Pamphilus, The Life of Constantine [NPNF 2 1; New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890]): “unlawful commerce of women,” and Horst Schneider (in Bruno Bleckmann and Schneider, Eusebius, De vita Constantini = Über das Leben Konstantins [Fontes Christiani 83; Turnhout: Brepols, 2007] 382): “Unter den Frauen wiederum gab es wiedergesetzlichen Verkehr und ehebrecherisches Verderben,” which appear to suggest homosexual relations among women (as well as adultery).



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prostitution. And chastity is the cure. The account of the practices at this site is shaped by the language and concepts of Christian moral discourse in confrontation with pagan polytheism.222 Here for the first time we have apologetic literature in support of religious reforms in the author’s own “backyard,” rather than “disinterested” reports of the practices of strangers.223 Despite shared features with Eusebius’s other accounts of Constantine’s suppression of pagan cults, this account emphasizes the distinct nature of the cult at Aphaca, with its remote location224 and secret rites unknown to “respectable men.” There is also a sense of threat, requiring a different response. Unlike the campaign against the impotent idols, which required no military force, but only one or two men from the emperor’s familiar circle to order their removal and exposure (VC 3.54.4–6), here “a detachment of soldiers” was required to demolish the shrine and its “devices of licentious error.” And here, unlike other sites of Aphrodite worship ( Jerusalem and Heliopolis), no church is erected in its place; rather, the site is simply cleared. How is this account to be assessed as historical evidence, and how does it relate to Lucian’s report on the same site? The lack of detail in both accounts is noteworthy. Lucian reports no activity, and Eusebius describes a den of debauchery involving every imaginable type of illicit sex—all performed in “propitiation” of the daimon Aphrodite (VC 3.55.4), elsewhere identified as the deification of lust. The curious super-human way that Constantine is said to learn of the place reinforces the notion that this site and its practices were generally unknown and inaccessible;225 and Eusebius gives no indication that he 222.  In his condemnation of pagan sexual practices in the Theophany (2.15), Eusebius invokes scripture in interpreting the activity, specifically Rom 1:27. Instancing Zeus, “Father and leader of all the gods who was overcome by bodily lust, and fell in love with Ganymede,” he describes how his worshippers “in emulation of their gods … transgressed the bounds of nature, and remained in this excess, at a distance not to be described.” “They fearlessly abused each other,” he continues, “as the Divine declarations affirm: ‘Man with man working that which was shameful, and receiving in themselves the return of reward, which was due to their error.’ ” The same citation appears in a similar accusation in CS 13.11 (“Transgressing the bounds of nature, they went even further to commit in their debauchery acts of unmentionable vice and things incredible to hear: ‘men with men working that which is unseemly …’ as Holy Writ says”). It is worth noting that both of these uses relate specifically to male same-sex relations, and that this verse is severed from the paired condemnation of female same-sex relations in Rom 1:26. This may suggest that the catalogue of abuses in our passage did not include female homosexual practice. 223.  Note that although this is really in Eusebius’s home territory, he distances himself from these practices by locating the site in the “province of Phoenicia.” Elsewhere (Theophany 2.14), he identifies Heliopolis with the Phoenicians, calling them “our neighbors.” 224.  See Lucian’s account of the site (above) and Frazer’s rhapsodic description (based on travelers’ reports) in The Golden Bough (IV/1:28–29.), quoted in Chapter 3, pp. 81–82, above. On the history of the site and its legends, see Lightfoot, Syrian Goddess, 328–30. 225.  Eusebius suggests that these unlawful practices remained unchecked until his own time because of the remote location of the shrine (Richardson, Life of Constantine, 534); only the all-seeing

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had ever been there. Oden assumed that the activities described by Eusebius were going on in Lucian’s day, despite Lucian’s silence. But what if the site was no longer functioning? What if it was already a ruin? Lucian does not describe the sanctuary, but merely confirms that it was “ancient,” supporting the founding legend he cites linking it to Cinyras. And Eusebius avoids the term “temple,” referring instead to a temenos (sacred precinct) in a “grove” (VC 3.55.2),226 and subsequently a “shrine” (νεὼν [VC 3.55.3, 4]). Was Aphaca perhaps the site of an ancient ruin, attracting legends of former times—like the ruins of Jericho and Ai? Whatever it represents historically, the activity reported there does not fit the portrait of sacred prostitution described by earlier texts—although it does exhibit a pattern, seen elsewhere, of generalizing particular sexual anomalies into broader notions of unrestrained sex, “group marriage,” etc. Its remote location, emphasized by all writers, means that it must have been a pilgrimage site, visited on special occasions, as Lucian suggests by connecting it with the legend of Adonis’s death.227 Thus it does not fit the pattern of the premarital prostitution associated with Aphrodite temples in urban centers, which required a ready market of available foreigners. Heliopolis (VC 3.58.1–2; Theophany 2.14–15) Chapter 58 concludes the section on pagan cults that began with Aphaca. It follows an account of the demolition of the temple of Asclepius in Cilicia (VC 3.55.5–56) and a generalizing summary of Constantine’s campaign against idolatry (VC 3.57). As a final example of the emperor’s “great achievements” Eusebius cites one of the “local dispositions” he made in particular provinces.228 Constantine was able to ferret them out. While Cameron and Hall (Life of Constantine, 303) assert that Constantine “had personally visited” the site, VC 55.5, which they cite as evidence, only reports that the site was demolished by the emperor’s soldiers on his command. 226. On temenos, see LSJ 1774. ἄλσος (“grove”) was used primarily in the specialized meaning of sacred grove, and hence of any hallowed precinct (LSJ 73). Cf. Pindar’s reference to the grove (ἄλσος) of the Mistress of Cyprus in Corinth in the passage quoted by Athenaeus on Xenophon’s vow of courtesans to the goddess (discussed by Budin, Myth, 122–24). See also n. 150, above, on open-air worship as a feature of Aphrodite sanctuaries at Eryx and Paphos. 227.  Cf. the mountainside sanctuary of Kato Syme on Crete, dedicated to Hermes and Aphrodite, as an extra-urban cult site with a long period of use, but no temple, according to Nanno Marinatos, “Striding Across Boundaries: Hermes and Aphrodite as Gods of Initiation,” in Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives: New Critical Perspectives (ed. David B. Dodd and Christopher A. Faraone; London/New York: Routledge, 2003) 131. Marinatos (143) notes that the iconography of the goddess worshipped at Kato Syme emphasizes sexuality—in frontal display, an invitation to sex that is “directed towards men and not women” (italics original). If Aphaca was identified with Aphrodite and Adonis as lovers, as well as the death of Adonis, it would explain why the theme of prostitution in honor of the goddess is absent and sexuality (of various types, all viewed as perverted) is emphasized in the traditions concerning the site. 228.  On Eusebius’s selection of the three sites, which provide rather limited support for Eusebius’s sweeping claims, see Cameron and Hall, Life of Constantine, 303–305.



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Such a case was Heliopolis in Phoenicia, where those who worshipped unbridled pleasure under the title of Aphrodite (οἱ μὲν τὴν ἀκόλαστον ἡδονὴν τιμῶντες Ἀφποδλίτης προσρήματι)229 had in the past allowed their wives and daughters without restraint to act as prostitutes (γαμεταῖς καὶ θυγατράσιν ἀνέδην ἐκπορνεύειν συνεχώρουν πρότερον). (2) Now however a fresh and chastening law was issued by the Emperor forbidding as criminal any of the old customs; for these persons also he provided written instructions, showing how he had been brought forward by God for this very purpose, of educating all mankind (ἀνθρώπους) in the laws of chastity (νόμοις σωφροσύνης παιδεύειν). (VC 3.58.1–2) Here we encounter the familiar language of prostitution (though in a new form, ἐκπορνεύειν)—and the familiar lack of details, even more pronounced here as both wives and daughters are mentioned, with no indication of circumstances or the duration of the activity. No temple is mentioned, nor its destruction. By the time Eusebius writes, a “very large church building for worship” had already been built in the city230 and a flourishing congregation was present, served by presbyters and deacons and presided over by a bishop (58.3). Explicit reference to former times (πρότερον) in describing the prostitution reinforces the impression that Eusebius is generalizing on the basis of limited information and that he lacks first-hand knowledge of the practice. The specific accusation of female promiscuity is subsumed under the general offense of “undisciplined hedonism” (ἀκόλαστον ἡδονὴν), worshipped under the name of Aphrodite; and the charge is directed at the male population. The men of the city, in their licentious “honoring” of Aphrodite, not only fail to control their women’s sexual activity, they occasion the women’s promiscuity (ἐκπορνεύειν).231 While the activity described here fits the pattern of the earlier references, the account also shares vocabulary and conception with the Aphaca text. Both are framed in terms of “licentiousness” (ἀκολαστός, 55.3, 5[2×]; 58.1), identified with Aphrodite and contrasted with 229.  Cf. Richardson (Life of Constantine, 535): “those who dignify licentious pleasure with a distinguished title of honor,” which conceals the name of Aphrodite. The notion that the pagan gods are deifications of natural elements, passions, etc. is expressed in many of Eusebius’s writings. E.g., LC 7: (3) “So by them [the pagans] procreation of bodies was deemed a god … and was honored with orgies as Aphrodite”; (4) A god for them … was the pleasure of the flesh, a god was foodstuffs … a god the lust of the body, a god its enjoyment. Whence the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone … whence the adulterous rites of Eros and Aphrodite. Whence Zeus himself a woman-chaser and lover of Ganymede, and all the lusty fabrications of philandering and pleasure-loving gods.” Cf. 13.2. 230.  The site is not specified, and the building is not described in relation to a former Aphrodite temple. 231.  LSJ: ἐκπορνεύω (commit fornication; c. acc., prostitute [a daughter]; cause to commit fornication) is attested almost exclusively in LXX uses (cf. especially Lev 19:29; 2 Chr 21:11). See Hos 4:13–14 for a similar accusation of males. Cf. καταπορνευω, Herodotus, Hist. 1.196 and Strabo, Geogr. 11.14.16.

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“chastity” (σωφρονεῖν [55.5], νόμοις σωφροσύνης [58.2]). At Aphaca, the violators had to “learn chastity” through the emperor’s “menace”; at Heliopolis, laws and written instructions sufficed. An apparently earlier reference to the cult at Heliopolis is found in Theophany 2.14–15. There Eusebius argues that the followers of pagan religions were corrupted by imitating their gods, offering Heliopolis as an example of a place where the old daimon worship could still be seen.232 That such were the things which they did, when assimilating themselves neighbors, as we ourselves have seen, are busied with these things, even now, in Baalbek;233 the ancient injurious excesses and corrupting paths of vice, being persevered in there, even to this time; so that the women there enter not into the bands of lawful marriage, until they have been first corrupted in a way contrary to law, and have been made to partake in the lawless services of the mysteries of Aphrodite. Now indeed, this city alone remains in this sickly state of folly, by way of proof of these ancient vices; when, from ancient times, many thus suffered while the disease inflicted by demons had more abundant hold.234 (Theophany 2.14) Here, in contrast to VC 3.58, Eusebius presents the cult at Heliopolis (described as mysteries235) as still functioning. The emphasis, however, is on this case as a lone survival of an ancient, more widely practiced custom. Here the prostitution is clearly understood as premarital, as in the earlier reports of Lydian practice. Although the loss of the Greek text makes close comparison with the language of other passages impossible,236 it appears very similar to what we have seen above, especially in the LC. Here again Aphrodite is associated with general licentiousness, expressed in a variety of unspecified forms (“lawless services,” “ancient vices”), but exemplified in female promiscuity prior to marriage. The added statement on “partak[ing] in the lawless services of the mysteries of Aphrodite” suggests some 232.  The translation is cited from Lee, On the Theophania, 74–75. 233.  Lee uses the modern name of the site in his translation and does not include the Syriac. But it is clear from Eusebius’s original Greek writings that he knew the site only as Heliopolis. On Baalbek, see below. 234.  It is not clear whether the repeated references to illness and injury are simply metaphor, or intended to describe the physical consequences of degenerate sex. Cf. CS 13.9. 235. On mystery cults, as a distinctively Greek phenomenon, see OCD 593–94 s.v. “Mysteries”; ODCC 717 s.v. “Mysteries”; Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); Michael B. Cosmopolous, ed., Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults (London: Routledge, 2003). This is the first reference to sacred prostitution in the texts considered thus far that uses the language of the Greek mysteries to describe the cult. The earliest use among the texts under consideration here is by Clement of Alexander (ca. 190 CE). 236.  Neither Lee nor Gressmann include the Syriac text with their translations.



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type of cultic rites in addition to being “corrupted in a way contrary to law” and reinforces the idea that the practice was understood as a type of initiation—but in categories drawn from Greek mystery cults.237 Note again that the women are presented as the victims or those affected by the action, rather than the initiators (“been . . . corrupted”; “made to partake in”). While Eusebius’s account of practices at Heliopolis conforms to earlier references to sanctioned premarital female promiscuity (with or without Aphrodite connections), it is far from secure evidence for the practice it reports. It is certainly testimony to a belief that worship of Aphrodite was characterized by licentious acts and was common in earlier times in Phoenicia, with centers in Heliopolis and Aphaca. From these references, however, it is impossible to determine what cultic practices relating to the Phoenician goddess may actually have survived into the fourth century CE, and what their “original” form and meaning may have been.238 Evidence of pre-Hellenistic cults at the site is limited and the question of continuity with the later cults is problematic. If the modern name of the site, Baalbek, reflects an earlier identification, the city would have been a center of Baal worship. But the great temple of the Greco-Roman period is dedicated to Jupiter/Zeus, the sky god, who corresponds to El, not Baal.239 Athanasius

Athanasius (296–373), bishop of Alexandria, was a contemporary of Eusebius who stood on the opposite side of the Arian debate but shared a common view of paganism. His earliest work, Contra Gentes (Against the Nations), displays many of the same features as Eusebius’s Theophany in its description and condemnation of Phoenician practice, suggesting dependence, or a common apologetic tradition.240 In Athanasius’s account, the Phoenician practices are not localized, and the 237.  On the problematic use of initiation to describe secret introductory rites into various mystery cults and “puberty rites” or tribal initiation, see Fritz Graf, “Initiation: A Concept with a Troubled History,” in Dodd and Faraone, eds., Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives, 3–24. 238.  Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 304) comments concerning Lucian’s claim of antiquity for the temple/cult at Heliopolis that “the sheer obscurity of its antecedents have made it impossible, in practice, to fathom the cult’s degrees of ancient inheritance, modern invention, and cross-cultural contamination from other cults, both Graeco-Roman and Syrian.” While this concerns the Jupiter/ Zeus cult, it holds just as well for that of Venus/Aphrodite. 239.  See ibid., 304–5; J.-P. Rey-Coquais, “Heliopolis (Baalbek),” in Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, 380–82. According to Rey-Coquais (381), the temple occupied an ancient tell, but the preceding structure would presumably have been that of a corresponding male deity, and the smaller temple of Venus occupied a different area (382). 240.  ODCC (101, s.v. “Athanasius”) dates the joint work Contra Gentes-De Incarnatione before ca. 318, noting, however, that some scholars date the two treatises 15–20 years later. Robert W. Thomson (Athanasius, Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione [Oxford: Clarendon, 1971] xxi–xxiii) argues for a date of 335–336 CE, citing dependence on Eusebius’s Theophany as the most telling evidence.

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Apostle Paul is cited in a direct quotation of Rom 1:26–27. The practices are also clearly assigned to a former age:241 In time past (πάλαι) women (γυναῖκες) displayed themselves in front of idols (ἐν εἰδώλοις . . . προεκαθέζοντο)242 in Phoenicia, offering the price of their bodies to the local gods (ἀπαρχόμεναι τοῖς ἐκεῖ θεοῖς ἑαθτῶν τὴν τοῦ σώματος ἑαθτῶν μισθαρνίαν), and believing that by prostitution they conciliated their goddess (τῇ πορνείᾳ τὴν θεὸν ἑαυτῶν ἱλάσκεσθαι) and incurred her favor through these practices. And men (ἄνδρες), denying their own nature and no longer wishing to be male, assume a female nature (τῆν γυναικῶν πλάττονται φύσιν),243 as if thereby they pleased and honored the mother of those they call gods . . . .244 As Christ’s holy servant Paul said: “For their women have turned natural intercourse into an unnatural one. And likewise the men, abandoning the natural use of the woman, burned with desire for each other, men performing obscene acts with men.” (C. Gent. 26, ll. 1–13)245 Here the language of prostitution is used to describe the practices of the women and is connected to the notion of wages dedicated to the deity (ll. 2–3). Although Athanasius refers initially to idols and plural gods (εἰδώλοις, l. 1; θεοῖς, l. 2), emphasizing the local Phoenician deities (τοῖς ἐκεῖ θεοῖς), he appears to have a particular goddess in mind (τὴν θεὸν ἑαυτῶν, l. 3). She remains unnamed in this account, but the attribution of fornication (πορνεία) to Aphrodite in the following statement (l. 16) makes the identification clear.246 The paired reference to male activity, however, has a different goddess in mind, since the men are said to honor the “mother (τῇ μητρὶ) of those they call gods” (ll. 6–7), who is not Aphrodite. The 241.  Text and translation cited from Thomson, Contra Gentes, 68–71. 242.  Προκαθίζω means simply sit before (LSJ 1483), suggesting that Athanasius intends nothing more than the scene described by Herodotus in which women presented themselves for sexual offers at a sanctuary. Athanasius drops the specification of strangers and emphasizes the plurality and impotence of the pagan “gods” (here called idols). 243.  Πλάττω (Att.) = πλάσσω: form, mold (LSJ 1412). 244.  Here Thomson (Contra Gentes, 69 n. 1) observes that “the train of thought … follows closely Eusebius, Theophany 85.10ff.” He notes further the similar, though expanded, sequence of themes in which “Eusebius discussed ritual prostitution practiced at Baalbek, then mentioned Ganymede before turning to homosexuality and Rom 1:26–27.” See n. 222 above. While the sequencing of female and male sexual transgressions is the same, following the pattern of the scriptural citation, the transgressions are not the same, and neither conforms to the scriptural accusations. 245.  The passage continues with the argument, familiar from Eusebius, that these practices represent imitation of their “so-called gods” (C. Gent. lines 14–15). “For from Zeus they learned pederasty and adultery, from Aphrodite fornication (πορνείαν), from Rhea lasciviousness … and from other gods other similar things which the law (οἱ νόμοι) punishes and which every decent man (σώφρων ἀνὴρ) avoids” (lines 15–19). 246.  See previous note. Cf. C. Gent. 9, lines 31–34 for the deification of pleasure and desire (τὴν ἑδονὴν καὶ τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν) as Eros and Paphian Aphrodite.



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emphasis here is on the effeminate nature of the men, and no reference is made to sexual activity with other men, despite the citation of Rom 1:26–27. This appears to describe the galli of the cult of Cybele (Atargatis at Hierapolis),247 rather than male (homosexual) prostitution practiced alongside the female prostitution associated with the cult of Aphrodite.248 The juxtaposition here of references to male and female sexual immorality in the service of pagan religion appears to unite examples from disparate cults in order to create a picture of sexual depravity among the Phoenicians corresponding to that described by Paul.249 The artificial nature of this pairing is underlined by the fact that the example of female sexual immorality does not correspond to the Pauline “master text,” which speaks of “unnatural” relations of women, not prostitution or fornication. Thus neither the male nor the female behavior fits the Pauline description. Athanasius testifies to the same tradition of female “prostitution” in the service of Aphrodite reported by Eusebius, but neither appears to have first-hand knowledge of the practice, and Athanasius’s succinct summaries and combination of disparate traditions seem even more detached from historical experience. Both have used Rom 1:26–27 in shaping and interpreting their accounts, but each has contributed distinctive emphases and associations. It appears that the tradition has become a stock example in Christian polemic against pagan religion. Further examples serve only to show how the tradition is being used in Christian apologetics. Augustine

A Phoenician custom of prostitution in honor of Venus is cited in the early fifth century by Augustine in his City of God (De civitate Dei, 413–426 CE).250 It is introduced as evidence in an argument concerning the contradictory attributes of the goddess, who in Rome is identified with Vesta and served by virgins, but in Phoenicia is associated with harlots (meretricum).251 To the goddess in her latter 247.  See Lucian, Syr. d. 26–27, 50–52. 248.  Note that pederasty, the primary form of male prostitution in the Greek world, is associated with Zeus in the following lines (26.15), and that Eusebius (Theoph. 2.15) introduces the theme of males assuming female nature by citing the example of Zeus and Ganymede. Neither text identifies the male practice with Aphrodite. Cf. Thomson, Contra Gentes, 69 n. 1. 249.  The following statement shows that Athanasius has a variety of gods and cults in mind, the examples cited being merely illustrative of a broader range of immorality induced by the pagan gods. 250.  OCD 148 s.v. “Augustinus.” The text is cited from the Loeb edition of William M. Green, Saint Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, vol. 2 (Books 4–7) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). 251.  Augustine points to the secondary nature of the identification with Vesta through contradiction of character, assuming a primary identification of Venus with sexual love and prostitutes: “For if

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identity, he says, “the Phoenicians used to make a gift of money gained from the prostitution of their daughters before marrying them to husbands” (Phoenices donum dabant de prostitutione filiarum antequam eas iungerent viris, De civ. D. 4.10). Here we encounter again the primary features of what appears to be the dominant tradition in the West: premarital prostitution of daughters for remuneration that is dedicated to the goddess. Augustine’s mention of Phoenicians does not locate them geographically, but it is noteworthy, given his own history, that he makes no reference to North African practice.252 Oden’s final references come from two church historians, both writing close to the time of Augustine and both recalling the action of Constantine in destroying the temple, or at least the worship, of Venus (Aphrodite) at Heliopolis. Both are dependent on Eusebius, but each formulates the account to fit his own interests. Socrates

Socrates (ca. 380–450 CE) was a lawyer and native of Constantinople, whose Ecclesiastical History was designed as a continuation of Eusebius’s history, covering the period from 305 to 439. Thus it includes the reign of Constantine, which Eusebius had treated in his Life of Constantine.253 In ch. 18 Socrates describes Constantine’s anti-pagan and church-building efforts, summarizing Eusebius’s account, beginning with the demolition of the pagan altars near the oak of Mamre and erection of a “house of prayer” at the site.254 He then moves directly to Heliopolis.255 Like Eusebius, he does not report any destruction of a temple at the site, but only Constantine’s directive for the construction of a church and his legislation to correct the “evil which had long prevailed among them” (Hist. Eccl. 1.18.8).256 That “evil” is Vesta is Venus, how have virgins rightly served her by abstaining from the works of Venus (a Veneris operibus)?” (De civ. D. 4.10). He suggests that there must actually be three Venuses, according to their devotees: one of virgins (Vesta), another of married women (identified with the wife of Vulcan), and another of harlots. He does not record a distinct Phoenician name for the goddess, but suggests that the Phoenician practice confirms her primary character. 252.  It appears that the rhetorical association of sacred prostitution with Phoenician religion applied only to the Phoenician East, where it reflected Christian encounters with Greco-Roman forms of indigenous paganism. 253.  ODCC 1285 s.v. “Socrates.” 254.  Here he includes a note of imperial reprimand of the region’s ecclesial overseer, reporting that Constantine, on learning of the altars and the pagan sacrifices at the site, “censured by letter Eusebius bishop of Caesarea” and ordered their demolition (Hist. eccl. 1.18.6). 255.  Eusebius’s report on the destruction of the Pythonic cult site in Cilicia is reduced to a single sentence dismissing the need for further detailed description after his abbreviated report on Aphaca (18.11; see below). 256.  English translation cited from the NPNF2 edition of A. C. Zenos, The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890) 2:22. The Greek (below) is cited from the GCS edition of Günther Christian Hansen, Sokrates Kirchengeschichte (Neue Folge 1; Berlin: Akademie, 1995).



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presented here as general promiscuity in sexual relations, exemplified by holding women in common and offering them to strangers—thus, fundamentally, as men’s lack of control over their wives, and offspring. A distinctive feature of Socrates’s account is his emphasis on legislation. Thus he begins with speculation about the prevailing “law”: Who originally legislated for the inhabitants of Heliopolis I am unable to state, but his character and morals may be judged of from the [practice of that] city; for the laws (νόμος) of the country ordered the women among them to be common (κοινὰς γὰρ εἶναι παρ’αὐτοῖς τὰς γυναῖκας), and therefore the children born there were of doubtful descent, so that there was no distinction of fathers and their offspring. Their virgins also were presented for prostitution to the strangers who resorted thither (τὰς δὲ παρθένους τοῖς παριοῦσι ξένοις παρεῖχον πορνεύεσθαι) (Hist. Eccl. 1.18.7). The emperor responded, according to Socrates, by issuing a “solemn law [of chastity]” and thereby removed the “shameful evil” (νόμῳ γὰρ σεμνῷ αἰσχροτάτην συνήθειαν ἀνέτρεψε)257 and provided for “mutual recognition of families” (1.18.9).258 In this account, Socrates does not connect the practices with any deity,259 and he appears primarily concerned with general promiscuity and the men’s lack of control, elaborated in his note on the problem of determining lineage. The emphasis is on family law rather than sexual depravity. The old tradition of virgins presented for prostitution (here with the specification of strangers) is subordinated to the theme of general promiscuity, as a final example of the strange sexual mores of the country; but it doesn’t really fit the scene, unless one imagines that the virgins are first given to strangers before becoming the common property of the men of the town. Although Aphrodite is not mentioned in Socrates’s account of female promiscuity at Heliopolis, she is named in his report of the destruction of the cult at Aphaca, which follows: He likewise demolished the temple of Venus (ἱερὸν τῆς Ἀφροδίτης) at Aphaca on Mount Libanus, and abolished the infamous deeds which were there celebrated (τὰς ἐκεῖ γιγνομένας ἀνέδην ἀρρητοποιίας) (Hist. Eccl. 1.18.11). 257.  Lit. “By means of a divine law he overthrew [the] most shameful sexual intercourse.” Here Zenos’s translation bowdlerizes, adding or substituting moral evaluative terms. 258.  Socrates continues with a reference to the building of further churches and ordination of a bishop and clergy, thus reforming the “corrupt manners” (τὰ κακὰ) of the people of Heliopolis. 259.  One might argue that Heliopolis was so well known as a center of Aphrodite worship that the identification was simply assumed, but Socrates is clearly not concerned with the cult of Aphrodite as the root cause of the immorality.

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Here too Eusebius appears to be the immediate source, which Socrates has reduced to a generalizing reference to “unmentionable acts (infamous deeds).” Sozomen

Sozomen (d. ca.  450  CE) was a younger contemporary of Socrates and a native of Gaza. Educated in his early years by local monks, he later settled in Constantinople to practice law. He is best known for his Ecclesiastical History, an extension of Eusebius’s history that often depends directly on Socrates’s work while incorporating independent traditions.260 In Hist. Eccl. 1.8.5–6, he offers as examples of Constantine’s religious reforms his prohibition of various pagan practices in Rome, Egypt, and Phoenicia. Of the latter he reports that the “Phoenicians, who inhabited Lebanon and Heliopolis” were no longer permitted to prostitute their virgins (ἐκπορνεύεσθαι τὰς παρθένους) before they entered into legal marriages (1.8.6).261 Here the tradition associated specifically with Heliopolis is apparently extended to the unnamed site of Aphaca (represented by “the Lebanon”), combining the previously distinct traditions. But the force of the older localized traditions is evident in the specification of the two sites, rather than generalization about a common “Phoenician” practice.262 Although no cultic language is used, the context presents the practice as a pagan religious custom. The Heliopolis tradition appears again in Sozomen’s history in connection with a dramatic account of atrocities committed by the inhabitants of that city.263 According to Sozomen’s report, they stripped the “holy virgins” and exposed them to public insult, then ripped them open, “conceal[ing] in their viscera the food usually given to pigs,” with the result that the swine, “impelled by the need of their customary food . . . also tore in pieces the human flesh” (Hist. Eccl. 5.10.6). The cause of this atrocity, Sozomen suggests, was the prohibition of ancient custom: I am convinced that the citizens of Heliopolis perpetrated this barbarity against the holy virgins on account of the prohibition of the ancient custom of yielding up virgins to prostitution with any chance comer (ἐκπορνεύεσθαι 260.  OCD 1005; ODCC 1296 s.v. “Sozomen”; Günther Christian Hansen, trans. and ed., Sozomenos, Historia ecclesiastica / Kirchengeschichte (2 vols.; Fontes Christiani 73/1–2; Turnhout: Brepols, 2004) 1:9–71. 261.  English translation from Chester D. Hartranft, The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen (NPNF2 2 [New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890]) *333. Greek text from Hansen, Historia ecclesiastica, which reads in full: οὐκέτι θέμις ἦν ἐκπορνεύεσθαι τὰς παρθένους πρὶν τοῖς ἀνδράσι συνελθεῖν, οἷς νόμῳ γάμου συνοικεῖν εἰώθασι μετὰ τὴν πρώτην πεῖραν τῆς ἀθεμίτου μίξεως. 262.  See below where Heliopolis alone is treated. 263.  The fantastic report is introduced between accounts of the persecution of St. Hilarion in Gaza and the martyrdom of the Bishop of Arethusa in Syria (Hist. eccl. 5.10).



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παρὰ τοῦ προστυχόντος τὰς ἐνθάδε παρθένους) before being united in marriage to their betrothed. This custom (τὰς συνήθεις ἐπιτελεῖν πορνείας)264 was prohibited by a law enacted by Constantine, after he had destroyed the temple of Venus (τῆς Ἀφροδίτης νεών) at Heliopolis, and erected a church upon its ruins (Hist. Eccl. 5.10.7).265 While the report of the atrocity is clearly fantastic, and without precedent or ascription,266 the account of the suppressed tradition retains essential features of earlier versions and corresponds closely to that of Socrates, emphasizing the premarital status of the women (here juxtaposing pagan and Christian virgins) and the chance nature of the relationship (corresponding to Socrates’s reference to strangers). Here too the activity is described as prostitution (ἐκπορνεύεσθαι),267 but without reference to payment in either account.268 Although Sozomen links the prohibited activity with an Aphrodite temple, his emphasis is on the legal prohibition of the practice. It is worth noting that this native of Gaza has nothing to report on Aphaca, but treats the practice of Heliopolis as distinctive of Phoenician paganism. Carthage Valerius Maximus

The earliest reference to sacred prostitution in a context suggesting Phoenician origin describes a practice of Punic Carthage, not the Phoenician homeland. In a work published ca. 31 CE entitled Factorum et dictorum memorabilium (Memorable Doings and Sayings) the Roman historian Valerius Maximus reports that Punic women at a temple of Venus “outraged” their bodies to collect dowries.269 The work is a handbook of illustrative moral and philosophical examples for 264.  Cf. Hansen (Historia ecclesiastica 2:605): “die Ausübung der gewohnten Unzucht.” 265. Hartranft, Ecclesiastical History, 333. 266.  Sozomen himself notes that the account strains belief: “man möchte dem Bericht kaum Glauben schenken, hätten ihn nicht einige der damaligen Zeitgenossen überliefert” (Hist. eccl. 5.10.6; Hansen, Historia ecclesiastica 2:603)—but fails to identify those who transmitted the report. 267.  Also in 1.8.6. See Eusebius, VC 3.58 and note (above) for this verb. 268.  Thus the emphasis is on promiscuous or undisciplined sexual relations. 269.  Text and translation (cited below) from the Loeb edition of D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Valerius Maximus, Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium /Memorable Doings and Sayings [2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000]). Nothing is known of the author beyond what can be inferred from this writing, which includes a dedicatory preface addressed to the Emperor Tiberius (14–37 CE). He appears to have lived in Rome and been “steeped in the art of rhetoric” (Bailey, “Introduction,” 1:1).

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rhetoricians containing extracts from earlier works (without attributions) and amplified with frequent moralistic comment.270 The passage on the Punic women is found in Book 2, which is devoted to “ancient and memorable institutions,” aimed to “yield some profit to modern manners” (Fact. et dict. 2. praef.). The preceding passages present examples of laudable mourning practices and attitudes toward death by various peoples, concluding with the one Valerius deems most praiseworthy, namely “the Indian pyre, which wifely devotion caring nothing for imminent death ascends like a nuptial bed” (2.6.14).271 This example of marital fidelity is then contrasted with Punic custom: To its glory I shall append the dishonor of Punic women that it may show uglier by comparison. At Sicca there is a temple of Venus where married women (matronae) used to gather and issuing thence for gain to collect dowries by outraging their bodies, intending forsooth to link respectable wedlock by so disgraceful a bond. (2.6.15)272 This isolated reference to prostitution associated with a goddess of love273 is formulated in a fashion that suggests Valerius was drawing on a fixed tradition that identified the activity with earning dowries, so that the reference to dowries was retained despite the strain of attribution to married women.274 The goddess here is identified as Venus, but the practice is described as Punic and past (imperfect 270.  OCD 1106 s.v. “Valerius Maximus”; Bailey, Factorum et Dictorum 1:1–3. Valerius prefaces his work with this statement of intent: “I have determined to select from famous authors and arrange the deeds and sayings worthy of memorial of the Roman City and external nations, too widely scattered in other sources to be briefly discovered, to the end that those wishing to take examples may be spared the labor of lengthy search” (Fact. et. Dict. 1. Praef.). The selections are presented in nine “books,” arranged according to topics, with Roman examples followed in each book by “external” ones. 271.  According to Bailey (Factorum et dictorum 1:176 n. 18), the Indian practice of suttee was widely mentioned in classical sources. 272.  The Latin text is as follows: Cuius gloriae Punicarum feminarum, ut ex comparatione turpius appareat, dedecus subnectam: Siccae enim fanum est Veneris, in quod se matronae conferebant atque inde procedentes ad quaestum dotes corporis iniuria contrahebant, honesta nimirum tam inhonesto vinculo coniugia iuncturae. 273.  It deviates from the theme of attitudes toward death, which continues in the following report that the Persians had a “very commendable practice” of not seeing their children until they were seven years old, so as to bear their loss in infancy less hard (2.6.16)—a tradition also reported by Herodotus and Strabo, according to Bailey (ibid. 1:178 n. 20). 274.  Matronae was presumably chosen to compare the Punic women with the Hindu wives, with the understanding that the action, designed to get dowries, occurred prior to marriage. But the comparison creates a tension however it is construed.



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verbs) and thus not current activity or a general feature of Venus worship. But what is Valerius’s source? And what was the relationship of the cult at Sicca to the cult of the goddess of Eryx attested in Punic Carthage, along with the hierodules featured in the Sicilian cult? Valerius describes his work as culled from other writings, yet we know of no other account of sacred prostitution in North Africa. The motif of prostitution for dowries does characterize references to Phoenician practice, making it reasonable to assume, despite the late date of the Phoenician sources, that the practice reported here represents the diffusion of a Phoenician cult and custom. But the picture is complicated by cultic connections with Cyprus and Sicily as well as the history of Punic and Roman Carthage. As we saw earlier, one ancient author, Solinus, understood the cult at Sicca as transplanted from Eryx, and most scholars have followed this lead. But Valerius, writing close to the time of Strabo and more than a century and a half before Solinus, seems to know of no such connection, or shows no interest in Sicilian origins. He surely knew of the two temples of Venus Erycina in Rome, and he must also have known of the famed Sicilian shrine which Tiberius had vowed to restore (at the very time of his writing). But it is Punic custom that he highlights at Sicca, as a moral lesson from an exotic past. The behavior he describes is familiar, however, to those acquainted with the literature on Oriental cults and customs, reflecting a formula associated with Eastern practices (specifically, Lydian and Cyprian) and identified with the goddess Aphrodite.275 The historical accuracy of Valerius’s report is impossible to determine,276 and many of the questions it raises must remain unanswered. But some speculation is in order concerning the identity of the goddess worshipped at Sicca and relations between Punic Carthage and Sicily. According to the evidence on Eryx examined above, an indigenous deity was recognized by Phoenician visitors to the site as the goddess Ashtart, and during the period of Carthaginian dominance, Punic devotees are attested not only at Eryx, but also in Sardinia and Carthage, possibly in daughter cults. Roman Carthage gives evidence of continued veneration

275.  Bailey annotates the paragraph on Sicca (Factorum et Dictorum 1:176–77 n. 19) with the statement that “the cult of Astarte flourished in Sicca,” but he offers no evidence from Sicca, citing only Herodotus (Hist.) 1.93 (Lydian practice of earning dowries by prostitution), Justin (Hist. Phil.) 18.5 (Cyprus), and Aelian, Var. hist. 4.1 (Lydia), references contained in the Kempf edition of the text (Valerii Maximi Factorum et Dictorum Memorabilium [ed. Carl (Karl Friedrich) Kempf; BSGRT; Stuttgart: Teubner, 1966]); see Bailey, Factorum et Dictorum 1:4. See now Budin, Myth, 239–46, who views this as a transplanted anecdote from Babylon/Lydia (244). 276.  Bailey describes Valerius as “lacking the historical virtues” and “not overly careful in his use of sources.” Blunders, he says, “are not rare and sometimes clangorous … but he loves hype” (Factorum et Dictorum, “Introduction,” 1:4).

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of the goddess of Eryx, as Venus Erycina.277 But Venus cults are attested at a number of other sites in the Roman province, with no identification with Eryx, the most notable being at Sicca, where the name of the goddess was attached to the city itself.278 The question raised by the nature and distribution of this evidence, together with the history of Carthage as a Phoenician colony (with Cyprian connections) is: Who is the goddess worshipped at Sicca, and what is the source of the tradition of prostitution associated with this cult? Was the cult a Sicilian import, as Solinus reports and most scholars assume; and if so, when did the transfer occur and under what conditions? Was there an earlier cult of Ashtart at the site, or the cult of an indigenous goddess identified with Roman Venus?279 And how was the Venus cult at Sicca related to the cult of Erycinian Ashtart/Venus evidenced in sources from Carthage—and only Carthage? While some have assumed that the references from the capital refer to the cult at Sicca, it is difficult to explain why they do not identify Sicca or why the sources from Sicca make no reference to Eryx, which had become a part of the goddess’s name (Venus Erycina) in daughter cults elsewhere. It is noteworthy that the single account of sacred prostitution from North Africa provides so little support for the assumption of Phoenician origins or identification with a Punic cult of Ashtart—apart from the Sicilian cult at Eryx. As long noted, evidence for Ashtart is exceedingly rare in the Phoenician colony and confined to city of Carthage.280 She is named side by side with “Tanit-in-Lebanon” in a dedication of twin sanctuaries (KAI 81)281 and is linked with Pygmalion on a gold medallion from the eighth century (KAI 73).282 The 277.  One might ask whether the mention of Venus Erycina in Roman Carthage derived from the cult in Rome or in Sicily, but in view of the Punic evidence for Ashtart of Eryx in Carthage, it seems best to treat the Latin inscription as evidence of continuity with the Punic cult. 278.  The temple seems to have enjoyed a degree of political autonomy, since the curator civitatis bore the title of curator coloniae Siccensis et Deae Veneris (Charles-Picard, Les religions, 116). 279.  Little is known of Punic Sicca, since it lay in Numidian territory until Carthage extended control over the area between the fifth and mid-third centuries. It reverted to the control of the Numidian princes in 201 BCE until a Roman colony was founded there soon after the Battle of Actium (31 BCE). Its prominence in the Roman era (it may have been briefly the capital) is matched by its marginal status in the Punic era, suggested both by limited data and by its choice as the site to which Carthage exiled the mercenaries that had revolted in 241 BCE (Ennabli, “Sicca Veneria,” 834). 280.  See Gsell, Histoire ancienne, 242–43, 251–58, 262–65, 348; Lipiński, Dieux et Déesses, 128–54; Moscati, “Sulla Diffusione”; María Giulia Amadasi Guzzo, “Astarte fenicia e la sua diffusione in base alla documentazione epigrafica,” in El mundo púnico: religion, antropología y cultura material: actas II Congreso Internacional del Mundo Púnico, Cartagena, 6–9de abril de 2000 (ed. A. G. Blanco, A. E. Vivancos, and G. M. Séiquer; Murcia [Antigua]: Universidad de Murcia, 2004) 47–54. 281.  ‫( לרבת לעשתרת ולתנת בלבנן‬KAI 81.1). The inscription is not dated in KAI. 282.  The medallion, dedicated to “Ashtart (and) Pygmalion” ( ‫ )לעשתרת לפגמלין‬is usually thought to derive from Cyprus because of the legendary association of Pygmalion with the island,



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only other occurrence of the name is in the Punic inscription from Carthage where she is identified as Ashtart of Eryx (CIS 3776).283 While the element Ashtart is more frequent as a component of personal names,284 it is difficult to see this as evidence of a continuing cult in the absence of independent occurrences of the name in cultic contexts. Whether worship of Phoenician Ashtart continued under the title Tnt pn B‘l or was replaced by a Punicized counterpart, associations with sexual activity relate exclusively to Ashtart/Venus where Aphrodite traditions appear to have a mediating or interpretive role.285 Thus Valerius’s account of the cult of Venus of Sicca draws on traditions identified elsewhere with Aphrodite, but not a feature of other Venus cults, and the goddess of Eryx had distinct features of Cyprian Aphrodite and was celebrated as Aphrodite throughout the Hellenistic world. Despite the differences in the evidence from Sicca and Carthage, both testify to a Punic Aphrodite, or a Hellenized Ashtart.286 but John C. L. Gibson (Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions [Oxford: Clarendon, 1982] 3:68–69) thinks it was inscribed in Carthage and only indicates that the author had contacts with Cyprus. 283.  See above, pp. 140–41. 284. Benz, Personal Names, 387; cf. Gsell, Histoire ancienne, 264. Moscati (“Sulla Diffusione,” 93) argues that the names represent Phoenician heritage, rather than current cultic practice. On the other hand, Tanit does not appear in personal names from Carthage, although Tanit-pn-Baal was the primary female deity and exclusive female recipient of worship from the fifth century on. On Tanit, see Lipiński, Dieux et Déesses, 199–215. 285.  See Gsell, Histoire ancienne, 261–65. Cf. Brent D. Shaw, “Cult and Belief in Punic and Roman Africa,” Version 1.2 (Stanford Working Papers in Classics, September 2007; https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/shaw/090705.pdf) 25, who notes that the dominant Phoenician-Punic pair of Baal and Tanit was replaced by Saturn and Caelestis during the Roman period. This suggests an identification of Tanit, as the chief goddess, with the queenly celestial aspects of Phoenician Ashtart—and/or Cypro-Greek Aphrodite Ourania. Was the love goddess worshipped under the same name Tanit, only to be distinguished as Venus by the Romans, who had already applied this name to Greek Aphrodite? Lipiński (Dieux et Déesses, 203–5) argues that Tanit is a hypostasis of Ashtart, incarnating the deity associated with vegetation, a chthonic deity represented as weeping, and nursing mother (Roman Nutrix). This association is attested not only at Carthage, but also at Pyrgi (Italy) where a Phoenician/Punic dedication to Ashtart has an Etruscan counterpart with the name of Uni, who was identified with Latin Juno and Greek Hera, rather than Venus and Aphrodite (Gibson, Textbook, 3:154). In contrast, Ashtart/Aphrodite is associated with sexuality and warfare. On the identification of Phoenician Ashtart with diverse deities of the classical world, see also Guzzo, “Astarte fenicia,” 50–51. 286.  See Moscati, “Sulla diffusione,” 93, for the argument that the cult of Ashtart at Carthage represents a secondary reintroduction of the goddess from Eryx in the third century BCE as part of a larger diffusion of the cult of Erycinain Ashtart beyond its Sicilian origin. Charles-Picard (Les religions, 115–16) likewise argued for a reintroduction of the cult from Eryx, assuming a temple of the goddess at Carthage as the destination of the annual departure of the pigeons of Eryx. Cf. Lipiński (Dieux et Déesses, 145), who identifies the cult of Eryx as the source of all of the Venus/Ashtart cults of North Africa, emanating from Sicca (488 n. 432), as well as Rome, Herculanum, Pouzzoles, Potenza, and Cagliari (Sardinia).

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*** Excursus: Succoth Benoth In the survey in Chapter 2 of the history of sacred prostitution in nineteenth century European writing and before, a tradition was noted concerning the etymology of Sicca Veneria that linked it to “Phoenician” Succoth Benoth, interpreted as meaning “tents of the girls.” Both Dulaure and Dufour reported this etymology without identifying the source of the expression, but Dulaure refers to an unidentified “Hebrew text” in his linguistic argument for the transformation of benoth into Venus.287 The argument appears to stem from the English Hebraist, John Selden, in reference to 2 Kgs 17:30,288 but neither Dulaure nor Dufour refer to this text, identifying the expression only as “Phoenician” or in “the language of Tyre.” Selden’s theory appears to have enjoyed wide currency in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and is found in the work of a number of biblical scholars. One example may be cited from an essay by the eighteenth-century British divine, John Gill (1697–1771),289 which exposes the missing links in the identifications made by Dulaure and Dufour. In an essay on the origins of the Samaritan’s language, script, and religion, Gill cites 2 Kings 17 as evidence that the Samaritans were “originally Chaldeans, or Phoenicians.” Those who were brought from Babylon, he argues, “brought with them their language and letters . . . as they did their idolatry.”290 His argument continues as follows:

287. Dulaure, Gods of Generation, 129. Here he refers to a cult “among the Phoenicians” under the name of Succoth-Benoth or Siccoth-Venoth, reporting that “it is believed, with very much reason, that the name Venus is derived from [this expression]” and citing Selden, Schedius, and Abbé Mignot (pp. 251–52 nn. 20, 21). He offers a more expansive explanation of this etymology in his earlier work, Des cultes qui ont précédé et amené l’idolâtrie ou l’adoration des figures humaines (Paris: Guillaume, 1805; 1825). There he refers to Sicca Veneria as a place “not far” from Carthage and “on the sea shore” (apparently confounding Justin’s account of Cyprian custom with Valerius’s account of Sicca) where young Carthaginians came, under the auspices of the goddess, to give themselves religiously to the brutal caresses of travelers. “This religious ceremony,” he writes, “was called by the Hebrews, and doubtless by neighboring peoples, succoth benoth: words interpreted by tents of the girls.” “Some scholars believe,” he continues, “that Succoth signifies tent, and benoth the divinity or the stone honored by these prostitutions. However that may be, it appears certain that benoth is the origin of the name Venus” (423). A footnote (423–24 n. 1) presents evidence for the frequent interchange of b and v in ancient writings and other linguistic arguments, concluding that “Il est très-probable que ce mot benoth, venue de la Syrie ou de la Phénicie, est passé à Carthage avec quelque altération, et de là s’est établi dans la grande Grèce et dans l’Étrurie, où il a été prononcé Vénus” (424). 288.  The arguments come from John Selden’s De Diis Syris Syntagmata 2. Addimenta Beyeri (ed. Andreas Beyer; London: n.p., 1619; digitized 15 March 2010 [from 1680 ed., Library of Catalonia] 26 September 2014) 310–14. 289.  “John Gill,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gill_(theologian). 290.  John Gill, A Collection of Sermons and Tracts … : To which are Prefixed, Memoirs of the Life, Writing, and Character of the Author, vol. 3 (London: George Keith, 1778), accessible online at https:// books.google.com/books?id=59wOAAAAIAAJ.



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for they made succoth benoth, or the tabernacles of the daughters, or booths of Venus, as Selden291 thinks it may be rendered; and which may have respect to the apartments in the temple of Mylitta, or Venus in Babylon, the like to which those people made in Samaria, in which women, once in their lives, prostituted themselves to whomsoever asked them, in honor of Venus; of which filthy practice, Herodotus makes mention; and from the Babylonians the Phoenicians had the same custom, their women prostituted themselves before their idols, and dedicated their gain to them, being strongly persuaded that they would be propitious to them, and they should enjoy prosperity, as Athanasius affirms, and Valerius Maximus relates, that they had a temple called the temple of Sicca Venus, which is near in sound to succoth Benoth, where their matrons before marriage prostituted their bodies for gain; and there was a Phoenician colony, three days journey from Carthage, called Sicca Veneria; to which may be added, that it was a custom with the Cyprians, another colony of the Phoenicians, for virgins before marriage to prostitute themselves, and give their gain to Venus; by all which, it is plain from whom these Samaritans received their impiety and impurity.292 Here we see how biblical exegesis and linguistic speculation by early Christian Hebraists and Orientalists forged a new connection between the old collection of classical and patristic references to sacred prostitution and Israelite religion; the Hebrew Bible provided the interpretation of the Punic name, which in turn provided the interpretation of the Hebrew text. This mutual influence of biblical scholarship and classical sources is also evident in Dufour’s account of the cult of Sicca Veneria, which adds a further tradition and combines details from different sources and locations. Dufour reports that sacred prostitution was carried by the Phoenicians to their colonies, where it preserved the “customs based upon lucre and mercantilism which distinguished this race.” He continues: At Sica-Veneria, in the territory of Carthage, the temple of Venus, which in the language of Tyre was called Succoth Benoth, or the Tents of Young Girls, was, in effect, an asylum for Prostitution, to which the daughters of the country went to gain their dot by the pain of their body (injuria corporis, says Valerius Maximus); they were all the more respectable as women after having plied this vile trade, and they married all the better for it. One may deduce from certain passages in the Bible, that this temple, like those 291.  Ibid., 495 n. k, citing De Diis Syr. Syntagm. 2. c. 7 p. 713. 292.  Ibid., 494–95 (italics original throughout).

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of Astarte at Sidon and Ascalon, was wholly surrounded by small tents, in which the young Carthaginian maidens consecrated themselves to the Phoenician Venus.293 Dufour, who is viewed as an authority on sacred prostitution by most nineteenth-century authors, cites only Valerius Maximus, but he clearly depends on secondary sources for his account, in this case the line of speculation traced to Selden. Cyprus The earliest reference to sacred prostitution in Cyprus is the note that concludes Herodotus’s account of Babylonian practice at the temple of Mylitta: “There is a custom (νόμος) like to this in some parts of Cyprus (ἐνιαχῇ . . . τῆς Κύπρου)” (Hist. 1.199). The indeterminate adverb ἐνιαχῇ (in some places)294 suggests multiple sites and hence the notion that the custom was at home on the island, especially given the association with Aphrodite at Babylon. Although Herodotus makes no reference to the goddess in his analogy, her close identification with the island, which made her “the Cyprian” to Homer, Pindar, and other Greek poets, strongly suggests that the likeness relates to the cult—in contrast to the Lydian practice, which he also describes, but does not cite as a parallel. The next reference to Cyprus as a site of sacred prostitution comes from the third-century BCE author Clearchus (as quoted by Athenaeus ca. 200 CE) in a statement concerning the Lydians (treated above, pp. 144–45) in which he likens the Lydian practice of premarital prostitution to that of the Cyprians, Western Locrians, and “all [peoples] . . . who dedicated their daughters to prostitution” (Deipn. 12.516b). No deity is mentioned, but both of the named sites have traditions of prostitution associated with Aphrodite. Of interest here is the view of a native Cyprian that a religious practice of his countrymen was simply a case of sanctioned promiscuity, and more particularly, a practice associated in Lydia and Locri with traditions of sexual violence. While it indicates that he believed the practice to be more widespread, it does not tell us whether he had any direct knowledge of it in his day. And it contributes no further information concerning a practice of cult-related prostitution.

293.  Pierre Dufour (pseudonym for Paul Lacroix), History of Prostitution among all the Peoples of the World from the Most Remote Antiquity to the Present Day (trans. Samuel Putnam; 3 vols.; Chicago: P. Covici, 1926) 1:28–29. On Dufour and his influence, see Chapter 2, pp. 52–54, above. 294.  LSJ 568.



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Justin/Trogus

A custom of prostitution in honor of Venus (Aphrodite) is reported for Cyprus in the Latin epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s Historiae Philippicae by Marcus Junianus Justinus ( Justin),295 produced in the latter part of the second century CE.296 The epitome is the only surviving form of the History (written ca. 20 CE) and represents a “fundamental source for Carthage.”297 It is in relation to traditions concerning the founding of Carthage that the reference to sacred prostitution in Cyprus appears. According to Justin’s (Trogus’) account, Elissa, sister of Pygmalion, king of Tyre, escaped from her brother, who had murdered her husband, and set sail for North Africa with male companions and the “sacred objects of Hercules.” Their first landfall was the island of Cyprus, where Justin reports that the priest of Jupiter298 made a compact to join her expedition. He then describes a local custom, and its aftermath: It was a custom in Cyprus to send young girls (virgines) down to the seashore on specific days before their marriage to earn money for their dowry by prostitution (dotalem pecuniam quaesituras in quaestum), and to offer Venus libations for the preservation of their virtue in the future (pro reliqua pudicitia libamenta Veneri soluturas). Elissa had some eighty of these girls (virgines) abducted and taken aboard so that her young men might have wives and her city a posterity. (Hist. Phil. 18.5.4–5) 295. Justinus, Epitoma Historiarum Philippicarum Pompei Trogi, cited below in the edition of Friedrich Duebner (Marcus Junianus Justinus, Iustini Historiae Philippicae [Leipzig: Teubner, 1831]); the English translation is that of J. C. Yardley in Yardley and R. Develin, Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus (Classical Resources Series 3; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994). 296.  R. Develin (in Yardley and Develin, Epitome) 4. Develin cites proposed dates from 144 to 395 CE, but argues for a date later in the second century and certainly before 230. Cf. OCD 571 s.v. “Justinus.” Little is known of Justin and his origins beyond a few hints in his own work, from which we learn that he composed the work on a sojourn in Rome. 297.  Develin, in Yardley and Develin, Epitome, 1. Trogus’s work, to the extent that it survives in Justin’s “epitome,” is the only surviving pagan Latin universal history. Trogus was a third-generation Roman of Gallic origin who was active through the reign of Augustus (2–3). Cf. OCD 1096–1097 s.v. “Trogus, Pompeius.” On the debated question of how much of Trogus’s original work is preserved in Justin’s epitome and how much is Justin’s own work, see Develin, Epitome, 4–6. 298.  Sacerdos Iovis (Hist. Phil. 18.5.2). Duebner (Iustini Historiae Philippicae, 210) indicates a variant reading of Iunonis (i.e. Astarte) proposed by the fourth-century grammarian and commentator Servius, which accounts for Moscati’s report that “according to Justin” Elissa “was joined by the high priest of Astarte ( Juno)” (The World of the Phoenicians, 114; so also Marie Eugenia Aubet, The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade [2nd ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; trans. Mary Turton, from the 2nd Spanish edition of 1994] 217). Cf. Duebner, Iustini Historiae Philippicae, 115, where he identifies “the cult of Juno (Astarte) and the sacred prostitution in Cyprus” as features of the tradition of Carthage’s founding that “denote familiarity with the Phoenician environment.”

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It is impossible to know whether this account derives from Trogus or Justin,299 but it combines features of Herodotus’s report on the Lydians’ practice of premarital prostitution for dowries (which Herodotus does not associate with Aphrodite)300 and the similar report by Justin’s contemporary, Aelian, who adds a note on the subsequent fidelity of the women (as in Herodotus’s Mylitta account). The commercial nature of the activity is clearly manifest here, though the language of “prostitution” is not used; but it is linked, uniquely, to a religious action of offering libations to Venus to protect their virtue in the future.301 In this account, the custom of premarital prostitution practiced on the island is not the focus of the author’s attention; it is reported to explain the availability of virgins for the men to populate the new city. The custom is presented as peculiar to the island and is not identified as Phoenician in origin. Nor is it linked to any Carthaginian practice. Rather than serving as the foundation legend for the sacred prostitution reported elsewhere for Carthage (Valerius Maximus), it serves only to explain the populating of the colony.302 Clement of Alexandria

Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 CE) was an Athenian-born convert to Christianity, who sought religious instruction in the catechetical school of Alexandria and later became its head. His Exhortation to the Greeks (Protrepticos, ca. 190 CE) attempts to prove the superiority of the new faith to pagan religions and philosophies.303 In an attack on the popular mystery cults, he first lifts up the “orgies” of the “raving” Dionysus (Protr. 2:11) and the “mystic drama” of Demeter and Persephone celebrated at Eleusis (2.12). He then turns to the originators of these mysteries, pronouncing a curse on the man who started “this deception for 299.  Budin (Myth, 211) argues that this passage derives from Justinus, rather than Trogus, on the basis of J. C. Yardley’s linguistic study, Justin and Pompeius Trogus: A Study of the Language of Justin’s Epitome of Trogus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003) 216. 300.  The theme of prostitution for dowries is also found in Valerius (a contemporary of Trogus)—with a Venus connection. 301.  The prostitution is not interpreted as a cultic action or performed as a religious obligation or offering. 302.  Justin’s history of Carthage contains no reference to sacred prostitution and only limited attention to religion, although it does describe an act of child sacrifice, a “bloodthirsty and unconscionable form of religious ceremony,” undertaken to avert a plague (18.6.10–11; Yardley, in Yardley and Devilin, Epitome, 158). Moscati’s attempt (see n. 298, above) to make the link through a priest of Juno (Astarte) conflicts with Justin’s identification of Venus as the goddess associated with the custom of prostitution. And his identification of “the cult of Juno (Astarte) and the sacred prostitution in Cyprus” as elements of Carthaginian culture evidencing “familiarity with Phoenician environment” (World of the Phoenicians, 115) reads against Justin’s presentation of the prostitution as a Cyprian custom, and with no apparent connection to the previously mentioned priesthood. 303.  OCD 249 s.v. “Clement of Alexandria.”



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mankind.” As possible initiators he names Dardanus (“who introduced the mysteries of the Mother of the Gods”), Eëtion (“who founded the Samothracian orgies and rites”), and the Phrygian Midas (“who learned the artful deceit from Odrysus and then passed it on to his subjects”), then extends his view from these “barbarians” of the Aegean to Cyprus, continuing the theme of deception: For I could never be beguiled by the claims of the islander Cinyras, of Cyprus, who had the audacity to transfer the lascivious orgies (μαχλῶντα ὄργια) of Aphrodite from night to day, in his ambition to deify a harlot of his own country (θειάσαι πόρνην πολίτιδα). (Protr. 2.12)304 In this roster of “originators” of the mystery cults Clement turns history on its head, claiming foreign origins for a form of religious practice that developed on Greek soil. His inclusion of the Phrygian cult of Magna Mater and the Cyprian cult of Aphrodite in his catalogue of mysteries reflects a relatively late Hellenistic development in which the secret rites around Demeter at Eleusis became a model for other cults, including increasingly popular cults of Asian origin. Clement’s main interest, however, was exposing the scandalous practices that the initiates were sworn to maintain in secrecy. Thus he proclaims that he will “tell openly the secret things” (2.13) and devotes the rest of his attack to a detailed description of the legends and practices of the mysteries, especially those associated with Demeter and Dionysus (2.13–19). He begins his exposé, however, with the “orgies” of the “‘foam-born’ ‘Cyprus-born’ . . . darling of Cinyras,” Aphrodite Philomedes, whose name and cult he relates to the Greek myth describing the birth of the goddess in the sea from the severed genitals of Ouranos.305 And in the rites (τελεταῖς) which celebrate this pleasure of the sea (τῆς πελαγίας ἡδονῆς), as a symbol of her birth, the gift of a cake of salt and a phallos is made to those who are initiated in the art of fornication (τοῖς μυουμένοις τὴν τέκνην τὴν μοιχικὴν); and the initiated (οἱ μυούμενοι) bring their tribute of a coin to the goddess, as lovers do to a mistress (ὡς ἑταίρᾳ ἐρασταί). (Protr. 2.13) 304.  Quoted from the Loeb edition of G. W. Butterworth, Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919; repr. 1960). Oden (“Religious Identity,” 190 n. 35) cites Protr. 2.13.4 as the source of Clements’s reference to “‘orgies’ celebrated in honor of Aphrodite of Cyprus” (142) but 2.13 (treated below) appears to refer only to male initiates. 305.  Here Clement quotes from Hesiod (Theogony 200), who explains the name φιλομμειδέα (“genial”) as recording that “she came forth from the genitals” (translation from the Loeb edition of Glenn W. Most: Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). See below p. 193 n. 358. Clement’s spelling of the name as φιλμηδέα appears to involve a word play. See OCD 80 s.v. “Aphrodite.”

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What should we make of these two, separated accounts of the cult of Paphian Aphrodite? The founding legend is of interest for its emphasis on the indigenous origins of the goddess and her cult, connecting the latter to the mythical king of the island and eponymous ancestor of the Cinyrade priests of Aphrodite at Paphos306 and calling Aphrodite a “harlot from his own country (πόρνην πολίτιδα).”307 It is also the first and only text among those commonly cited as references to sacred prostitution that refers to “orgies” of Aphrodite. But orgia are simply rituals of the mystery cults, to which Clements relates the cult of Aphrodite for the first time.308 And in the absence of any clear reference to prostitution, they can hardly be equated with sacred prostitution, even when characterized as lascivious.309 The adjective (μαχλῶντα) indicates that it is women’s rites that are targeted,310 but what is meant by the charge of transferring them from night to day? Is this a way of saying that the rites involve sexual activity that belongs properly to the “nightlife” of bedroom or bordello—or the night rituals characteristic of the mystery cults—but is practiced here in the “light of day”? Or does it mean that the secret rituals amount to nothing more than simple prostitution practiced openly in the public sphere? Elsewhere Aphrodite is said to have instituted the profession of prostitution.311 Unfortunately Clement provides no details, assuming readers know of what he speaks; and the only prostitute in this passage appears to be Aphrodite herself.312 306.  OCD 242 s.v. “Cinyras,” in which Frazer is cited as the primary source. While Cinyras is also father of Adonis according to one tradition, and identified with Byblos (Strabo, Geogr. 16.2.18), F. R. Walton (“Aphrodite,” OCD 80–81) suggests that he may represent the autochthonos culture of Cyprus. Paphos was the site of a famous Aphrodite temple (OCD 777 s.v. “Paphos”), although it is not named in any of our sources, which refer simply to Cyprus or the Cyprian Venus/Aphrodite. It is Aphrodite’s home in the Odyssey (8.363–364) and The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (lines 58–64), and she was also known by the epithet Paphia (“the Paphian”). 307.  Walton (“Aphrodite,” OCD 80–81) reports that “to Homer she is ‘the Cyprian,’ and it was probably from Cyprus, in the Mycenaean age, that Aphrodite first entered Greece.” See below on the legend of her sea birth, connected both to Cyprus and Cythera. Cf. Budin, Origin of Aphrodite, 273–75, 281, who also sees Cyprus as the place from which Aphrodite entered Greece (by way of Crete), though at a somewhat later period. 308.  This is the earliest of our sources to make this identification. Eusebius, more than a century later, also speaks of the mysteries of Aphrodite (in dependence on Clement?). He likewise refers to “orgies” of Aphrodite (LC 7:[3]), but without reference to sacred prostitution. By identifying the Paphian cult of Aphrodite as a mystery cult, and beginning his exposé with the lewd associations of its cult legend, Clement appears to suggest that this is the kind of thing that characterizes all of the mysteries. 309.  On the actual practices of the initiates in the mysteries and the relationship between sexual symbol and act, see Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, 9, 95–96, 104–6, and passim. See below for the connection of Cinyras to sacred prostitution on Cyprus. 310.  According to LSJ (1085), μαχλος refers to lewd or lustful women, a different term being used for men. 311.  See below, pp. 210 and 205. 312.  Another new feature in this account is the euhemerizing interpretation of the cult’s origins as the deification of a human “hero,” a mode of interpreting pagan religions that became popular among Christian writers (OCD 344 s.v. “Euhemerus”).



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It is Clement’s second reference to the rites of Aphrodite (Protr. 2.13) that is often cited as a reference to sacred prostitution. However, the only participants described in these rites are clearly males, indicated by the masculine terms for the initiates (μυουμένοις / μυούμενοι) and the activity (μοιχικὴν313), but more decisively by the analogy describing their offering of a coin to the goddess, “as lovers do to a hetaira.”314 The relationship between the “lascivious” women’s rites and the rites of male initiates in the “art of fornication” is not clear, but it appears that two distinct cults, or rites, together with distinct etiologies of Aphrodite worship in Cyprus are presented.315 Arnobius

Arnobius (d. ca. 330 CE) was a rhetorician at Sicca Veneria and a convert to Christianity, whose only surviving work is a critique of pagan cults and philosophy entitled Adversus Nationes (ca. 305 CE).316 The work contains no references to Sicca (in his time a major Christian center in Roman North Africa) or to any Venus cult or custom of prostitution there.317 It is only in relation to Cyprus that Venus is 313.  The term generally refers to adultery by a man (LSJ 1141). 314.  Clement’s reference to initiation in the “art of fornication” might well suggest female sacred prostitution; and the phallic symbol received by the initiates does not exclude the possibility of female participants, since a phallus plays a central role in the Dionysian orgia, in which women were the primary participants (OCD 717 s.v. “Mysteries); cf. Burkert (Ancient Mystery Cults, 58 fig. 5. VII, and 95–96) for depictions of initiation scenes with women and a giant phallus. But note Plutarch’s consolation of his wife by referring to their “common initiation into the mysteries of Dionysus” (ibid., 105). Nevertheless, a male interpretation seems to be required not only by the grammar and metaphor of the text, but by later citations of the passage, or a common source (see below). 315.  Some authors have seen evidence of sacred prostitution in a legend concerning Pygmalion related by Arnobius and, in a more restrained manner, Clement. Both authors cite Philostephanus (fourth/third century BCE) as their source. Clement’s version is related in a section on the folly of venerating statues, which contains multiple references to statues or other representations of Aphrodite as a beautiful naked woman. It reads as follows: So the well-known Pygmalion of Cyprus fell in love (ἠράσθη) with an ivory statue; it was of Aphrodite and was naked. The man of Cyprus is captivated by its shapeliness and embraces the statue (νικᾶται ὁ Κύπριος τῷ σχήματι καὶ συνέρχεται τῷ ἀγἀλματι). (Protr. 4.57.3) There does not appear to be anything in this account that would suggest association with an institution of sacred prostitution, or any form of prostitution. See below for Arnobius’s account. 316.  Our only biographical information on Arnobius comes from Jerome. OCD, 122 (s.v. “Arnobius”); Michael Bland Simmons, Arnobius of Sicca: Religious Conflict and Competition in the Age of Diocletion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Simmons (vi–vii) argues that the work is designed as a rebuttal of the anti-Christian writings of Porphyry of Tyre, which Arnobius had previously espoused. 317.  Based on a negative search of concordances to Arnobius, The Seven Books Against the Heathen (IntraText Edition CT, 2007; Èulogos 2009 [http://www.intratext.com/ixt/ENG1008/]); confirmed by George E. McCracken (Arnobius of Sicca, The Case Against the Pagans [2 vols.; Ancient

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mentioned with explicit cultic associations, including practices commonly interpreted as sacred prostitution.318 In Adv. Nat. 4.25 Arnobius cites tradition concerning Venus in a series of rhetorical questions arguing that it was pagans, not Christians, who authored insults to the gods: “Did we say that Venus was a courtesan, deified by a Cyprian king named Cinyras? (meretriculam Veneram divorum in numero consecratam).”319 The reference to Cinyras suggests a founding legend, which is explicit in 5.19, a passage highlighting the abhorrent acts of various mysteries: Those hidden mysteries of Cyprian Venus we pass by also, whose founder is said to have been King Cinyras, in which being initiated, they bring stated fees as to a harlot (certas stipes inferunt ut meretrici), and carry away phalli, given as signs of the propitious deity.320 This account corresponds closely to that of Clement (Protr. 2.14, 19), though combining reference to the founder of the cult with description of the initiation rites. The resemblance is especially close in the account of the payment made to the goddess, “as to a harlot,” and the reference to the phalli given as signs to the initiates—here likewise male (in quibus sumentes).321 As in Clement, Venus appears to Christian Writers 7–8; Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1949] 1:7), who finds this silence surprising, since the practice reported by Valerius would have provided him with “perhaps the most disgraceful single charge” he could have made against the pagans. On the silence of Augustine, another North African, see above. While some scholars conclude that Jerome’s identification of Arnobius with Sicca was erroneous, McCracken notes that Valerius (almost three centuries earlier) describes the practice in the past tense and argues that Arnobius’s attacks were against current religious practices. According to Simmons (Arnobius of Sicca, vi, 8, 184–215), the primary religious conflict in Roman North Africa was between Christianity and the cult of Saturn. Although he also notes that Valerius described “a moribund cultic practice,” he reports that an early fourth-century inscription mentions a statue of Venus at Sicca, “which had for a long time been in need of restoration.” He suggests that this may be related to Adv. Nat. 6.20.1–10 and 6.21, but especially 6.22.1–5, which precedes a scathing attack on the image of Venus in 6.22–23 (Simmons, Arnobius of Sicca, 104–5). None of these passages deal with Sicca, however, or with women prostituting themselves for dowries. See above on Sicca. 318.  The majority of Arnobius’s references to Venus concern her representation in myth and art—as a harlot or lover who incites lustful thoughts and acts. 319.  The English translation is cited from the edition of Hamilton Bryce and Hugh Campbell, revised and annotated by A. Cleveland Coxe (ANF 6; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1951 [reprint of 1886 edition] 484); the Latin text is from PL 5:1206. On the disputed question of the source of Arnobius’s references to the Cyprian Venus and her cult, see below. McCracken (Arnobius of Sicca, 556–57 n. 170) cites a proposed parallel in Clement, but finds a closer resemblance in the Sacra Historia of Euhemerus, cited by Lactantius. 320.  This passage is sandwiched between an account of the Greek Omophagia and the rites of the Corybantes, both involving acts or memorials of violent killing. Does this suggest an association with the Adonis myth? 321.  On the question of Arnobius’s dependence on Clement, see McCracken, Arnobius of Sicca, 42–44.



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be the only prostitute mentioned in the account, although indirectly. The etiology referring to the deified harlot (Adv. Nat. 4.25) is separated from the account of the rites, and there is no mention of prostitutes in connection with the cult. A third reference to Cyprian Venus by Arnobius concerns the legend of Pygmalion:322 Philostephanus relates in his Cypriaca, that Pygmalion, king of Cyprus, loved as a woman an image of Venus, which was held by the Cyprians holy and venerable from ancient times323) . . . and that he was wont in his madness, just as if he were dealing with his wife, having raised the deity to his couch, to be joined with it in embraces and face to face, and to do other vain things, carried away by a foolishly lustful imagination.324 (Adv. Nat. 6.22) How this legend relates to the traditions of Cinyras as founder of the cult of Aphrodite (Venus) on Cyprus is not clear, though it serves to reinforce the tradition of royal patronage.325 Since Pygmalion appears in other sources as king of Tyre,326 it might also suggest Phoenician origins of the cult—though Arnobius’s emphasis on the antiquity of Venus/Aphrodite veneration in Cyprus seems to suggest autochthonous origins. While the account may be an etiology for sexual activity associated with the cult, it is male activity that is depicted—with an inert female image—and it offers no evidence of female prostitution as cultic activity. It is apparent from the passages cited above that Arnobius had no independent knowledge of the Cyprian cult and depends either on Clement or a common source. Whatever the source, none of these passages provide evidence of a practice that might be described as sacred prostitution.327 322. See OCD 750 s.v. “Pygmalion,” and McCracken, Arnobius of Sicca, 599 n. 152, for the differing versions of Ovid (first century BCE–CE) and Philostephanus (fourth/third century BCE). For Clement’s version, see above. 323.  Coxe (ANF 6:516 n. 1) annotates: “Lit., ‘of ancient sanctity and religion’” (quod sanctitatis apud Cyprios et religionis habebatur antiquae). 324.  Italics original. Coxe annotates (ibid. n. 2): “Lit., ‘imagination of empty lust.’ ” The Latin description of the activity is as follows: solitumque dementem, tamquam si uxoria res esset, sublevato in lectulum numine copularier amplexibus atque ore, resque alias agere libidinis vacuae imaginatione frustrabiles. 325.  At least in Arnobius’s version; Clement does not identify Pygmalion as king, but simply calls him “the Cyprian Pygmalion” (ὁ Κύπριος ὁ Πυγμαλίων, Protr. 4.57.3). 326. Vergil, Aen. 1.343–364; Justin, Hist. Phil. 18.4 (where he is the murderous brother of Elissa who occasioned her flight to Cyprus and thence to Carthage). 327.  In another passage, Arnobius refers explicitly to prostitution in connection with sacred rites: “In the greatest states, and in the most powerful nations, sacred rites are performed in the public name to harlots, who in old days earned the wages of impurity, and prostituted themselves to the lust of all (sacra publice fiunt scortis meritoriis quondam, atque in vulgarem libidinem prostitutes [Adv. Nat. 1.28]).” This un-localized account of former activity (quondam: unspecified former time) is a generalizing statement about the immorality of pagan cults. McCracken (Arnobius of Sicca, 78;

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Lactantius

Venus the Harlot, of Cyprian fame, or infamy, also figures in the apologetics of Lactantius (ca. 240–320 CE), a North African convert to Christianity and a pupil of Arnobius.328 Originally a teacher of rhetoric, who lost his position during the Diocletian persecution, he authored numerous works, though only the Christian writings survive. His magnum opus, the Divinae Institutiones (304–313 CE), surveys a variety of arguments for the superiority of Christianity, focusing in 1.16–17 on the sexual differentiation, procreation, immoral behavior, and vicissitudes of the gods as proofs of their human origins.329 In this context Lactantius speaks of the “indecency of Venus (obscenitatem Veneris), prostituting herself to the lust of one and all (omnium libidinibus prostitutae), not only gods but also men,” and recalls her debauchery with various gods (Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, etc.), identifying the offspring of each union (Div. Instit. 1.17.9). Concluding with Adonis, “from whom she could bring forth no offspring, because he was . . . slain while yet a boy,” he shifts attention to her human associates: And she first instituted the art of courtesanship (artem meretriciam instituit), as is contained in the sacred history (in Historia Sacra continetur); and taught women in Cyprus to seek gain by prostitution (auctorque mulieribus in Cypro fuit uti vulgo corpore quaestum facerent), which she commanded 280 n. 117) suggests that the “public sacrifices … made to harlots” refers to “divine honors paid to historical hetaerae,” citing Greek Leaena and Roman Laurentia and Flora (following Coxe’s annotations in ANF 6:420 n. 4). 328.  OCD 575–76 s.v. “Lactantius”; ODCC 791–92 s.v. “Lactantius”; Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey, trans. and ed., Lactantius, Divine Institutes (Τranslated Texts for Historians 40; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003) 1–6. Bowen and Garnsey (1) argue that Lactantius did not know of Arnobius’s Adversus Nationes and suggest that the two men wrote these apologetic works at about the same time. 329.  References are to the English translation of Bowen and Garnsey and the Latin text of Pierre Monat (Lactance, Institutions Divines, Livre I [SC 326; Paris: Cerf, 1986]). Lactantius makes an interesting argument for the human origins of the pagan gods by considering the phenomenon of female representation: People therefore who think that stories about the gods are a poet’s creation both believe in the existence of female gods and worship them; without realizing it they are brought round to admitting what they denied, that gods copulate and give birth. Two sexes can only have been instituted for the sake of producing offspring. People accept the distinction of sexes and fail to realize the consequence of it, which is conception. That is not possible for a god, but they think it is. (Div. Inst. 1.16.4–5) To the issue of procreative design, Lactantius adds the argument of female weakness: “Of the two sexes, one is stronger and one is weaker (the stronger ones are the males, and the feebler the females). But feebleness is not a feature of a god; neither therefore is the female sex … because there are females among the gods, they are not gods” (1.16.16–17).



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for this purpose, that she alone might not appear unchaste and a courter of men beyond other females (ne sola praeter alias mulieres impudica et virorum appetens videretur). (Div. Instit. 1.17.10)330 In this account, Venus is the patroness of prostitutes, and no ritual significance is attributed to her action, or that of her human counterparts.331 The nature of her worship, alluded to in the following rhetorical question,332 is not spelled out. No link is made with the cult of Adonis, despite reference to the Adonis myth immediately preceding this account. The connection of Venus with the institution of prostitution is represented as established tradition, recorded in the “sacred history”—a reference to the Euhemerus or Sacra Historia of Ennius (239–169 BCE).333 The novelty in Lactantius’s commentary is the (very human) motive he attributes to Venus. This passage appears to be simply an etiology for the institution of prostitution under the patronage of Cyprian Venus. Firmicus Maternus

Oden’s last reference to the cult of Cyprian Venus is from the work of Julius Firmi­cus Maternus, a Sicilian convert to Christianity whose De errore profanarum 330.  Cf. Bowen and Garnsey (Divine Institutes, 99): “She started prostitution, and promoted it on Cyprus as a way the women could make money from the public hire of their bodies; she required it of them to avoid herself being seen as the only wicked woman, with a gross appetite for men.” In the Epitome of the Divinae Institutiones that Lactantius later produced, the essence of the argument here is preserved: “Venus, exposed to the lusts both of gods and men, while reigning in Cyprus, devised the art of whoredome, and bade women make a gain of it, that she might not be alone in infamy (Venus deorum et hominum libidinibus exposita quum regnaret in Cypro, artem meretricam reperit, ac mulieribus imperavit, ut quaestum facerent, ne sola esset infamis)” (Epit. 9.1; text and translation from Edward Henry Blakeney, Firmiani Lactantii Epitome Institutionem Divinarum / Lactantius’ Epitome of the Divine Isntitutes [London: SPCK, 1950] 66). 331.  Pace Oden (“Religious Identity,” 143), who relates this passage to the rites described by Arnobius, which he characterizes as “sacred prostitution in honor of Venus.” He continues: “Lactantius himself … describes this alleged rite in somewhat greater detail.” Although Lactantius was a pupil of Arnobius, his use of traditions relating to Cyprian Venus differs in conception and content from that of his teacher. Cf. Clarence A. Forbes, trans. and ed., Firmicus Maternus, The Error of the Pagan Religions (ACW 37; New York: Newman, 1970) 173–74 n. 206, who notes that Cinyras does not appear in the euhemerisitic tradition that forms the base of Lactantius’s work. Initiation rites, prominent in Clement and Arnobius, also receive no mention in Lactantius. 332.  “Has she, too, any claim to religious worship, on whose part more adulteries are recorded than births?” (Div. Instit. 1.17.10). 333.  OCD 1:344 s.v. “Euhemerus,” and 316 s.v. “Ennius.” Forbes (Error, 27) observes that “Lactantius, the principal source of our surviving fragments of the Ennian version of Euhemerus, obviously read the Latin translation [rather than the Greek original]; but few others did even that.” Although first-hand evidence of the original is lacking, Lactantius’s citing of the Sacra Historia points, at least, to a tradition extant in the second century BCE that attributed the invention of harlotry to Aphrodite (Venus) in Cyprus.

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religionum, written in Rome ca. 346, appeals to the emperors Constantius and Constans to exterminate the pagan religions.334 His assemblage of traditions describing the scandalous behavior of the pagan gods and their adherents includes a foundation legend for the Venus temple in Cyprus, which closely resembles the references in Clement and Arnobius:335 I hear that Cinyras of Cyprus gave a temple to his harlot friend named Venus (amicae meretrici . . . ei erat Venus nomen), and even initiated many in the rites of the Cyprian Venus (initiasse etiam Cypriae Veneri plurimos), and devoted them to her by senseless consecrations (et vanis consecrationibus deputasse)—yes, even stipulated that whoever wanted to be initiated, with Venus’s secret confided to him, should give the goddess one penny as pay. What sort of secret it was we all must understand without telling, because its shameful character is such that we cannot explain it in clearer detail. The lover Cinyras observed well the laws of whoredom (meretriciis legibus servit): he bade the priests of the consecrated Venus give her a piece of money, as if to a whore (ut scorto). (Err. prof. 10.1)336 Here, as in Clement and Arnobius, the initiates are clearly male (initiasse . . . plurimos; quicumque initiari vellet), and it is Venus who is the harlot and receives the harlot’s “wage.” Male priests appear in her service (mentioned here for the first time, identified by the common term sacerdotes), but there is no reference to women associated with the cult. Firmicus’s account of the cult of the divine harlot follows his account of the Adonis cult (Err. prof. 9.1), which introduces the theme of Venus as partner of many gods—and men. Although juxtaposed, the two cults are treated as distinct.337 Scholars differ on the question of Firmicus’s sources. Clarence Forbes finds “considerable evidence” that Firmicus “read and imitated” Clement’s Protrepticus and concludes that Arnobius was also a source,338 while Robert Turcan rejects the notion of direct dependence on Clement or Arnobius, arguing that the three authors had a common source.339 Firmicus makes no direct use of Euhemerus 334.  OCD 439 s.v. “Firmicus Maternus”; ODCC 514 s.v. “Firmicus Maternus”; Forbes, Error, 1–19. For the date of the work, see Forbes, Error, 9. Before his conversion to Christianity he wrote an eightbook compendium of astrology interwoven with moral reflections (entitled Mathesis). 335.  On his sources, see Forbes, Error, 22–32, and Robert Turcan, trans. and ed., Firmicus Maternus, L’Erreur des Religions Paiennes (Collection des Universités de France; Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1982), 49–53. 336.  The English translation is from Forbes, Error, 65–66; the Latin is from Turcan, L’Erreur, 100. 337.  Cf. Lactantius (above) for similar order and associations. 338. Forbes, Error, 29–31. 339. Turcan, L’Erreur, 251.



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(unlike Lactantius), though he offers a full display of euhemeristic interpretation, which was popular in Christian polemic.340 Italy: Western Locris Oden has no reference to a tradition of sacred prostitution among the Locrians, but Clearchus likens the Lydians to Western (Epizephyrian) Locrians and Cyprians as peoples who “dedicate” their daughters to hetaerism (Deipn. 12.516b). Justin preserves a report of Locrian prostitution in a religious context, in an account describing how the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius despoiled the Locrians through a ruse (Hist. Phil. 21.3).341 According to the report, the Locrians had made a vow during an earlier battle to “prostitute their unmarried women on the festival of Venus if they were victorious (si victores forent, ut die festo Veneris virgines suas prostituerent)” (21.3.2). They had failed to fulfill their vow,342 and during a subsequent unsuccessful war, Dionysius urged them to “send their wives and daughters to the temple of Venus dressed in all their finery” (21.3.3). From these a hundred would be selected by lot “to discharge the communal vow and, to satisfy the religious requirements (voto publico fungantur religionsique gratia), spend a month on show in a brothel” (emphasis added)—but all of the men would have sworn not to touch them (21.3.4). The plan was accepted, according to Justin, because “it respected both the religious obligation and the virtue of the young women” (21.3.6). Dionysius, however, stripped the women and appropriated their jewelry as his personal booty (21.3.7–8). The passage is difficult to interpret, because the same “event” is reported in a quite different manner by Clearchus (Deipn. 12.541c–e), Strabo (Geogr. 6.1.8), and Aelian (Var. Hist. 9.8), all without reference to a vow, temple, or brothel and all involving sexual violence by Dionysius and by the Locrians in revenge.343 In the case of Strabo and Aelian, the language of prostitution (specifically kataporneuo) is used in addition to rape to describe the retribution exacted by the Locrians from 340. Forbes, Error, 27–29. 341.  According to Budin (Myth, 211, citing Yardley, Justin and Pompeius Trogus, 155), this account, as well as Justin’s account on Cyprus, derives from Justin, rather than Trogus. 342.  The Latin text reads “Quo voto intermisso,” which Yardley translates “This vow had gone unfulfilled.” Budin (Myth, 212) offers “As the vow was intermisso (paused, interrupted, neglected, omitted, ignored, left unfulfilled),” discussing problems of interpretation in the context of the whole passage, which, as she observes, “is not a coherent narrative” (219). See further discussion with suggested parallels, ibid., 219–28. 343.  See ibid., 212–28.

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Dionysius’s wife and daughters.344 While this tradition of rape and revenge may represent the “original” tradition,345 the addition of the motif of the vow in Justin’s version suggests that a tradition of prostitution associated with the cult of Venus/ Aphrodite was alive in the third century CE (assuming this is Justin’s contribution to whatever account existed in Trogus’s History) as a free-floating motif made up of elements of older reports and capable of transfer to new loci.346 In the case of the Locrians, Clearchus’s analogy in his treatment of the Lydians provided an opportunity for Justin to fill in the blank. Justin’s account of sacred prostitution at Locris cannot count as historical evidence for the practice it describes; what it shows is a movable, and adaptable, tradition of prostitution associated with the cult of the goddess of sexual desire. III. Summary by Regions Babylon (“Assyria”) Herodotus’s account (Hist. 1.199; fifth century BCE) of women offering themselves to strangers at the temple of Mylitta is unique in its elaborate description of the “playing field” and terms of “play,” its accent on universal obligation, and its psychological and economic interest. Although it makes no reference to age or marital status in specifying the once-in-a-lifetime obligation, the note that this insures the woman against succumbing to future sexual appeals of strangers suggests a pre-marital rite, as does its contrastive pairing with the village bridal market.347 The uniqueness of the account and the identification of the goddess by her local name Mylitta invite speculation about indigenous practice or tradition. But Herodotus names no source or informant,348 and he seems to understand Mylitta more generally as the “Assyrian” name of Aphrodite.349 Greek Aphrodite is the controlling term here, with the whole account constructed as a counter to Greek civic and religious ideals, a portrait of the cult of the “Oriental” goddess in 344.  Strabo (Geogr. 6.1.8) says of the Locrians’ revenge against Dionysius that they “made themselves masters of his wife and children … [and] having prostituted them, they strangled them” (Budin, Myth, 217); and Aelian (Var. Hist. 9.8) reports that “the Locrians prostituted his wife and daughters, and without restraint they all raped them” (Budin, Myth, 218). 345.  It may also explain Clearchus’s inclusion of the Locrians in his analogy with the Lydians, as Budin argues, though it does not explain the inclusion of the Cyprians or Clearchus’s accent on the men’s prostituting of their own daughters. 346.  See Yardley, Justin and Pompeius Trogus, 155–56, and Budin, Myth, 221. 347.  Cf. Budin, Myth, 73–75, who argues that Herodotus has specifically married women in mind and views this account as another example of his use of inversion in describing the customs of the Babylonians. Clearly there are tensions in the account, however it is read, because of its silence with respect to fathers or husbands. 348.  In contrast, for example, to his report on the activity at the Zeus temple of Babylon. 349. See Hist. 1.131, and discussion below on the origins and identity of the Heavenly Aphrodite.



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her eastern domain—if not her home.350 The question of what late Babylonian practice or tradition might lie behind the reported “custom” requires assessment of Mesopotamian sources, but scholars of Mesopotamian religion today know of no practice corresponding to Herodotus’s account and either dismiss it as a Greek fantasy or speculate about what institution(s) or practice(s) might lie behind this distorted refraction. What seems clear is that Aphrodite has provided the interpretive lens for Herodotus. Thus he points to a “similar” custom in Cyprus, the birthplace of the goddess in Greek tradition, reflected in her most common poetic name, “the Cyprian.” Herodotus also provides an account of a different type of cultic activity that is widely invoked in modern theories of sacred prostitutionι, namely activity or ritual associated with the concept of “sacred marriage.” This is his account of the woman who slept on the great bed of Zeus Belus in the shrine atop his temple tower, joined by the god himself on that bed, according to local tradition (Hist. 1.181). Neither Herodotus nor any other ancient author made any connection between this type of consecrated “intercourse” and the sexual activity associated with Aphrodite and various other goddesses. Herodotus did recognize a parallel, however, in a tradition concerning Theban Zeus (Hist. 1.182), which is elaborated by Strabo (Geogr. 17.1.46).351 Although Strabo reports that the dedicated virgin “cohabits” (σύνεστιν) with whatever men she wishes, this activity ceases at menarche, and Herodotus reports that “neither the Egyptian nor the Babylonian woman . . . has intercourse with men.” The abbreviated account of a Babylonian sex market in the Letter of Jeremiah (fourth–second century BCE) appears to be dependent on Herodotus’s Mylitta account. The author has constructed his own version of the report to suit his own purposes, parodying the sense of honor attached to such humiliation by the “idol worshippers” and eliminating any identification of the action as sacred. Strabo’s account (Geogr. 16.1.2; beginning of first century CE) also depends on Herodotus (or a common source), abbreviated and tailored to his own interests, with the added note that the custom was instituted in response to an oracle. More significantly, Strabo treats the Babylonian case as unique and draws no connection to the other cases of cult-related prostitution that he reports, whether in association with Aphrodite or another deity. None of the three interdependent examples relating to Babylon use terms for prostitution to describe the activity, although it is clearly presented as analogous, if anomalous.

350.  On the complex question of her “origins,” see below. Herodotus recognizes Ascalon as her earliest cult site, at least with respect to the cult known in Cyprus and the west. Since he makes no mention of the Aphrodite cult at Corinth, it is uncertain how much of the tradition transmitted, or created, by Pindar and Strabo was known to him, or could be assumed on the part of his audience. 351.  Strabo does not have an account of the Babylonian temple and therefore draws no parallel.

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Asia Minor Prostitution with cultic associations is described at two sites in northeastern Asia Minor, both by Strabo, the sole source for both. Acilisene (Armenia)

Strabo’s report (Geogr. 11.14.16) of nobles who consecrated their virgin daughters to the goddess Anaitis to “be prostituted” for a “long time” prior to marriage uses explicit language of prostitution while emphasizing the religious character and lack of dishonor attending the practice. The women come from noble families, give presents to their paramours, and do not consort with partners below their rank. The practice is distinguished from the common dedication of male and female slaves to a temple. Despite the clear religious context, Strabo cites the secular Lydian practice reported by Herodotus as similar. What they appear to have in common is premarital prostitution without damage to future marriage prospects—and an implied critique of male honor, debased by the men who subject their daughters to prostitution, and by the men who marry them. The goddess here is identified as Persian and especially honored by Medes and Armenians, and no identification is made with Aphrodite or any other Greek or indigenous deity. Comana Pontica

Strabo’s account (Geogr. 12.3.36) of the festival at the twice yearly “exoduses” of the goddess (Ma)352 highlights the crowds that fill the city from the surrounding countryside and the luxurious life of the inhabitants in their vine-rich estates. It concludes with a note on the presence there of “a multitude of women who make gain of their persons, most of whom are sacred (hierai),” and an analogy to Corinth, because “there too” outsiders flocked “on account of the multitude of courtesans (hetairai) sacred (hierai) to Aphrodite.” Here are sacred courtesans (as at Corinth), not high-ranking virgins consecrated to prenuptial service (as at Acilisene) or commoners in quest of dowries (as in Lydia). Although the goddess and her rites are said to have been transferred from Cappadocia, Strabo makes no reference to prostitution at the original cult site, and refers to prostitution at Comana only in a circumlocution, in a notice separated from the account of the goddess’s festivals. The practice appears as a Pontic peculiarity, with a Corinthian prototype, and belonging to a previous era. 352.  The goddess is not named, but the city is said to be consecrated to the same deity as its Cappadocian namesake, identified as Ma or Enyo (Geogr. 12.2.3 and 12.3.32).



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Lydia

A Lydian practice of premarital prostitution is noted by four different authors, but Strabo cites Herodotus as his source. None of the references has a cultic context or connection, except by analogy, so they cannot be considered primary sources for sacred prostitution, despite the assumption of some modern authors that there “must be” a religious motive. They nevertheless contribute to an understanding of the ancient authors’ views of cult-related sexual activity when they are cited as evidence of comparable practice. The earliest reference is from Herodotus (Hist. 1.93–94), who reports that “all the daughters of the common people (δήμου) . . . ply the trade of prostitutes, to collect dowries till they get themselves husbands; and they offer themselves in marriage.” This ethnographic note is introduced into an account of the great tomb of Alyattes, to which prostitutes (ἐνεργαζόμεναι παιδίσκαι, lit. girls working for hire) were the largest group of contributors. This juxtaposition seems to suggest the identity of the two groups, and explains the large number of the “working girls.” In subsequent commentary Herodotus remarks that the customs of the Lydians are like those of the Greeks, “save that they make prostitutes (kataporneuousi) of their female children.” No religious setting or motive is evident, but the concluding note on the women’s offering themselves in marriage suggests a broader critique of Lydian gender roles and sexual honor, i.e. inversion of sexual roles as characteristic of “barbarian” society. Strabo’s citation of Herodotus’s report (Geogr. 11.14.16; ca. 1–20 CE) generalizes the Lydian practice, ignoring the economic motive of the dowry and likening it to the practice in Acilisene of prostituting daughters consecrated to the goddess Anaitis. The sole point of comparison appears to be premarital prostitution, with neither rank nor religious motive playing a role. Both examples contain an implied critique of male complicity, whether from penury or piety. Aelian’s reference (V.H. 4.1; ca. 170–235 CE) to a Lydian custom of women living as courtesans (ἑταιρεῖν) prior to marriage repeats the substance of Herodotus’s remarks, with the added note that, once married, the women show no inclination toward promiscuous behavior, and “sinning” with another man after marriage cannot be pardoned. This seems to combine themes from older traditions and cannot be regarded as independent evidence. Once again it focuses on the consequences for marriage. Clearchus’s extended account of Lydian sexual mores, as quoted by Athenaeus (Deip. 12.516b; ca. 200 CE), does not describe a custom of premarital prostitution, but a practice of general female promiscuity in a sensationalized history of sexual violence, revenge, and inversion of gender roles. Despite the unique history, devoid of religious associations, Clearchus compares the Lydian practice of allowing their women “free range among all comers” with that of the Western Locrians,

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the Cyprians, and “all [tribes]” who “dedicate their daughters to prostitution.” Both Locrians and Cyprians are known from other sources for Aphrodite worship and prostitution in her name, but Clearchus assumes a larger class of cult-related prostitution. As in other references to the Lydians, there is an implied critique of male failure to protect and control women, but there is also a critique of religious sanctioning of prostitution. By equating the dedication of women to prostitution with allowing women to “run free,” Clearchus interprets sacred prostitution as licensed promiscuity. The Lydian references provide no evidence for sacred prostitution among the Lydians. They do testify to a conception of cult-related prostitution (elsewhere) that aligned it with aberrant Lydian sexual practices, including premarital prostitution of daughters. As in other reports, all of the references are from outsiders, who describe Lydian practice as distinctive, yet similar to customs elsewhere. Explicit reference to religious motives or meanings is absent. Greece Corinth

One of the best known references to prostitution in a religious context is Strabo’s report of the 1,000 hierodules dedicated to the temple of Aphrodite in Corinth, whom he describes as hetairai (Geogr. 8.6.20). It differs from the majority of references, which assume some form of temporary service, by describing hierodules permanently attached to the temple and defined by profession, rather than activity. Although Kurke finds a dual role for the hierodules celebrated in Pindar’s poems—as performing a cultic role by assisting in the thanks-offering and as companions to the guests at the subsequent banquet353—Strabo sees them only as hetairai (misinterpreting his sources, according to Budin). None of the other ancient authors we have examined cite Corinth as an analogy to the practices they describe.354 The “Oriental” Goddess

The Corinthian specialization in hierodule hetairai is unique among Greek temples, and other centers of Aphrodite worship—and it has long been associated with the un-Greek character of Corinth and the “oriental” nature of its 353.  Kurke, “Pindar and the Prostitutes,” 50, 58. 354.  Oden does not include this case in his survey of references to sacred prostitution in classical antiquity.



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celebrated goddess.355 Whether this Corinthian excess can be traced to Eastern origins or was a local specialization within the cult of a Hellenized Cyprian goddess, it must be viewed within a history in which Aphrodite was a popular Greek goddess from at least the time of Homer (eighth–seventh century BCE), celebrated in Greek myth and integrated into the Greek pantheon—by multiple etiologies. Temples and representations of Aphrodite were scattered throughout Southern Greece as far as Athens,356 and her many epithets testify to local connections and a wide range of attributes acquired or highlighted in Greece. For poets, however, she was above all Cypris (“The One of Cyprus”).357 One of her most common epithets is ambiguous in its associations. Ourania (“The Heavenly One”) is linked in Greek myth to the sky god Ouranos, and the sea—identifying her as the goddess born of the sea foam that enveloped the severed genitals of Ouranos, and emerging from the waves at Paphos, site of her primary sanctuary in Cyprus.358 But the title also hints at an eastern ancestry, where “Queen of Heaven” is the well-known epithet of the goddess Ishtar, as well as an unnamed goddess in the book of Jeremiah. And Herodotus (Hist. 1.105) reports that the oldest temple of Aphrodite Ourania is in “Ascalon in 355.  On Aphrodite as the “Oriental” goddess, see Lewis Richard Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (3 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1896) vol. 2: Chapter 21. Eryx is the only other Aphrodite site noted for hierodules, though they are not identified as hetairai or associated with “oriental” influences. 356. Pausanias’s Description of Greece (second century CE) refers to Aphrodite temples and/or statues in 40 passages describing 19 different localities of southern Greece (citations from “Aphrodite Cult” [http://www.theoi.com/Cult/AphroditeCult.html). On the history of Aphrodite in Greece (and her origins in Cyprus), see now Budin, Origin, who dates the earliest Aphrodite sanctuary at Corinth to the Protogeometric–seventh century BCE, with thirteen other Greek sanctuaries before 500 BCE (286). I became aware of this work only when I had completed this chapter and could only add a few notes supplementing my very partial and tentative attempts to comprehend the role of a goddess who was not the focus of my study, but whom I gradually came to see as critical to the traditions I was examining. 357.  For Homer she was “the Cyprian,” an epithet that also appears in Pindar’s poem on the Corinthian hierodules and Theocritus’s hymn for the Adonia in Alexandria. Walter Burkert (Greek Religion [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985; trans. John Raffan, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1977], 153) declares that “from the time of the Iliad onwards Kypris is the most common poetic name for the goddess.” For the goddess and her various epithets and identifications, see Burkert, ibid., 152–56; David Potter, “Hellenistic Religion,” in A Companion to the Hellenistic World (ed. Andrew Erskine; Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) 424–26. Cf. Paul Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). Budin (Origin, 273) argues that Aphrodite came to Greece from Cyprus by way of Crete, having emerged in Cyprus from Cyprian, Levantine, and Aegean influences. 358.  This account of her birth is related by Hesiod in his Theogony (ca. 700 BCE), which identifies four of her names or epithets (though not Ourania) with etiologies from the narrative. Thus she is called “Aphrodite … since she grew in the foam (ἀφρός)” “Cytherea, since she arrived at Cythera,” “Cyprogenea, since she was born on sea-girt Cyprus,” and “‘genial’ (φιλομμειδέα), since she came forth from the genitals” (Theog. 196–201). Hesiod’s account appears to combine two different claims to her birthplace, Cythera, an island off the southeastern tip of the Peloponnesus peninsula, and Cyprus—giving precedence to Cythera (“First she approached holy Cythera, and from there she went on to sea-girt Cyprus” [lines 193–94]).

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Syria,” from which the temple in Cyprus was founded, adding that “the temple on Cythera was founded by Phoenicians from this same land of Syria.” Pausanias pushes the origins of the cult even further east while maintaining the role of the Phoenicians in transmitting the cult, at least to the Cytherians. Describing a sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania in Athens (Descr. 1.14.6), he states: “The first men to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live in Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera.”359 Phoenicia Traditions of Phoenician origins, or mediations, behind the figure of Greek Aphrodite prompt a search for the roots of her cult and character in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. But sources from the Phoenician “homeland” are meager and late. None of the references cited as evidence of sacred prostitution among the Phoenicians antedates the second century CE, with most dating to the fourth century or later. And none is associated with the primary sites of Phoenician culture and expansion into the Mediterranean (Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos), save Byblos, whose practice, as described by Lucian, has no parallels in Greece or the Phoenician diaspora and is unattested elsewhere in Syria. The exemplary site for a “Phoenician” custom of sacred prostitution is Heliopolis, an inland site in the province of Coele Syria, 50 kilometers from the coast and dating to the Hellenistic period.360 The paucity of documentation, especially for the earlier period, may simply reflect the more general dearth of sources that has made the reconstruction of Syro-Palestinian religion (including biblical religion) in the first millennium BCE so difficult. Archaeological evidence is critical for filling the gaps, but it too 359.  Pausanias seems to suggest that the “Assyrian” cult passed to Cyprus and Phoenicia independently, and some traditions, as well as archaeological evidence, suggest that the Cyprian goddess was an indigenous deity or had roots in Asia Minor. Budin (Origin, 273) observes that the eastward move of her origins progressed over time, from Cyprus (Homer and Hesiod) to Phoenicia (Herodotus) to Assyria (Pausanias). On the Phoenician influence on Paphian Aphrodite, as the latest influence from the Levant, see Budin, ibid., 243–71. 360. Lightfoot, Syrian Goddess, 303. A new province of Syria Phoenice was created around the beginning of the third century CE. Herodotus places Ascalon in “the part of Syria called Palestine,” which is how he describes the place where the Scythians met Psammetichus, before turning back to Ascalon (Hist. 1.105). He appears to have understood Palestine as the southern part of Syria, bordering Egypt, and Phoenicia as the northern portion. Note that Eusebius of Caesarea speaks of the “Phoenicians, our neighbors” in reference to Aphaca (Theophany 2.14). Strabo (Geogr. 16.2.2) describes Syria as extending from Cilicia and Mt. Amanus south to Arabia Felix and Egypt, with Phoenicia occupying the coastal plain south of Coele-Syria (whose southern border was the Eleutherus River).



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is complex and cannot answer the question of meaning which texts alone supply. The task of this chapter is to analyze the extant texts, which show complex and changing identifications of deities, their attributes and relationships in the Hellenized world of the eastern Mediterranean.361 Byblos

Lucian’s account of sacred prostitution at Byblos (Syr. d. 6; second century CE) is anomalous in a number of ways. It is the only account to relate the practice to Adonis rites, which are the focus of his report and dominate the account, an account that draws repeated attention to Egyptian connections and analogies. As a note appended to the description of the mourning rites, and connected by a secondary reference to the practice of shaving heads (as in Egypt), Lucian inserts an account of a sexual obligation of women who refuse to shave their heads. Interpreted as a penalty (for failure to observe a practice alien to women’s activity in Adonis rites elsewhere), rather than an act of consecration to the goddess, the practice nevertheless shows clear dependence on Herodotus’s account of the Babylonian women’s sexual obligation. With this transfer of a motif of Aphrodite worship from its “original” eastern site to the great Aphrodite temple of Byblos, Lucian makes Byblos a western Babylon, but he tells us nothing about prostitution as a feature of a Phoenician cult of Aphrodite. That is apparent when one considers his silence concerning other Phoenician temples identified with Aphrodite—and especially Astarte, the Semitic deity commonly assumed to underlie Syro-Phoenician Aphrodite. Sidon

The most surprising, and revealing, silence is in Lucian’s report on the “great sanctuary” of Sidon (Syr. d. 4), which he identifies as a temple of Astarte, citing local attribution.362 Here alone he uses the native Semitic name (in its Greek form) of the deity whose cult is generally credited with introducing sacred prostitution to Cyprus, Carthage, and Sicily. But he reports no sexual activity associated with this temple and no features of the cult. Instead he proposes an alternative identification of the goddess as Selene, while reporting local tradition and myth that supported 361.  For analysis of the archaeological evidence pertaining to the origins and character of Aphrodite, see now Budin, Origin. 362.  According to Lightfoot (Syrian Goddess, 197), Lucian is the only imperial writer to mention the temple of the city’s chief goddess. Confirmation of the prominence of Ashtart in Sidon in the sixth to fifth centuries BCE is found in the names and records of the city’s royal family, who founded several sanctuaries to her.

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identification with Europa.363 It would appear that for Lucian, prostitution was a feature of the cult of “Assyrian” (or Cyprian) Aphrodite, and not identified with Phoenician Astarte.364 And it is not understood as a common or characteristic feature of any Phoenician cult, but as a penalty for refusal to follow an “Egyptian” mourning practice. Heliopolis

The earliest reference to Heliopolis as a site of sacred prostitution comes from the early fourth century CE.365 All of the references appear in Christian apologetic texts and most, if not all, appear to be interdependent. The first comes from Eusebius (in works dated ca. 325–339), who describes Heliopolis as alone among Phoenician cities in maintaining the ancient practice of requiring women to act as prostitutes and “partake in the . . . mysteries of Aphrodite” before marrying (Theop­hany 2.14)—thus assuming a more widespread practice in earlier times.366 In another text, Eusebius characterizes the Heliopolitans as worshipping “licentious pleasure” (ἡδονὴν) under the title of Aphrodite, allowing their wives and daughters to act as prostitutes (VC 3.58.1). Both texts describe the practice as ancient, with the first emphasizing its persistence and the second hailing its abolition through enforcement of the emperor’s laws of chastity. Here the charge of premarital prostitution, familiar from earlier texts and associated particularly with the Lydians, is universalized and linked explicitly to the cult of Aphrodite—and to rites described as mysteries, an association made earlier by Clement (190 CE) in characterizing the Aphrodite cult of (Paphos) Cyprus. Association of Heliopolis, or simply “Phoenicians,” with a practice of prostitution or promiscuity in honor of the goddess of love is repeated by Christian apologists during the next century, with or without clear dependence on Eusebius. Some of these references combine features of the cult at Heliopolis with those associated with nearby Aphaca, necessitating attention to Eusebius’s treatment of the latter site before considering the testimony of others. 363.  See ibid., 297–303. 364.  The lack of Astarte-Aphrodite identification is the most revealing feature of this account and must qualify the assumption that Astarte stands behind every reference to “Phoenician” Aphrodite. Cf. Budin, Myth, 85–86, and Budin, Origin, 261 and 243–71. 365.  Lucian’s reference to a “large and ancient” temple of the Phoenicians that came from Heliopolis (Egypt) appears to refer to the great temple of Jupiter, and he makes no reference to Aphrodite or allusion to sexual activity at the site. 366.  The persistence of an “ancient” practice in the Phoenician hinterland might be explained by its relative isolation in comparison with the western-oriented coastal cities, although the site itself dates only to the Hellenistic period and its major temples (to Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus) to the Roman Εmpire.



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Aphaca

Eusebius is not the first to mention this site, although he is the first to name it as a cult site of Aphrodite.367 Lucian reports a personal visit on learning of the presence there of an ancient sanctuary of Aphrodite, founded by Cinyras. The name Cinyras is connected in myth and tradition with the cult of Aphrodite at Paphos, and its lascivious rites; thus it prompts expectations of similar rites at Aphaca. But Cinyras is also connected with Byblos and Adonis,368 and that connection appears to be the motive for Lucian’s journey to this sanctuary on the very mountain where Adonis met his death according to local legend, which Lucian reports in the previous paragraph. Lucian says only that he “saw the temple, and it was ancient.” Was this “ancient” sanctuary with its legendary associations already a ruin? Lucian does not describe its size or appearance, but seems only intent on establishing its antiquity—and hence the claim of its founding by the legendary king of Byblos and father of Adonis. Whether in ruins or intact, it must have been a pilgrim shrine, visited on special occasions, since its remote location in the Lebanon, a “day’s journey from Byblos,” is noted by Lucian and emphasized by Eusebius. Whatever its function in Lucian’s day, for Eusebius it was a “school of vice for all dissolute (men/persons)” where a variety of immoral and unlawful sexual activities were engaged in primarily, if not exclusively, by men (VC 3.55.2–3). Language of prostitution or fornication does not occur here, but rather that of “ungoverned” and perverted sex, with males as the targeted actors.369 Although Eusebius describes the activity as propitiating the daimon Aphrodite, he does not connect the activity at this shrine with the practices associated with her cult in Heliopolis, and the two accounts are separated by a report on an Asclepius temple in Cilicia. They are united only by the common theme of licentiousness, for which the common cure is chastity. For Eusebius, prostitution of daughters is only one form of ungoverned sexual activity associated with the goddess of erotic pleasure, but it has a distinct institutional expression. Eusebius’s contemporary, Athanasius, joins references to female and male forms of cult-related sexual activity in “Phoenicia” (C. Gent. 26), interpreting both by quoting Rom 1:27, which fits neither case. His reference to women “displaying themselves in front of idols” and “offering the price of their bodies” seems to draw on the Herodotus tradition of Aphrodite worship, but his coordinated reference to men’s activity describes castrated males, not homosexual acts, and is in honor 367.  Lucian only describes its location, without naming the site. 368. Strabo, Geogr. 16.2.18. 369.  If female homosexual activity is intended by the reference to “unlawful intercourse by/ among women,” the focus is still clearly on the men.

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of the “mother . . . of the gods,” i.e. Cybele, not Aphrodite.370 The practices belong to the past, and the sources are unspecified. What is new is Athansius’s use of Christian scripture to organize and evaluate extant traditions about aberrant sexual practices in pagan religions, more specifically goddess worship.371 A century later Socrates and Sozomon elaborate Eusebius’s reports of Constantine’s reforms at Heliopolis, with Socrates noting the “unmentionable” licentious practices at Aphaca. Each adds his own interpretive framework or commentary (Socrates: holding women in common; Sozomon: atrocities occasioned by the prohibition of the ancient custom). Augustine repeats the general tradition that the Phoenicians prostituted their daughters before marriage for money dedicated to the goddess of love, suggesting that this confirms the “original” character of the variable Venus as a goddess of prostitutes. Reports of sacred prostitution in Phoenicia seem to have at their core a tradition of premarital prostitution in association with rites of Aphrodite at Heliopolis. Understood as an ancient custom, abolished by Constantine’s reforms, this tradition is repeated, with variations, by five Christian authors. A distinct tradition of aberrant male sexual activity (with possible female involvement) is reported by Eusebius, and echoed by Socrates, in relation to an Aphrodite-Adonis cult site at Aphaca in the Lebanon. Lucian’s account of prostitution at Byblos is distinct and was not appropriated by Christian polemicists. Cyprus References to Cyprus as a site of sacred prostitution represent the most persistent tradition of the practice from western antiquity, spanning a period of some 800 years.372 Like the Phoenician references, they are not all independent. None names a particular site, but most appear to relate to the cult of Aphrodite at Paphos, singled out by Homer (Od. 8.362).373 Aphrodite is the controlling figure here. 370.  This unlocalized “Phoenician” practice does not seem to fit Aphaca with its clear associations with Aphrodite. 371.  Eusebius’s use of the same Pauline passage was in reference to male homosexual practice alone—in imitation of Zeus’s lust for Ganymede. It is not associated with any cultic site or activity, and is not coordinated with any reference to female sexual activity. 372.  The prominence of Cyprus in traditions of licentious sexual practices from the ancient Mediter­ranean world has left a legacy in the English language. Webster’s Third New International Diction­ary of the English Language (ed. Phillip Babcock Gove; Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1993) gives as a first meaning of the noun “Cyprian/cyprian”: “a lewd person; specif. prostitute” and of the adjective: “licentious” (566). 373.  The Homeric passage refers to her “grove and altar.” As Strabo’s report on Cyprus shows (Geogr. 14.6), the island possessed multiple Aphrodite temples in his day, including one “inapproachable to women,” but it is only the temple at Paphos that is identified particularly with Aphrodite Hetaira and celebrated with rites or customs involving prostitution and/or sexual symbols.



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And despite evidence of Phoenician influence or origin, she is preeminently “the Cyprian,” at least to the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman writers who constitute our sources.374 The first is Herodotus (Hist. 1.199), who concludes his description of Babylonian practice at the temple of Aphrodite/Mylitta with the observation that a similar custom existed in some parts of Cyprus. The fact that he does not cite the custom of premarital prostitution among the Lydians as a parallel suggests that the Aphrodite connection is critical, though he does not name a goddess in likening the Cyprian practice to the Babylonian, and he identifies other Aphrodite temples and worship without any reference to prostitution as a feature of the cult. His silence is particularly striking in the case of the temple of Aphrodite Ourania in Ascalon, which he ties explicitly to the Cyprian cult. His statement is revealing in its formulation: “This temple, as I learn from what I hear, is the oldest of all the temples of the goddess, for the temple in Cyprus was founded from it, as the Cyprians themselves say” (Hist. 1.105). Here Herodotus writes as a Greek (from 374.  The cultural and religious history of the island is complex, including early and continuous contacts with Asia Minor and Syria and strong Mycenaean influence beginning in the fifteenth century. Migration from Syria is attested ca. 1000 BCE, occasioning major changes in Cyprian art; and Phoenicians entered the island around 800, settling in the cities but having limited influence on the island culture. Egyptian connections were also constant, but without significant cultural impact (OCD 248–49 s.v. “Cyprus”). A temple of ‘Ashtart (Astarte) is attested in two fourth- or third-century BCE inscriptions from Kition (KAI 1:33,3; 37A,5), the oldest and largest Phoenician settlement on the island, but no traditions of sacred prostitution are associated with this site. Paphos, on the other hand, had a tradition of goddess worship with fertility features from an early period, and a temple to a Mycenaean goddess was erected on the site in the twelfth century BCE. Thus the great Greco-Roman temple of Aphrodite, illustrated on coins of Vespasian and Septimius Severus, was only the latest in a long sequence that had archaic foundations. Its pre-Hellenic origins were visible in its latest representation in the Mycenaean tripartite structure of the temple and the giant cone that apparently stood for the goddess. This is the cult center of the goddess known by the name of Aphrodite from the eighth century BCE. Whether and how Phoenician Astarte worship may have influenced this tradition at Paphos is not evident. It is only in some Cinyras traditions, the Pygmalion myth, and the phenomenon of priest-kings, unique to Paphos, that Phoenician influence is suggested, but none of the passages cited as references to sacred prostitution in Cyprus make allusions to Phoenician origins. It would appear then that Phoenician Ashtart and Cypro-Hellenic Aphrodite had separate centers of worship on the island, with traditions of the divine harlot associated with the Aphrodite cult of Paphos. By the fourth century, however, the goddess of Kition was recognized as Aphrodite, since an inscription from Piraeus, dated to 333/2, grants the merchants of Kition a plot of land for a sanctuary (hieron) to Aphrodite; and a fourth-century dedicatory inscription from Piraeus by an individual from Kition mentions Aphrodite Ourania by name (Rachel Rosenzweig, Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical Athens [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004] 90–91). See Vassos Karageorghis, “The Cult of Astarte in Cyprus,” in Canaan, Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the Late Bronze Age Through Roman Palaestina: Proceedings of the Centennial Symposium, W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and American Schools of Oriental Research, Jerusalem, May 29/31, 2000 (ed. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003) 215–21; “Ancient Cyprus in the Ashmolean Museum: Highlights of the Collection: Aphrodite, Female Figurines and Cyprus” (Ashmolean Museum, 2012; http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/amps/cyprus/AncCyp-Aph-02.php). See Budin (Origin, 262, 275–76) on the Phoenician establishment of the temple of Ashtart at Kition in the ninth century and on the Greek assimilation of Cypro-Phoenician Ashtart to Cyprian Aphrodite.

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Asia Minor) who knows Aphrodite as a Cypro-Hellenic goddess and assumes a Cyprian origin for her cult in accordance with Greek myth and the prominence of her temple in Paphos. He learns, however (from the Ascalonians?), that the temple in Ascalon is even older, being the temple from which the Cyprian cult was founded—as the Cyprians themselves affirm. Thus he acknowledges Phoenician origins, but he offers no report or speculation about her cult in Ascalon,375 and no local name, as he does for Aphrodite in Babylon.376 He seems rather to think of Aphrodite Ourania as her “original” name, in Ascalon as well as Cyprus, and never mentions the name Astarte. It is only when he refers to her outside the Mediterranean basin that he reports a distinct local name.377 A Cyprian practice of “dedicating” daughters to prostitution was known to the third-century (BCE) Cyprian writer Clearchus (as quoted by Athenaeus, ca. 200 CE), who attributes the practice to at least one other group with an Aphrodite cult (the Western Locrians of southern Italy), while equating it with the general promiscuity of the Lydians. The first description of cult-related prostitution in Cyprus comes from Pompeius Trogus (ca. 20 CE) as preserved in Justin’s Latin epitome from the latter part of the second century CE (Hist. Phil. 18.5. 4–5). The custom, as described, combines features found in other accounts, but in a new way and with new elements. Like the Lydian practice described by Herodotus, it involves premarital prostitution to earn dowries, but it also involves an offering to the goddess, identified as Venus in the Latin text. Here it is not the money earned that is offered, but libations—for the preservation of the women’s future virtue. The place of the encounters (and also the libations?), is the seashore (presumably the place for meeting strangers), and no temple is mentioned. The practice is presented as a local Cyprian custom, whose fortuitous occurrence during the Tyrian queen’s stopover on the island allowed her to abduct 80 of these virgins to provide 375.  In fact, he makes no reference to sacred prostitution in Phoenicia at all or in any references to Aphrodite with Phoenician associations. These include the Aphrodite temple of Cythera, which he describes as founded by Phoenicians (Hist. 1.105), and a temple of “the Stranger (ξείνη) Aphrodite” in a precinct of Memphis called the “Camp of the Tyrians” (Hist. 2.112)—which he suggests was a temple of Helen. 376.  Whether he thinks of “Assyria” as the ultimate homeland of Aphrodite, as Pausanias, is not clear, since he recognizes a different local name at Babylon. It seems more likely that he understands Cypro-Greek Aphrodite to be a universal goddess, worshipped under various names by various peoples, but having her roots in Phoenicia. 377.  In a paragraph on the Arabians (Hist. 3.8), he describes the making of a covenant invoking Dionysus and the Heavenly Aphrodite, whom, he says, they call Orotalt and Alilat respectively. In 4.59 he maintains that the only gods the Scythians worship are Hestia, Apollo, the Heavenly Aphrodite, Heracles, and Ares, whom he then proceeds to name in the Scythian tongue, calling Aphrodite “Argimpasa.” In Hist. 1.131, he reports that the Persians never believed the gods to be in human likeness, as the Greeks, but from the beginning worshipped the whole circle of heaven, the sun and moon, etc.; later, however, they learned from the Assyrians and the Arabians to sacrifice to the Heavenly Aphrodite, whom, he explains, the Assyrians call Mylitta, the Arabians Alilat, and the Persians Mitra. Here the Assyrians and Arabs appear to be the mediators of Cypro-Hellenic Aphrodite.



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wives for the young men accompanying her. While this account invites interpretation as an etiology for a similar practice in Carthage, no such claim is made by Trogus. Nor is there any hint that the Cyprian custom was known or practiced in Tyre. It appears to be conceived as a kind of initiation rite which serves the practical end of procuring dowries for the women, is confined to a limited period of time, and invokes religious power to guarantee that it will not be repeated. Thus it presents a contrast to the general promiscuity to which Clearchus likened it. Athenian-born Clement of Alexandria (ca. 190 CE) targets the Greek-style mysteries of the Cyprian cult of Aphrodite,378 ridiculing their obscene activities while highlighting the indigenous origins of the goddess and her cult. Here Cinyras is “the islander,” and Aphrodite is “a harlot of his own country,” whose “lascivious orgies” he “transferred” from night to day (Protr. 2.12). The allusion is enigmatic, but the characterization of the activity (as specifically female) suggests a “transfer” of the secret rites characteristic of the mystery cults to the public acts of prostitution associated elsewhere with the cult of Aphrodite. Thus the foreign goddess is indigenized by assimilating, but transforming, features of the Greek cults of Demeter and Dionysus.379 Subsequent references to sacred prostitution in the cult of Cyprian Aphrodite are all in Latin texts by North African and Sicilian authors—who make no reference to similar practices in their homelands, despite the testimony of others to such activity. In Arnobius of Sicca (ca. 305 CE), the tradition related by Clement reappears, either in direct dependence or in reliance on a common source. His exposé of pagan cults briefly mentions the “mysteries of the Cyprian Venus,” earlier identified as a harlot deified by King Cinyras (Adv. Nat. 4.25). The (male) initiates into these mysteries bring fees “as to a harlot” and carry away phalli as “signs of the propitious deity” (5.19). Arnobius’s pupil Lactantius (304–313) also depicts the Cyprian Venus as a prostitute, but without reference to Cinyras, or the mysteries celebrated in her name. Concerned only to portray the all-too-human character of the pagan gods, Lactantius relates that Venus instituted the art of prostitution and taught women the commerce of their bodies so as not to appear alone among women as unchaste 378.  This appears to be the earliest report to interpret sacred prostitution in the cult of Aphrodite in terms of mysteries, a term Eusebius uses more than a century later to describe the practices at Heliopolis. The site of the activities targeted by Clement is not identified, but inferred from the association of the Cinyrides (priests) with the temple in Paphos (OCD 242 s.v. “Cinyras”). 379.  A noteworthy feature of Clement’s polemic against the cult of Paphian Aphrodite is his detailed and explicit account of the rites of male initiates (Protr. 2.13)—in contrast to his summary reference to the female rites. It is only in describing the male rites that he uses the language found elsewhere in relation to female devotees: “fornication,” gift of a coin, and hetaira—all relating to the goddess. This suggests more intimate knowledge of the cult in its Hellenic home by this Greek author, who is also alone among authors reviewed here in referring to the name Philomedes and the Hesiodic birth legend.

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(Div. Inst. 1.17.10). Here Venus is the patroness of prostitutes, and religious associations are totally lacking. The final reference to the cult of Cyprian Venus, by the Sicilian Firmicus Maternus (ca. 345 CE), repeats the tradition related by Clement or reflects a common source. In his review of the scandalous behavior of the pagan gods and their adherents, Firmicus reports that Cinyras gave a temple to his “harlot friend Venus” and initiated many in her rites, adding a reference to “priests of the consecrated Venus,” who, like the initiates, are to give her a piece of money “as to a harlot.” Here again no female personnel or participants are mentioned, and Aphrodite is the only prostitute. The traditions of Cyprian Aphrodite introduce a number of features not found elsewhere. One is her identification as a divine harlot and patroness of harlots—without reference to any cultic activity on the part of those who share her profession. If the Aphrodite cult at Corinth is a Cyprian import, the presence there of a large number of prostitutes in the temple’s service would reflect this association. The other unique feature in the Cyprian traditions is the description of male initiation into the mysteries of the goddess, involving payment of a coin “as to a harlot” and receipt of a phallus (and a cake of salt) as a sign of initiation. Nothing in these accounts suggests effeminate behavior or homosexual activity, and the phallus symbol in association with the harlot image of the goddess points to heterosexual activity (whether symbolic or actualized), rather than male identification with the goddess (as in the cult of Cybele). Thus a connection with the cult of Aphrodite at Aphaca, which also involved male devotees, seems unlikely, at least as described in our texts, despite the common link with Cinyras.380 Carthage The single reference to sacred prostitution from the Phoenician colony of Carthage relates to a temple of Venus in Sicca, some distance from the capital. The practice reported by Valerius Maximus (ca. 31 CE) evidences the primary features of the 380.  Whether Herodotus’s account of the “female sickness” inflicted on the Scythians by the Heavenly Aphrodite at Ascalon may be connected to either the cult at Paphos or Aphaca is also highly problematic, despite intriguing links. According to Herodotus (Hist. 1.105), a few of the Scythians who were turned back from Egypt remained at Ascalon and plundered the temple of the Heavenly Aphrodite. As punishment, he reports, “the Scythians who pillaged the temple, and all their descendants after them, were afflicted by the goddess with the ‘female’ sickness’ (θήλεαν νοῦσον).” What is presented here is an etiology of a current condition among the Scythians: “the Scythians say that this is the cause of their disease, and that those who come to Scythia can see there the plight of the men whom they call ‘Enareis’ (Ἐνάρεας).” According to Godley (History, 137 n. 2), the derivation of ἐνάρεας is uncertain, though “it is agreed that the disease was a loss of virility.” In Hist. 4.67, he notes, ἐναρής = ἀνδρόγυνος. Cf. LSJ 556: “prob. a Scythian word.” What this etiology confirms is a view of Aphrodite as the goddess of sexuality, whose broad range of powers extended to both sexes and who was herself represented at times with androgynous attributes.



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dominant tradition, namely premarital prostitution to gain dowries coupled with “respectable wedlock” and performed under the auspices of the goddess of love. Whether Phoenician Ashtart or Cypro-Greek Aphrodite lies behind the Latin name is impossible to determine; although the dominant influence is assumed to be Phoenician, the Cyprian tradition related by Justin displays similar features. The picture in Carthage is complicated by inscriptional and literary evidence pointing to connections with Sicily and the goddess of Eryx. Sicily Allusions to sexual activity related to the temple of Aphrodite in Eryx as found in the writings of Strabo and Diodorus Siculus (ca. 60 BCE) suggest Greek origins, with Corinth providing the closest example to the multitude of female hierodules highlighted in Strabo’s account. But features of the cult have suggested Cyprian influence; and Punic adoption of the cult, including hierodules, is attested in inscriptions from the city of Carthage. A tradition connecting the goddess to North Africa through an annual nine-day sojourn (Athenaeus and Aelian) reinforces the notion of a Phoenician, or Punic, connection, though the direction of influence is disputed. The only account of sexual activity at the site comes from Diodorus, who reports that Roman visitors and sojourners in the region embellished the temenos and engaged in “sports” and intercourse with women, believing it pleased the goddess (Bib. Hist. 4.83.4–6). A popular daughter cult in Rome attracted prostitutes during the annual celebration of its founding, but they play no role in the cult itself. Italy Two authors point to traditions of prostitution with cultic associations among the Western Locrians, who occupied an area of Greek settlement (Magna Graecia) in the southern tip of Italy. Clearchus simply lists the Western Locrians alongside the Cyprians as groups that “dedicate their daughters to prostitution.” Justin reports that the Locrians had vowed during a battle to “prostitute their unmarried women on the festival of Venus” if they were successful (Hist. Phil. 21.3.2). He also spells out how this communal vow was to be discharged, namely by selecting a hundred of their women to “spend a month on show in a brothel” in order to “satisfy the religious requirements” (21.3.3). Here features of a tradition of premarital prostitution in association with a particular religious festival are combined with a model of (limited) engagement in institutionalized prostitution.

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Conclusions Prostitution, or sexual congress with strangers, as a feature of the cult of Aphrodite, and a number of other “oriental” goddesses, is a recurrent theme in Hellenistic ethnography, perpetuated in the writings of Christian apologists and Roman rhetoricians. While Aphrodite is the key figure in these accounts, the sites associated with prostitution in her honor are limited—not only in Greece and Cyprus, where sanctuaries of the popular goddess abounded, but also in the lands of the East to which etiology and attributes point for her origins. It is only at her “home” in Paphos, at Heliopolis in Syria/Phoenicia, and at Babylon that reports of sacred prostitution cluster, with a scattering of references to other sites. All of the reports describe the practice of others, usually foreigners, and none report first-person observation of the rites or action.381 Most (perhaps all) report past activity, often of the ancient past,382 and most show dependence on earlier reports or testify to an established tradition. The activity reported in these texts shows considerable variation, but two major patterns are distinguishable, neither of which corresponds to the Frazerian model of fertility magic. The dominant pattern describes premarital prostitution for a limited time, which may or may not be associated with a particular feast, ritual, and/ or dedication of the proceeds to the goddess. The period of prostitution varies, from a single act or a single day to an extended period of time, but it is followed by marriage, generally with the understanding that the prostitution/promiscuity does not diminish the bride’s value, and may, in some cases, be understood to insure against future infidelity. This pattern has a secular analog in reports concerning Lydian prostitution of daughters in order to gain dowries, a feature shared with some cases of prostitution in honor of the goddess. In the Lydian context this limited prostitution is connected with a broader set of traditions highlighting the unusual honor or power accorded prostitutes and women along with implied (or explicit) critique of the men as “feminized” and/or unable to control women—a theme of sex role inversion found more widely in Hellenic accounts of “barbarian” cultures. The fact that the sacred and secular cases are treated as comparable in some sources suggests that the activity was regarded as essentially the same in both, with the cult promoting, or condoning, “barbaric” practice. The minor pattern involves prostitutes dedicated to the temple of the goddess, or temple slaves (hierodules) who serve as hetairai. Such a cult specialization would appear to be a natural form of homage to the goddess of sexuality and 381.  Although Clement purports to describe the secret rites of initiation into the mysteries of Cyprian Aphrodite, his claims are suspect, and they involve only male initiates. 382.  Strabo’s present-tense report of “women who make gain from their bodies, most of whom are sacred” describes no activity or location for their practice and is attached to an account of festivals of the goddess that is clearly set in a previous age (the time of the kings).



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patroness of prostitutes. What is surprising is that it is so rare, confined to Corinth and Eryx, with a suggested parallel in the cult of the goddess of Comana Pontica. The latter is compared explicitly with Corinth by Strabo, the source for both accounts, but the description of the Pontic practice is notably oblique, avoiding the terms hierodule and prostitute (hetaira or porne) by referring to women who “make gain from their persons, most of whom are dedicated [hierai]”.383 The note is detached from the account of the cultic activities, and the women are assigned no cultic role; so as in the case of Corinth the accent is on the commercial aspect. This appears to be a case of borrowing a motif from the report on Corinth to describe a “comparable” emporium in Asia Minor dominated by the temple of another Oriental goddess, whose wealth is attributed to the attraction of its feasts and its hetairai. A direct connection of prostitutes and goddess appears in some references to practices in Cyprus that identify Aphrodite as a “deified” harlot, who taught her profession to other women. In these references to a shared profession of divine and human actors there is no evidence of prostitution as a cultic activity—although prostitutes, just as brides, sacrificed to Aphrodite as the source of the sexual favors both desired.384 The literature on sacred prostitution consistently points to the east for the origins of the practices and the goddess with whom they are almost exclusively associated. But despite the clear influence of Syro-Phoenician deities on the figure of Cypro-Greek Aphrodite,385 our only accounts of cult-related prostitution in the lands of its presumed origins are cast in terms derived from western models: Lydian premarital prostitution, Corinthian hierodule hetairai, and Greco-Cyprian mystery cults associated with Paphian Aphrodite. Our earliest record, Herodotus’s account of Babylonian custom associated with Aphrodite/Mylitta, is viewed by Oden as the ultimate source of most or all of the other accounts. But it is unique in its detail and conception, and its distinctive features are clearly recognizable in dependent accounts: the Epistle of Jeremiah, Strabo on Babylon, and Lucian on Byblos. Despite its uniqueness, however, and despite the assumed contribution of local tradition, it is an account of the cult of Aphrodite in an eastern incarnation constructed by an author who knew of similar practice in Cyprus, her home according to Greek myth.386 Herodotus acknowledges Phoenician origins for the 383.  Strabo does refer to hierodules in describing the temple state under Pompey. “The hierodules who lived in the city,” he says, “were no fewer in number than six thousand” (Geogr. 12.3.34), equaling the number he recorded for Cappadocian Comana. There he describes the inhabitants as consisting mostly of “divinely inspired people” (θεοφρήτων) and hierodules,” the latter being “more than six thousand in number, men and women together” (12.2.3). 384. Rosenzweig, Worshipping Aphrodite, 76–77. 385.  See Budin, Origin, 199–271. 386.  Herodotus surely knew Hesiod and Homer. Whether he also knew of the prostitutes hymned by Pindar at the Aphrodite temple in Corinth is uncertain, but he found his analogy to the Babylonian practice in Cyprus.

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cult of the Cyprian goddess (as well as her cult at Cythera), but he has no account of sexual service at the temple in Ascalon which he identifies as the founding cult. The evidence cited for sacred prostitution in Phoenicia is in many ways the most perplexing, and disappointing for those seeking clues to biblical traditions from Israel’s nearest neighbor. The sources are sparse, late, and limited to the borders of the ancient maritime city-states. Excluding Byblos, which Lucian makes a second Babylon by borrowing from Herodotus, it is only Heliopolis that is identified as a site of cultic prostitution in “Phoenicia”—and only in the fourth century CE and later, in Christian writings that extend critique of premarital promiscuity in the cult of Aphrodite to more general accusations of sexual debauchery at the mountain sanctuary of the goddess in Aphaca. While the coastal cities of Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos were the centers of Phoenician culture, whose gods and cults can be traced in the texts and artifacts of its settlements throughout the Mediterranean, Heliopolis is unknown in texts from the period of Phoenicia’s floruit. Its Greek name together with the Hellenistic foundations of its major temple (of Jupiter) point to the period in which the cult attacked by patristic polemic must have arisen or flourished, while features of Greek mystery religions in the descriptions of the practices reinforce the notion of a relatively late development. What lay behind the Greco-Roman cult of Aphrodite/Venus is literarily inaccessible. “Syrian” features are recognized in cultic archaeology at the site, including evidence of Astarte worship; and the modern name of the city, Baalbek, suggests a prominent role for Baal in the prehellenistic cult. But as in all of the traditions from the Greco-Roman and Hellenistic periods, it is impossible to determine the practices of the preceding period, or their meanings, without independent evidence from that time. The silence concerning sacred prostitution in texts relating to the Phoenician heartland is most telling in the case of Sidon, a major cult center of Phoenician Ashtart as evidenced by Phoenician texts of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE and Lucian’s second-century account of the temple locally identified with Astarte. Though Lucian reports a case of sacred prostitution at Byblos, associated with Aphrodite, he appears to know of no such practice in the cult of the Phoenician goddess assumed to be her antecedent. In the case of Ascalon in the far south, which became a major Phoenician city in the Persian period,387 it is Aphrodite, not Astarte, who is associated with the temple there, and tied by Herodotus to the Cyprian cult that he likens to the Babylonian custom. But he reports no such activity at this site, although his account of the Scythians’ illness clearly identifies the goddess with the sexual realm. To find a “Phoenician” reference to sacred prostitution other than at Heliopolis and Byblos one must go to the Roman city of Sicca Veneria, on the western edge of the old Phoenician colony of Carthage. While it 387.  After the destruction of the Philistine city and defeat of the last Philistine king (NIDB 1:300–301 s.v. “Ashkelon”).



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is certainly conceivable that practices which had disappeared from the centers of Phoenician culture persisted on the fringes, they are only known in terms peculiar to Hellenistic and Greco-Roman accounts of the cult of Aphrodite/Venus as goddess of sexual desire. What the scattered “witnesses” reveal is the continuity of a tradition, or traditions, not a continuity of practice. In the final analysis, the texts cited as evidence for an institution of sacred prostitution in ancient Mediterranean or “Canaanite” society do not provide access to any pre-Hellenistic practice, nor do they describe a single institution or activity. They are heavily stamped by the figure of Aphrodite, but also strongly localized and restricted, as a particular feature of her cult at particular sites where she was celebrated as the goddess of erotic sexuality. Sacred prostitution is not an invariable accompaniment of the cult of Aphrodite—and it is never identified with Astarte/ Ashtart, with the possible exception of Ashtart of Eryx, who is not Phoenician in origin.388 It is Cyprian Aphrodite above all that appears to provide the model. In contrast to modern scholars, the ancient reporters make no reference to agricultural or human fertility or connect the activity to the concept of “sacred marriage.” And while fertility themes may have a place in the cult of Aphrodite, this is almost exclusively in association with Adonis—who is never mentioned in any of the sacred prostitution texts, apart from Lucian’s report on Byblos (which is focused on Adonis). None of the texts treat the sexual activity as a ritual or symbolic act. The hierodule-hetairai of Corinth do not define the class of hierodules, and the women who “make gain of their persons” in Comana do not in themselves constitute a class of cultic servants. The only texts describing a class of consecrated women whose cultic role involves actual or symbolic sexual activity are the accounts relating to the “Zeus” temples of Babylon and Thebes, neither of which is included in the collection of texts generally understood to document sacred prostitution. Thus the texts traditionally cited as sources for sacred prostitution in the “ancient world” neither support the notion of a common institution associated with “fertility cult religion” nor provide evidence of a class of cultic prostitutes that might lie behind the biblical figure of the qdš.

388.  If the inscription mentioning a “female servant” of the goddess can bear the weight of that interpretation.

Chapter 5

New Sources from the Ancient Near East

I. Akkadian qadištu a new chapter in the interpretation of hebrew qedešah was opened by the discovery and decipherment of cuneiform texts from ancient Mesopotamia containing the cognate term qadištu. Appearing in the Laws of Hammurapi (LH)1 as a class of female votaries, Akkadian qadištu2 was immediately identified with Hebrew qedešah—and interpreted as a sacred prostitute in accordance with the long tradition associated with the biblical term. At the same time, the discovery was taken as vindication of Herodotus, reinforcing the views of sacred prostitution that had been anchored in his report on the Babylonian women at the temple of Mylitta. Thus the first effect was to confirm views that had been formed in relation 1.  Traditionally known as the Code of Hammurabi (CH). Recent scholarship has determined that the final syllable of the name was pronounced pi, not bi. Advances in cuneiform studies have lead to revisions of many early readings (e.g. sal.me now read as lukur; zermašītu now read as kulmašītu; and Labartu now read as Lamaštu). The transcriptions used in this chapter reflect the latest readings and may differ from the readings in earlier publications. All transliterations and translations of cuneiform texts in this chapter are those of Anna Glenn, correcting my own preliminary readings (which were heavily dependent on Kathryn Slanski) in conversation with previously published editions as acknowledged in the notes. Readings and interpretations attributed to Glenn are from private digital communications. Assyriological abbreviations and sigla in this chapter follow the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and may not be included in the list of Abbreviations at the front of this book. NOTE on transliteration: Akkadian text is represented by lower case italic font (qa-diš-tu; normalized form: qadištu); Sumerian in Sumerian texts is represented by lower-case roman font (nu-gig); Sumerian terms used as logograms in Akkadian texts are represented by small caps, with syllables separated by periods (nu.gig [= qadištu], lukur [= nadītu]). 2.  The term qadištu does not actually occur in LH, but rather the Sumerogram nu.gig, which was used to represent qadištu in most Old Babylonian texts. See discussion below. 209

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to texts from classical antiquity. Despite the distinct contexts and usage presented by the Mesopotamian texts, interpretation continued to be burdened by a legacy of classical and biblical scholarship.3 As the corpus of texts grew, the complexity of the evidence made any overarching definition difficult, and contested, with the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) settling for “a woman of special status.”4 No studies have been devoted to qadištu alone, but a number of works give extended treatment of the term and its designees in the context of broader studies (e.g., studies of “priests / priestesses” or “special” classes of women) or in relationship to Hebrew qedešah. Johannes Renger’s 1967 study of the “priesthood” in Old Babylonian times5 challenged the sacred prostitute interpretation of qadištu and was followed by general denials of the existence of sacred or cultic prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia.6 Two articles in the 1980s applied the new understanding of the Mesopotamian evidence to the interpretation of Hebrew qedešah, providing the fullest documentation and discussion of the Akkadian texts yet available to most biblical interpreters. Mayer Gruber’s 1986 article “Hebrew qĕdēšāh and her 3.  See Gernot Wilhelm’s review of the history of debate in Assyriological circles concerning the nature and existence of sacred prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia, “Marginalien zu Herodot Klio 199”. Wilhelm’s review focuses on the interpretation of Herodotus’s Hist. 1.199 (see above, Chapter 4, pp. 106–108) and does not deal with Akkadian qadištu, but other authors treating texts containing qadištu often simply translated “hierodule” or provided commentary referring to “sacred prostitution,” even when there is nothing in the text to suggest such an association. Thus G. R. Driver and John C. Miles in their commentary on the Laws of Hammurapi write of the “hierodule” (qadištum): “She was evidently connected with the service of the temple, but there is nothing to show the nature of her service nor whether she may or may not have been devoted to sacral prostitution” (Babylonian Laws, 2:369; emphasis added). A footnote (n. 6) explains that “the Babylonian word is philologically identical with that for the sacral ‘harlot’ or ‘prostitute’ (Heb. ‫[ קדׁשה‬qedešah]) of Canaanite religion,” citing Deut 23:18. 4.  CAD Q 48 (1982). 5.  Johannes M. Renger, “Untersuchungen zum Priestertum in der altbabylonischen Zeit, Part 1,” ZA N.F. 24 (1967) 110–88. 6.  Wilhelm (“Marginalien,” 513) pointed to the 1972 lecture by Daniel Arnaud entitled “La prostitution sacrée en Mésopotamie, un mythe historiographique?” (RHR 183 [1973] 111–15) as signaling a new phase in Assyriological appraisal of Herodotus, Hist. 199 and debate concerning sacred prostitution. An important study with implications for the understanding of qadištu was Rivkah Harris’s 1964 study of the nadītu women of Sippar, “The Nadītu Woman,” in Studies Presented to A. Leo Oppenheim (ed. Erika Reiner; Chicago: University of Chicago, Oriental Institute, 1964) 106–35. Her 1975 volume on the city (Ancient Sippar: A Demographic Study of an Old-Babylonian City, 1894–1595 B.C. [Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1975]) devoted a section to the qadištu/ nu.gig (328–32), represented by eight different individuals named in the Sippar texts, and interpreted with references to qadištus in other cities. Some scholars continue to maintain that the qadištu was a prostitute, including Wilfried G. Lambert (“Prostitution,” in Außenseiter und Randgruppen: Beiträge zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Alten Orients [ed. Volkert Haas; Xenia 32; Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 1992] 127–57), who argues that “in ancient Mesopotamia all prostitution was by definition sacral” (143), including nadītus as well as qadištus in the category of women who acted as prostitutes (140–43). These arguments are tested in the examination of the texts below.



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Canaanite and Akkadian Cognates”7 aimed to prove that neither Hebrew qedešah nor Akkadian qadištu denoted “cult prostitutes,” as widely believed. Although he argued that the Hebrew term denoted “prostitute,” with no religious associations,8 he insisted that the Akkadian term denoted “a woman who had been dedicated to the service of a deity” and might function in a variety of roles, but never as a prostitute.9 Joan Goodnick Westenholz cited much the same cuneiform evidence in her 1989 article “Tamar, qĕdēšā, qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia,”10 but oriented her analysis to the interpretation of Tamar’s identification as a qedešah in Gen 38:21–22, considering the social location of the qadištu in Mesopotamian society and the circumstances she shared with the prostitute (ḫarīmtu). She also gave attention to the Sumerian term identified with Akkadian qadištu, and cautioned on the need to evaluate the data by period and area in attempting to determine the function of the qadištu. “Religious symbols and titles undergo change continually,” she argued, and “in a complex fashion in which older elements are replaced in time by newer ones or persist but are reinterpreted to fit into a new total system of meanings.”11 Heeding that caution, I will treat the data by period and provenance as far as possible while also trying to group texts of similar type and/or subject matter. My basic source is the CAD qadištu article with its collection of over 60 examples.12 The feminine noun qadištu (Assyrian: qadiltu, qadissu; pl. qašdātu), and presumed by-forms qaššatu (Mari) and qašdatu, is attested in Mesopotamian texts from Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian times to the Neo-Assyrian period, usage 7.  UF 18 (1986) 133–48 (hereafter “Gruber”). 8.  See the critique in Chapter 6. In an earlier article published in Hebrew (“The qādēš in the Book of Kings and in Other Sources,” 167–76) Gruber argued, on the basis of the same cognate evidence, that Hebrew qādēš represented a cultic functionary, with no evidence to support the interpretation of male (cult) prostitute (argument summarized in Gruber, 133 n. 1). 9.  Gruber, 133, 146. Gruber reports that, although his article had been largely completed prior to the publication of the Q volume of CAD, and thus provided documentation hitherto unavailable to most scholars, he decided to publish it after the appearance of that volume, with its fuller documentation and rejection of the “cultic prostitute” interpretation, because the noted Assyriologist Simo Parpola had described the CAD position as “tendentious” (ibid., 133 n. *). 10.  HTR 82 (1989) 245–65 (hereafter “Westenholz”). 11.  Ibid., 251. 12.  The 62 texts treated below include one with 18 different named individuals bearing this identification, one describing the ritual actions of a group of qadištus, and others in which the term describes a class of individuals recognized in economic and legal documents. I have treated all of the texts cited in the CAD article together with a number of additional texts that have come to my attention. Since I completed my initial study of the texts, many new editions have become available, as well as interpretive material in studies treating multiple texts. These are cited at the points of their contributions. I have been aided immeasurably in accessing and interpreting this new material, as well as assessing the older works, by Anna Glenn (see n. 1 above). While the final judgments remain my own, they have been informed by Glenn, and where she has contributed new readings or views, they are acknowledged by name.

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spanning more than a millennium,13 though in varying concentrations. Two features of this extensive documentation make it difficult to interpret. One is the variety of contexts in which the term appears and the indirect nature of the testimony, together with the markedly different attitudes expressed in texts of different periods and genres. The other is the use of the Sumerogram nu.gig as the dominant writing, especially in Old Babylonian documents, evidence that the Akkadian term qadištu (with its generic meaning of “consecrated woman”) was applied to a pre-existing Sumerian class—or that the Sumerian term was used by Babylonian scribes to describe an Akkadian institution.14 Because nu.gig has a distinct pattern of use in pre-Sargonid Sumerian texts, its continued use in post-Sargonid Sumerian as well as Akkadian compositions raises questions of interpretation and meaning.15 Are the differences simply the result of changing times and a hybrid culture in which an older Sumerian institution was adapted to the needs of Babylonian and Assyrian society, or do they reflect a distinct institution among the Semitic intruders? It may be impossible to separate sources of institutions in the societies that evolved from the mixture of peoples and cultures on the southern Mesopotamian plain, and influence from both directions must be reckoned with.16

13.  From the early second millennium to the middle of the first millennium. All dates are BCE and are based on the “Middle Chronology,” with individual reigns dated according to the king lists in Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 B.C. [2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 2007) 303–17. General periods are: Old Assyrian (OA) 1950–1750; Old Babylonian (OB) 1900–1600; Mari 1800–1750; Middle Babylonian (MB) 11600–1000; Middle Assyrian (MA) 1500–1000; Standard Babylonian (SB) 625–; and Neo-Assyrian (NA) 1000–600. Literary attestation does not assume the contemporary existence of a qadištu class, but may perpetuate a memory, or “myth,” of a past institution, as investigation of the texts will show. See Harris, “Nadītu Woman,” 135, who notes that nadītu women (with whom the qadištu is often associated) disappear at the end of the Old Babylonian period, but are remembered in a Neo-Babylonian text (also in association with a qadištu)—in a capacity not documented in any Old Babylonian text. 14.  Sumerian, the language of the earliest texts from Mesopotamia, is as yet unconnected to any known language family and differs fundamentally from the language of the Semitic speakers who moved into the area from the north and became heirs to that civilization, as they also contributed to its development. Mutual influence must also be reckoned with after the initial identification. 15.  The meaning of the term in Sumerian is debated. See Appendix C for a proposal. 16.  Marie-Louise Thomsen argues that the first contacts between Sumerians and Akkadians occurred ca. 3000, affecting the languages of both groups (The Sumerian Language: An Introduction to its History and Grammatical Structure [Mesopotamia; Copenhagen Studies in Assyriology 10; Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1984] 15). By ca. 2500, the northern part of Sumer must have contained a considerable number of bilingual persons (ibid., 16), and Akkadian became the official language during the Akkadian dynasty of Sargon (2340–2200). In the Old Babylonian period (1900–1600), Sumerian had become a dead language, though still used as an official and literary language (17). Perpetuated as the language of “scientists,” it continued to be written until the Seleucid period (second century) in incantations, proverbs, liturgical texts in the Emesal dialect, and Emesal laments (19, 32). See also Jerrold S. Cooper, “Sumerian and Akkadian in Sumer and Akkad,” OrNS 42 (1973) 239–46; Dietz Otto Edzard, “Sumerer und Semiten in der frühen Geschichte Mesopotamiens,” Genava 8 (1960) 241–58; and Adam Falkenstein, “Kontakte zwischen Sumerern und Akkadern auf sprachlichem Gebiet,” Genava 8 (1960) 301–14.



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Whatever the Sumerian legacy, it is clear that new elements and new dynamics are at work in the Babylonian and Assyrian usage.17 Although the Semitic-speaking inhabitants of these kingdoms knew the institution by the name qadištu, indicating a linguistic association with the sacred sphere, the act of dedicating a daughter to a god as a qadištu is expressed in Babylonian documents by an idiom that does not employ the root q-d-š. In fact, Akkadian words from this root are rare, leaving qadištu linguistically isolated in the Mesopotamian context.18 Mari offers an exception, however, with a text describing the “consecration” of a girl as a qadištu, using a verb from this same root. This raises the question whether the specialized use of the root to designate a particular class of women dedicated to a deity might represent a West Semitic import or influence, although we lack evidence for a corresponding West Semitic institution for this period.19 Alternatively, we may ask whether it represents an Akkadian (re)naming of an older Sumerian institution. While the vernacular term for this class was qadištu, it was represented in the majority of Old Babylonian texts by the Sumerian logogram nu.gig, which is attested from the mid-third millennium as the name for a special class of women in Sumerian society. In our smaller number of Assyrian texts, nu.gig is found only in the Middle Assyrian ritual text from Assur, and in Neo-Assyrian literary texts, whose origins may go back to earlier Babylonian and Sumerian sources. It is not (yet) attested at Mari; but the Old Babylonian scribal tradition of representing qadištu with nu.gig, or vice versa, is evidenced in an Akkadian document from Ugarit in which nu-gig appears with a masculine determinative, representing the male qdš known from alphabetic Ugaritic texts. Lexical identification of qadištu and nu-gig need not imply identity of institutions or continuity of function, which can only be assessed after examination of the Sumerian sources. Old Babylonian Texts Primary evidence for the qadištu comes from Old Babylonian texts over a period of 200 years, showing that the qadištu was a significant and stable institution 17.  Cf. Harris (Ancient Sippar, 305) on the “radically different” position of the Old Babylonian nadītu (written lukur) from the lukur of earlier texts. 18.  In contrast to Hebrew where attestations of this root are numerous, forming an extensive family of nominal and verbal uses in which qedešah is a minor form, the root is rare in Akkadian, with qadištu its most common form. Verbal uses are infrequent, though attested as early as the third millennium. The basic meaning, as in Hebrew, appears to be “be sacred or dedicated/consecrated,” but the disproportionate occurrence of the feminine professional noun (and the absence of any evidence for a corresponding masculine term) suggests that a distinct socio-religious institution in Mesopotamian society is behind this usage. For the meaning and distribution of the root, see Claude-­ Bernard Costecalde, “Sacré (et sainteté),” 10:1361–72. 19.  See Chapter 5, section II for evidence from Ugarit and Ebla.

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in the society. It also appears to have been broadly established. Although the texts documenting the class come from relatively few sites, with a concentration at Sippar (a consequence of excavations there), qadištus are also attested in OB Larsa, Nippur, Kish, and Dilbat. Somewhat earlier texts from Mari and the Old Assyrian colony in Anatolia show that a class by this name (with dialectal variants) was already recognized in these kingdoms as well.20 Thus the qadištu was an established figure in the social and religious world of the Semitic kingdoms that occupied the breadth of Northern Mesopotamia during the second millennium BCE. Old Babylonian narrative texts present the qadištu as a class of women dedicated to a deity and engaged, at least at times, in wet-nursing. Legal texts and economic documents treat issues of inheritance, property, maintenance, payment for services, and adoption. In all of the texts the qadištu appears as an established member of the society, whose place and function(s) require no explanation. As a consequence we learn little about the life and activities of the qadištu in the society. The predominant writing in Old Babylonian texts is with the Sumerogram nu.gig. Of the 23 examples of “qadištu” cited by CAD under the heading “OB, Mari,” only four are written syllabically,21 with an additional syllabic writing in the Old Babylonian version of Atraḫasis (treated separately under literary texts).22 All four of the nonliterary examples are in letters, reflecting vernacular usage, while legal and administrative documents, which form the bulk of our evidence, make heavy use of Sumerian.23 I begin with the letters, which contain the earliest Babylonian occurrences of syllabically written qadištu, since my interest in the term and the class is prompted by the question of the relationship of the Akkadian qadištu to the women described by the Hebrew cognate qedešah. However, these are not the earliest attestations of a cognate term to describe a class of women in Mesopotamia, since Assyrian and Mari by-forms point to an earlier presence of a class by this name. Because they are few and in part disputed, these references are treated after the Old Babylonian evidence has been examined. The fact that nu.gig is not found in the texts from either of these areas may simply be a consequence of the nature of the documents and/or small sample size, but one might speculate that 20.  The reference to the qadištu wife of a man in a contract from the Assyrian colony in Anatolia (BIN 6 222 9) is in a broken context and may well refer to a wife married in the Assyrian homeland, while the only other occurrence of the term in documents from Kanesh explicitly identifies the qadištu with the city of Assur, so there is no certain evidence of qadištus existing as a distinct class within the Assyrian colony. 21.  CT 52 130 r. 9; TCL 18 100:31; Fish Letters 8:12; ARM 10 59 r. 3. 22.  Renger (“Untersuchungen,” 179 n. 481) includes a further Old Babylonian syllabic writing, in TRS 16:2, where it appears as a title of Inanna. A Mari by-form qaššatum is considered below. 23.  Some contracts were written entirely in Sumerian (as YOS 14), while others (such as Grant Smith Coll. 260) combined Sumerian and Akkadian. See Elihu Grant, Babylonian Business Documents of the Classical Period (Philadelphia: n.p., 1919) 5.



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they represent an early usage with West Semitic origins in these regions removed from the Sumerian heartland. Letters

1. TCL 18 100:31 Letter from Adad-rim-ili to Sin-uṣelli.24 This letter from a son-in-law to his father-in-law begins with a complaint (“Is it possible, that I come to you from a distance of two hours, full of worry, without your showing any concern for me?” [lines 4–7]), and closes with an admonition (“Don’t be negligent to the house” [30]) and a request for information about a qadištu:25 u ṭēm qá-di-iš-tim šupram and send me a report on the qadištu.26 (31–32) Renger cites this text, together with Fish Letters 8:12 (below), as evidence of the qadištus’ dependence on the palace or temple,27 but nothing in this letter suggests a temple setting, or a palace, though the juxtaposition of “house” and qadištu suggests that she may be identified with whatever institution that represents. This letter does not allow us to determine what functions this qadištu performed or why she is of concern to Adad-rim-ili. But the latter’s name, compounded with Adad, suggests a religious connection, as seen in other Old Babylonian texts. In this instance, it is clear that the reference is to a particular qadištu, identified by office rather than name, and that she has a significant role in the affairs of the two correspondents. But the nature of that role remains hidden. 2. Fish Letters 8:12 Letter from Dan-Erra to Gimil-Marduk concerning payments of sesame and oil.28 This letter reports payments of sesame and oil to four individuals, two identified by name and two by occupation or office. It opens with a word of assurance that “the house is well” and Gimil-Marduk should not be distressed. It then reports 24.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival _view. php?ObjectID=P387396. Early OB; Larsa. Transliteration and translation: Erich Ebeling, Altbabylonische Briefe der Louvre-Sammlung aus Larsa (MAOG 15:1–2; Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1942) 70–72 (no. 100); K. R. Veenhof, Letters in the Louvre (AbB 14:154; Leiden: Brill) 144–45. 25.  Transliteration and translation based on Veenhof, Letters, 144–45. 26.  Alternative translation of ṭēm qadištim (ibid., 145 n. i): “what the decision/mood of the q. is.” 27.  Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 182. 28.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P370820. Kish (?). Transliteration and translation: Thomas Fish, Letters of the First Babylonian Dynasty in the John Rylands Library (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1936) 13–14 (no. 8); F. R. Kraus, Briefe aus kleineren westeuropäischen Sammlungen (AbB 10:8; Leiden: Brill, 1985) 15.

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the payment “from the storehouse (ina našpakim)” of 1 kurrum of sesame [= about 300 liters] to Iddin-Zababa and “the rest of the sesame, 1 sūtum” [= about 10 liters] to the gold-/silversmith. Next comes the qadištu: mala namandim šamnam / ana qá-di-iš-tim addin I gave a full measure of oil to the qadištu (11–12). This is followed by “5½ qû worth ½ shekel of silver” to Utu-ḫegal.29 Here it appears that the qadištu, like the silversmith, was in the service of Gimil-Marduk, presumably a local ruler or administrator of a (temple?30) estate. As in the previous example, the text tells us nothing about the specific function(s) of the qadištu, but it does show her to be a valued member of the society alongside the silversmith. 3. CT 52 130 r. 9 Letter from Tutub-magir to “my lady,” with reference to a qadištu wet nurse.31 In this letter the service of a qadištu is stated explicitly as wet-nursing, and treated as an expected, if not defining, function. The reference occurs in the final lines of a broken tablet:32 šumma libbaki / qa-di-iš-ta-am / lūmurma / lišēniq[šu] If it pleases you, let me find a qadištu, and let her nurse him (rev. 8′–11′). What other services the qadištu wet nurse might have been expected to perform remains unknown, as does the question of whether wet-nursing was a common function of all qadištus. But qadištus are associated with wet-nursing in other texts, examined below. Marten Stol opens his discussion of “nuns in wet-nursing” with this text, commenting that the qadištu “seems to have had the special task of wet nurse.”33 Here clearly the term designates a class, rather than a particular individual. 29.  The substance measured by qû here is not specified. The reverse of the tablet refers to repeated communications concerning “good quality oil” with an unspecified female (“I have said it to her ten times but she has not answered me” [lines 13–14]). One can surmise that this refers to the qadištu mentioned on the obverse, since she is the only female identified in the letter, but even if that is the case, it tells us nothing about the nature of her service, although it does present her as a responsible (though unresponsive) individual. 30.  Suggested by Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 182. 31.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P462176. Sippar. Transliteration and translation: F. R. Kraus, Briefe aus dem British Museum (AbB 7:130; Leiden: Brill, 1977) 108–9. 32.  Over half of the tablet is broken away, leaving only a triangular-shaped portion containing the first and last lines. It must have included some attention to the infant who is to be nursed. Marten Stol (Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting [CM 14; Groningen: Styx, 2000] 186) includes lines 6–7 in citing this text: “Let them provide for the (baby) boy right here.” 33.  Ibid.; see further 187–88.



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Legal Texts: Dedication, Marital Status, and Inheritance One of the best-known references to a qadištu is in the Laws of Hammurapi, where nu.gig appears alongside a number of other “special classes” of women who receive special attention with respect to inheritance. Inheritance is also the subject of a number of private documents relating to qadištus. While this narrow legal interest leaves most of the life and activities of the qadištu unillumined, it points to the special social and economic place of this class of women in the society. The social position, family relations, and economic needs of the qadištu differed, in varying degrees, from those of the woman who passed at marriage to her husband’s family and whose economic welfare depended on her husband and the children she bore him. I begin with the royal legislation, which positions the qadištu in relation to other classes with similar economic interests or needs, and then move to the private documents. 4. LH §181:61 Laws of Hammurapi34 The Laws of Hammurapi (ca. 1750 BCE) contain an entire section (§§178–84) devoted to issues of inheritance and “dowry” relating to six “special” classes of women, treated in various groupings. Among these nu.gig appears only once (LH §181:61), in a paragraph that reads as follows: If a father dedicates (his daughter) to a deity as a nadītu (lukur), a qadištu (nu.gig), or a kulmašītu (nu.bar) but does not award to her a dowry (šeriktam), after the father goes to his fate she shall take her one-third share from the property of the paternal estate as her inheritance, and as long as she lives she shall enjoy its use; her estate belongs only to her brothers. (lines 60–75 = §181) Here we find explicit statement of the understanding that the nu.gig/qadištu is dedicated to a deity (ana dingir iššīma), using the verb (našû) for offering gifts to a god.35 But this understanding extends to the lukur /nadītu and nu.bar/ kulmašītu as well, uniting distinct classes in a common category of “dedicated” or “religious” women. Although this statement of dedication is unique in LH, it appears to articulate the assumption underlying all of the laws treating the several 34.  Transliteration and translation: Driver and Miles, Babylonian Laws, 1:72; normalized transcription and translation: Martha T. Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (2nd ed.; Society of Biblical Literature: Writings from the Ancient World; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997) 118. 35.  Driver and Miles (Babylonian Laws, 2:243) note the cognate usage of ‫ נׂשא‬in Ps 96:8 and 1 Chr 16:20 and Punic nasi lilim, but err in stating that this usage occurs only here and in one other instance. In fact, it is standard in documents recording inheritance gifts to qadištus, as in No. 5 below.

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classes of women named in this section: ereš.dingir.ra36 (ugbabtu), lukur (nadītu), munusse2.ek.ru.um (sekrētu), and šugītu. All deal with issues of inheritance by women who, by virtue of their special relationship to a deity, do not marry or have children in the normal way,37 but remain to some degree part of their paternal families. Thus all of the laws begin with consideration of whether the father has provided a “dowry” (šeriktum)38 for his daughter who is an ugbabtu (ereš.dingir.ra), etc.39 The distinct formulation of §181 suggests that it was added to a series that began with provisions for the ereš.dingir.ra (ugbabtu), lukur (nadītu), and munusse2. ek.ru.um (sekrētu) (§§178–179) and concluded with the šugītu (“lay sister”) (§§183–184). In this series, which proceeds in descending order of restriction from the temple-bound ereš.dingir.ra and cloistered lukur to the married šugītu, nu.gig (qadištu) and nu.bar (kulmašītu) follow lukur in the place occupied by munusse2.ek.ru.um (sekrētu) in the preceding law (§180). The two new classes, which appear only here in LH, are often grouped together in lists of these special classes of religious women, always in the order nu.gig, nu.bar,40 and usually toward the bottom of the lists, suggesting a comparatively lowly position in the social hierarchy.41 Whatever the distinctions in status and function among the three classes of §181, they are treated as one with respect to inheritance:42 in the absence of a dowry, they are eligible for a (reduced) portion of inheritance. 36.  The sign that was previoiusly read as nin is now read as ereš and is substituted throughout this text for the older reading nin.dingir.ra. 37. The šugītu, who is treated alone in §§183–84, may be an exception, since she is expected to marry and have children. It is unclear what distinguishes her as a class and why she is grouped here with the other classes that seem to have been restricted to some degree in child-bearing. 38.  On the šeriktum and its function in these laws, see Driver and Miles, Babylonian Laws, 2:273–74. 39.  On the groupings and differences in the provisions related to different classes, see Driver and Miles, Babylonian Laws, 2:361–74. The issue of how the dowry relates to the inheritance is complicated, because the provisions vary. Normally the dowry serves as an inheritance, or an advance on an inheritance, given before the father’s death. In the case of the unmarried votary, it provides for her maintenance and is not a presupposition of marriage. The absence of a šeriktum raises the question of the qadištu’s means of support prior to receiving her portion of the paternal estate. Clues are provided by a variety of private documents, but all are tantalizingly incomplete, giving us only glimpses of some aspects of some qadištus’ lives and livelihood. 40.  See Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 185–88, who records the meaning of kulmašītu as undetermined (185 n. 537). The texts are written exclusively with the Sumerogram and not attested before the Old Babylonian period. The meaning has been explained as involving a sense of “taboo.” See Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 185–87; Harris, Ancient Sippar, 324–28; Dietz Otto Edzard, “Sumerische Komposita mit dem Nominalpräfix ‘nu–’,” ZA 55 (1962) 91–112. According to Renger (187), the nu.bar/ kulmašītu was associated with the cultic realm and had some relationship to sexual activity. 41.  See Driver and Miles, Babylonian Laws, 2:243, and below. Individual kulmašītus appear only in texts from Sippar, where 17 individuals are known. 42.  nu.bar/kulmašītu, like nu.gig, occurs only here in LH, in contrast to the frequently mentioned lukur/nadītu, who appears in LH 40; 144; 145; 146; 178; 179; 180; 181; 182. The



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Whatever the reason for the limited appearance of the nu.gig in LH, she is firmly established among the classes of women whose inheritance was regulated by Mesopotamian law, as evidenced by the earlier Sumerian Laws of Lipit-Ishtar (hereafter LL) (ca. 1930 BCE).43 There she is aligned with the ereš-dingir-ra and the lukur in a paragraph that appears to be the forerunner of the more detailed formulation of LH.44 The law reads as follows: If, during a father’s lifetime, his daughter becomes an ugbabtu (ereš-dingir-ra), a nadītu (lukur), or a qadištu (nu-gig), they (her brothers) shall divide the estate considering her as an equal heir. (LL §22)45 Despite differing interpretations of this law, the essential idea, continued in the later Babylonian laws, is that the qadištu was one of a number of classes of women whose relationship to a deity excluded a normal marriage relationship so that she continued to be considered a member of her natal family with inheritance rights alongside male siblings. But her inheritance is for her lifetime only, returning to her brothers at her death.46 Further information on a qadištu’s inheritance, and legal status, is provided by documents from private archives, including the following text.

much better documented, and studied, nadītu provides valuable clues to the lives of women dedicated to a god in ancient Babylon with which the qadištu can be compared and contrasted. See especially Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 149–76; Harris, “Nadītu Woman,” and Ancient Sippar, 303–23; and Elizabeth Stone, “The Social Role of the nadītu Women in Old Babylonian Nippur,” JESHO 25 (1982) 50–70. 43.  The laws stem from the southern Mesopotamian city of Isin, whose ruler, Lipit-Ishtar, was the fifth king in a dynasty founded by a West Semite from Mari (William W. Hallo and William Kelly Simpson, The Ancient Near East: A History [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971] 86–89). Only fragments remain of what had been an immense tablet of eleven columns per side, written entirely in Sumerian (Roth, Law Collections, 23–24). 44.  Cf. Driver and Miles (Babylonian Laws, 2:364), who argue that the three classes named in LH §181 probably have their origin in the pre-Babylonian civilization of Mesopotamia since their titles are “always written in the Sumerian language.” 45.  Translation from Roth, Law Collections, 30; cf. CAD Q 48: “During the father’s lifetime, his daughter, even if she is an ugbabtu, nadītu, or a qadištu, has the status of an heir, she may live in the house.” See Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 180, who understands this to mean that she continues to live in her father’s house. Cf. Harris, Ancient Sippar, 306, who describes the entry of the nadītu into the cloister at the time she would normally marry. Roth’s translation raises the question of the age at which a daughter was dedicated and how her status was affected by the death of her father. 46.  Thus any heirs that she might designate are excluded from sharing in the paternal estate. For evidence that some qadištus did marry, and consideration of the circumstances and conditions, see below. The question of how the inheritance was determined and why the nu-gig of LL shares equally with her brothers while LH specifies only a one-third share has invited speculation without resolution.

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5. Grant Smith Coll. 260:4 Document recording the dedication of Beltani as a qadištu and designating her inheritance.47 This document opens with the declaration that Beltani’s father has dedicated her as a qadištu, using the same language as LH 181 (ana DN našû). Beltani šumša / Ibni-Adad abuša / ana Adad ilišu / ana nu.gig/qadištim iššīš48 (Concerning the woman) named Beltani: Ibni-Adad, her father, dedicated her to Adad his god as a qadištu. (1–4) Of particular interest in this dedication is the connection with Adad, since few texts identify the deity to whom the qadištu is dedicated. As we shall see, the qadištu appears to have an exclusive relationship with Adad, except at Mari, where a single text attests a relationship to Annunitum.49 In this case the father appears to have a determining role in the relationship, since the deity is first identified as “his god” (ilišu, line 3), reflected in his name Ibni-Adad. Subsequently, in the list of divine witnesses, Adad is identified as “her god” (iliša, line 14). The opening declaration of dedication is followed by the specification of Beltani’s inheritance: she is to receive five shekels of silver and share equally with her brothers “from whatever will be in the house” (lines 5–9). She is also given a certain Šamaš-mutabbil as her “son” (ana māriša, line 10), thus providing her with a legal heir. This suggests that qadištus, like nadītus, were prohibited from bearing children (which raises questions about their role as wet nurses), but in any case it provides for a dependent to care for an unmarried qadištu in her old age. A key question in the interpretation of this document, and others of similar nature, has been the question of the age at which the daughter was dedicated and the relationship of the dedication document (nišītu) to the act of dedicating a daughter, on the one hand, and her installation into the office of qadištu, on the 47.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P463106. Provenance unknown. Date: Samsu-iluna 5 (1744). Transliteration, translation, and discussion: Claus Wilcke, “Zwei spät-altbabylonische Kaufverträge aus Kiš, mit zwei Exkursen,” in Zikir Šumim: Assyriological Studies Presented to F. R. Kraus on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. G. van Driel et al.; Leiden: Brill, 1982) 446–47; Daniel Schwemer, Die Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens im Zeitalter der Keilschriftkulturen: Materialien und Studien nach den schriftlichen Quellen (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 2001) 318–19. 48.  The Akkadian text is presented here (and in most of the texts that follow) in normalized transcription that renders the syllabic writing, and the Sumerian logograms common in legal documents, as an approximation of “spoken” Akkadian. Thus mib-ni-diškur ad.da.ni is presented as Ibni-Adad abuša and a-na nu.gig i-ši-iš as ana qadištim iššiš. 49.  See pp. 250–53 below. In contrast, nadītus are found in the service of Marduk, Shamash, Ninurta, Sin, Anum, Ishtar, Ilabrat, and Suzianna, but are never associated with Adad (Driver and Miles, Babylonian Laws, 2:364).



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other. Claus Wilcke, following Renger,50 argues that the dedication of a qadištu occurred shortly after the child’s birth and accompanied her naming, since some qadištus (though not necessarily Beltani) bear recognizable “priestess” names.51 But he separates the act of infant dedication (“Widmung”) from the installation into office (“feierlichen Amtseinsetzung”), which he envisions as taking place considerably later.52 Nevertheless, he appears to connect the present document with the initial act of dedication, “offering” (našû) the child to the deity,53 although it is difficult to imagine providing a “son” to a newborn infant, and the legal provisions of the document have significance only when the daughter leaves her father’s house to assume her duties as a qadištu.54 Lucile Barberon finds a key to the occasion of this document in the identification of the first female witness, Iltani (a name common among “priestesses”) as “her presenter” or “sponsor” (nāšītiša, line 17).55 Thus she relates the document to the formal installation of Beltani in her new role in the temple, envisioning a ceremony in which she is presented by Iltani (“l’instructrice”) and accompanied by three other qadištus, named as witnesses to the document.56 Whatever the age of the qadištu at her dedication, the critical feature of this document is the provision for her inheritance/support (nudunnû) as an alternative to a dowry (šeriktu). Since she typically did not marry, and thus did not enjoy the support of a husband or heir, she commonly received a share of her father’s estate and/or personnel (an adopted “son,” as here, or a slave, below, to provide support). While the decision to dedicate a child to future service of a deity would require some consideration of her future support, it remains questionable whether it required a detailed legal document at the time of her dedication or the involvement of persons who would later accompany her in her passage from her father’s house into the service of her god.57 50.  Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 153. 51.  Wilcke, “Zwei spät-altbabylonische Kaufverträge,” 447. 52. Ibid. 53.  The verbs are all in the past tense, and could refer to distant past or immediate past. Nevertheless, in discussion of a similar document, involving a nadītu of Marduk, Wilcke asserts that the nudunnû (“inheritance” document) was issued in the birth year of the priestess (ibid., 441, 446). See further “Exkurs A: nudunnûm und nišītum” (440–45), though neither nudunnûm nor nišītum occur in this text. 54. Cf. CAD N2, 280, which defines nišītu as “installation in office.” 55.  Lucile Barberon, Les Religieuses et le Culte de Marduk dans le Royaume de Babylone (ARCHIBAB 1; Mémoires de NABU 14; Antony: Société pour l’Étude du Proche-Orient Ancien, 2012) 185. Wilcke (“Zwei spät-altbabylonische Kaufverträge,” 446) also calls attention to this nāšītu, but likens her to a “Taufpaten,” understanding her role to be at the infant’s consecration (which might take place at a local temple), rather than at her installation in the Adad temple where she would serve (cf. 441). 56.  Barberon infers that the four women, who form a group among the seven witnesses, were qadištus on the basis of their names, which are recognizable as names of “priestesses” (ibid. n. 1079). 57.  Note that LH §181 deals specifically with a situation in which the child has been dedicated but no šeriktu/nudunnû has been issued.

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Texts from Sippar The following texts contain further dedication contracts along with other documents from the region of Sippar. As a group they attest the presence of qadištus in the region, in a variety of roles and activities, over a period of almost two centuries. 6. VAS 8 69–70:5 (Tablet and Envelope) Legal document recording the gift of a female slave to the qadištu Marat-erṣetim by her parents upon her dedication.58 This text is similar to the preceding one in documenting an inheritance grant bestowed on a qadištu at her dedication/installation, but it follows the more generic form of the “Schenkungsvertrag” (“donation contract”), used for a variety of occasions and not specifically tied to the dedication of a “priestess.”59 Thus it begins with the gift, rather than the individual being dedicated. (1–2) A female slave named Saniq-qabuša (, instead of field and house),60 (3) whom Aḫi-ay-amši, her father, and (4) Lamassi, her mother, (5) ana Marat-erṣetim nu.gig/qadištim (mārtišunu) to Marat-erṣetim, the qadištu (their daughter) (6) ina nišītiša iddinūšim gave upon her dedication. (7) From among her brothers (any that there are) (8) no one will raise a claim against her. Here we find the technical language of dedication (nišītu,61 line 6) in a document recording an “inheritance” gift for a qadištu. In this case a slave girl takes the place of the usual gift of real estate. Whether the intention of this gift was to care 58.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P372482. Sippar. Date: shortly before Hammurapi 20 (ca. 1772). Transliteration and translation: Bruno Meissner, Beiträge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht (= BAP; Assyriologische Bibliothek 11; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1893) 99; translation: Josef Kohler and Arthur Ungnad, Hammurabi’s Gesetz, vol. 3: Übersetzte Urkunden, Erläuterungen (= HG 3; Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1909) 138 (no. 493); transliteration and translation: Moses Schorr, Urkunden des altbabylonischen Zivil- und Prozessrechts (= VAB 5; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913) 294–95 (no. 211); Wilcke, “Zwei spät-altbabylonische Kaufverträge,” 442–43. 59. Schorr, Urkunden, 278. The final clause (lines 7–8) excluding objections from siblings (or children) is a standard feature of this form. See 278–81 for further commentary on this class of texts (“Schenkung an Kinder”). 60.  Parentheses contain additional lines from the envelope. 61.  The word was originally read erištum, “request,” a reading assumed by Schorr, Urkunden, 294; Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 180; and Harris, Ancient Sippar, 330. See CAD N2, 280 nišītu 1a for the corrected reading; Wilcke, “Zwei spät-altbabylonische Kaufverträge,” 440–42 (“Exkurs A: nuduunnûm und nišītum”).



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for the qadištu in her old age or to perform some other service is uncertain, but the related document, CT 48 (treated below), suggests a particular motive.62 As in the previous text, the majority of witnesses are female, here comprising eight of nine, suggesting even more strongly that this dedication took place in the presence of other qadištus, or at least within a circle of women. The inclusion of the mother, Lamassi, alongside the father in the dedication is notable here. With the exception of the linked document CT 48:2, the following contracts mention only the father.63 7. CT 48 2: 3 Legal document concerning a dispute between the qadištu Marat-erṣetim and her male relatives over the ownership of the slave Saniq-qabuša.64 This document is linked to the preceding text (VAS 8 69–70) as a challenge to Marat-erṣetim’s claim to the slave Saniq-qabuša, a challenge resolved by consulting the original document. It begins by restating the terms of that document, in almost identical form: A female slave named Saniq-qabuša, whom Aḫi-ay-amši, her father, and Lamassi, her mother, gave to Marat-erṣetim, their daughter, the nu.gig/ qadištu, when she was dedicated (inūma innašû [4]), instead of field and house (1–6). It continues with the report that ten years have passed and “the slave had given birth to her daughter,” when the two sons of Marat-erṣetim’s father’s brother and her own two brothers “laid claim” (ibqurūma) to Saniq-qabuša and her daughter. Thereupon, it reports, the elders of Akšak and Zarda65 “heard her old tablet concerning her dedication” (ṭuppaša labiram ša nišītiša išmû [13–14]), recognized the slave and her daughter as belonging to Marat-erṣetim, and gave them to her (15–18). Stol speculates that the nursing slave girl was the “working capital” of this qadištu, arguing that the qadištu did not nurse the babies herself, but “manage[d] the wet nurses in her service.”66 With this argument he attempts to accommodate the identification of qadištus with wet-nursing attested in multiple texts with an 62.  See Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 187. 63.  A further document considered below (Dekiere OB Real Estate 105, in relation to CT 6:42) also names the mother alongside the father in a bequest of property. 64.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?%20ObjectID=P366198. Date: Hammurapi 20 (1772). Transliteration, translation, and discussion: H. M. Kümmel, Review of J. J. Finkel­ stein, Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum: Old-Babylonian Legal Documents, vol. 48, OLZ 68 (1973) 466–67; Wilcke, “Zwei spät-altbabylonische Kaufverträge,” 442–43. Discussion: Andrea Seri, “Domestic Female Slaves During the Old Babylonian Period,” in Slaves and Households in the Near East (ed. Laura Culbertson; OIS 7; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) 52. 65.  Towns in the region of Sippar which were the likely origin of this text. 66. Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 187.

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apparent interdiction of child-bearing by qadištus, as well as nadītus and kulmašītus. It is clear that wet-nursing as a profession has rather narrow limits of age and physical condition that have to be considered if the wet-nursing is to be provided on an ongoing basis. These issues will be addressed below. 8. CT 6 42b (= Dekiere OB Real Estate 110), with Dekiere OB Real Estate 105 Legal document confirming the inheritance of the qadištu Erištum as shared with her sister, the nadītu Amat-Šamaš, with earlier document establishing her inheritance.67 CT 6 42b represents a judgment following an apparent dispute over the inheritance of the qadištu Erištum. It confirms her claims as specified in her earlier inheritance document,68 which involved division of the property with her nadītu sister. It begins by identifying the property designated as her “inheritance share” (zittu), emphasizing equal division of everything between the sisters, and adds a prohibition against (further) claims against the other. It also makes the nadītu sister, Amat-Šamaš, Erištum’s heir. The text of the tablet reads as follows: A built-up house plot of one mūšarum, / next to the house of Belakum / and next to (the house of) Awil-Nanna, / the inheritance share of Erištum the qadištu (zitti Erištum nu.gig/qadištim [4]) / the daughter of Ribam-ili, / which she divided with Amat-Šamaš, the nadītum of Šamaš, her sister (ša itti Amat-Šamaš nadīt Šamaš aḫātiša izūzu [6–7]):/ they have fully divided the shares. / Whether [concerning something] worthless or precious,69 / one sister will not raise a claim against the other. / Her heir is Amat-Šamaš, her sister (apiltaša Amat-Šamaš aḫāssa [11]).70 While providing further evidence of the kinds of inheritance qadištus received, this text is of special interest for its documentation of the practice of dedicating more than one daughter to a deity, in this case a nadītu of Šamaš as well as a qadištu. Harris cites this text as an example of a modest qadištu inheritance (“only a small 67.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival _view.php?ObjectID=P385863. Reign of Sin-muballiṭ (1812–1793). Transliteration and translation: Schorr, Urkunden, 182; transliteration: Luc Dekiere, Old Babylonian Real Estate Documents from Sippar in the British Museum, Part 1: Pre-Hammurabi Documents (MHET 2/1; Ghent: University of Ghent, 1994) 173–75; Translation: Kohler and Ungnad, HG 3:19 (no. 45); partial translation and discussion: Anne Goddeeris, Economy and Society in Northern Babylonia in the Early Old Babylonian Period (ca. 2000–1800 BC) (OLA 109; Leuven: Peeters, 2002) 126–27. 68.  Dekiere OB Real Estate 105 (= Dekiere 105, treated below). 69.  Lit. “from chaff to gold.” 70.  The envelope has slightly different wording throughout, but it adds the following to line 11: “She will give her inheritance to whomever she(!) pleases” (which appears to leave Erištum free to name another heir).



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house of 1 SAR”), showing that “the qadištus did not come from wealthy families, in contrast to many of the other classes of [dedicated] women,” and comparing them with nadītus in particular, some of whom received much larger inheritance gifts.71 She also notes that among cases of sisters belonging to different “special classes,” the nadītu was generally the first-born and enjoyed the higher status.72 This case does not show a distinction of status or inheritance between the two classes of “priestesses,” but it does appear to confirm the priority of the nadītu, if, as it appears, she has already received her inheritance at the time that Erištum received her allotment. But how is one to understand the division of the property given to Erištum, which appears to belong to the stipulations of the original inheritance document? That text reads as follows: Dekiere OB Real Estate 105 73 A built-up house-plot of one mūšarum / next to (the house of) Belakum / and next to (the house of) Lunanna / Ribam-ili and Aya-tallik, her mother / [gave] to Erištum, the qadištu (nu.gig), / their daughter; / [ ] and everything, / however much there is, / the qadištu and the nadītu / will divide equally (mitḫāriš [envelope: ištīniš] izuzzā74). (1–9) Here the mother is named together with the father as bestowing the property, and the first witness is a priest of Adad (line 14), suggesting that this document was issued at Erištum’s installation. No reference is made to her dedication and she is identified by the title of qadištu, as already possessing that status. The description of the property given to Erištum is the same here as in the document confirming her claims, but here it is not called an inheritance “share” (zittu) as in the later document. In both, however, an emphasis is placed on dividing “everything” (mimma mala [7–8]) between “the qadištu and the nadītu.” Surprisingly, “the nadītu” is not named here, or identified as Erištum’s sister. This seems to imply that provisions for her inheritance had already been made and are assumed in this document. It is unclear whether the property designated in these two documents was envisioned from the beginning as Erištum’s share (zittu) of a joint inheritance or represented a division of property bequeathed originally to the nadītu sister alone. Whatever the case, the city house plot seems to be intended to serve Erištum as a residence, since it would not be needed by her cloistered sister, 71. Harris, Sippar, 330; emphasis mine. 72.  Harris, “Nadītu Woman,” 126; cf. Ancient Sippar, 306–7, 325. 73.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P481355. Date: prior to CT 6 42b (= Dekiere OB Real Estate 110). Transliteration: Dekiere, Old Babylonian Real Estate Documents, 164–65. Partial translation and summary: Goddeeris, Economy and Society, 126. 74. Reading i-zu-za as izuzzā; alternative reading: izūzā, “they divided.”

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although the latter may have desired it as a source of revenue, along with other items of the joint property. 9. BE 6/2 85:17 Legal document detailing the inheritance given to the qadištu Qištum by her father Riš-Šamaš.75 This text, like the preceding one, is not a dedication document, but simply a list of items comprising the “inheritance share (zittu) of Qištum the qadištu (nu.gig), which Riš-Šamaš her father had given her.”76 The 15 items consist of a field of four ikû, a built-up house plot of one mūšarum, some garments, some livestock, a basalt millstone, and some furniture, along with a number of other illegible items.77 Despite its substantial size in relation to the inheritance in the previous text, Harris judges it “hardly comparable to those usually given to the other classes of women.”78 10. Riftin 30:10 Record of property belonging to a qadištu named Erištum.79 References to a qadištu’s property occur in a number of Old Babylonian documents concerned with multiple properties, including this document that lists two “undeveloped lots” with measurements, one belonging to a certain Ili-kimaabiya, son of Nur-Ilabrat, the other “the property (bītum) of Erištum, the nu.gig/ qadištu” (obv. 9–10).80 While this may reinforce the impression that the property possessed by qadištus was not concentrated in a qadištu “compound,” but interspersed among other properties in the community, this text concludes with the note identifying the two properties as “bordering on (the property of) Hamsi(?), the overseer of the diviners” (rev. 13), which suggests that this may concern property belonging to a temple or temple personnel. 75.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P258728. Date: Samsu-iluna 16 (1735). Translation: Josef Kohler and Arthur Ungnad, Hammurabi’s Gesetz. Vol. 4: Übersetzte Urkunden, Erläuterungen (continuation of vol. 3) (Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1910) 4:51 (no. 992); partial translation and comments: Harris, Ancient Sippar, 330. 76.  The inheritance is described here as a zittu without any reference to sharing it with a sibling. Wilcke (“Zwei spät-altbabylonische Kaufverträge,” 443–44, with n. 19) suggests that an inheritance allotment may be called a zittu rather than nudunnû if it is determined after the father has died. 77.  A reference to the location of the house “next to the house of Suḫuntum and next to the house of her brothers (da e2 a-aḫ-ḫi-ša [4])” might suggest that the house that Qištum received was part of the family estate, reinforcing the notion that the qadištu remained a member of her natal family. But if Suḫuntum is understood as a female name, it could refer to the house of Suḫuntum’s brothers. 78. Harris, Ancient Sippar, 330, citing contrasting gifts to nadītus in BE 6/2 70, CT 4 1b, and CT 8 5b (n. 109). 79.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P412512. Hammurapi 38 (1754); Provenance unknown. Transliteration and translation (Russian): Riftin 30, pp. 69–70. 80.  Transliterations and translations cited here are Glenn’s reading of the hand copy.



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11. CT 4 40b:18 Inventory documenting the household possessions of a qadištu.81 This text records the contents of a house that the qadištu Sabitum rented from a gardener named Ibbatum, beginning with the items that he withheld for the rent (five beds of several types and a bundled-reed door). The other items listed include: two chairs, four stools, numerous types of jars and vessels, various wooden implements, at least two types of sieve, two types of pestle, and one potter’s grinding slab covered in leather. The text concludes with the summary statement: “The household goods of Sabitum, the qadištu” (numât Sabitum nu.gig/ qadištim” [18]). Harris cites this text along with the following (PBS 8 2 218:4) as evidence of the low economic status of the qadištu.82 12. PBS 8/2 218:4 Lease of a wing of a house by the qadištu Ilša-ḫegal.83 In this lease contract, the qadištu Ilša-ḫegal84 rents a house from Ribatum, a nadītu of Šamaš.85 The terms of the lease are stated as follows: A wing of a house—as far as it extends—Ilša-ḫegal, the nu.gig/qadištu, the daughter of Kibisi(?), has leased from Taribatum, the nadītu of Šamaš, the daughter of Warad-Sin, for payment of rent, for one year. She will pay her one-year’s rent of 1/3 shekel of silver. She will plaster the roof and will reinforce the foundation (1–11). Like the preceding text, this one witnesses to the relatively constrained economic state of the qadištu, here juxtaposed with that of a naditu. In cases where 81.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P355845. Ammi-ditana 12 (1671). Translation: Kohler and Ungnad, Hammurabi’s Gesetz, vol. 5: Übersetzte Urkunden, Verwaltungsregister, Inventare, Erläuterungen (= HG 5; Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1911) 103 (no. 1401); discussion: Edzard and K. R. Veenhof, “Inventare,” RlA 5:137. 82. Harris, Ancient Sippar, 329–30. 83.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php? ObjectID=P258512. Ammiṣaduqa 16 (1630). No published transliteration or translation. 84.  According to Barberon (“Quand la mère est une religieuse: le cas d’Ilša-hegalli d’après les archives d’Ur-Utu,” NABU 2005/89, 12–13), this name, which has a number of different “spellings,” is reserved for qadištus. Its most likely meaning is “her god is abundance” (Glenn). Harris (Ancient Sippar, 329) notes that ḫegallu (“abundance”) is the gift of Adad to humans. Another qadištu with this name appears in an inscription from Kish (TCL 1 157) treated below. Yet another, who is not included in the CAD references (and hence was not included in this survey), is discussed by Barberon (“Quand la mère,” 12–13). She is Ilša-ḫegal, mother of Ur-Utu, the well-known chief gala-priest from Sippar. Based on this case, Barberon argues that the qadištu, like the nadītu and the kulmašītu, could not bear children due to a taboo associated with her consecration; but she could gain children through adoption, secondary wives, or concubines. 85.  Although the nadītus of Šamaš were cloistered, they frequently owned land and houses outside the cloister, which they sold or leased, as evidenced in many contracts. See Harris, Ancient Sippar, 310–11.

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a qadištu receives a house or rents one, she appears to be unmarried and living independently in her own dwelling. There is no evidence of a cloister of qadištus, or of qadištus living together. 13. VAS 8 92:4 Marriage contract in which the mother of the bride is identified as a qadištu.86 Damage to this marriage contract has removed part of the bride’s name and portions of the concluding lines, but the main content is clear. It reads as follows: [ . . . ]-mitum-ummi, / daughter of Šamaš-naṣir, / from Šamaš-naṣir / and Erištum, the qadištu,87 her mother (u Erištum nu.gig/qadištim ummiša [4]), / Saniq-pišu-Šamaš, / the son of Šamaš-re’um, / took as a wife. / 10(?) shekels of silver, her terḫatu (bridal gift), / [the heart(s) of] Šamaš-naṣir, her father / [and] Erištum, her mother [are satisfied with?88] If this reading is correct, the terḫatu is paid to both parents, just as the bride is taken from both. Note that Erištum is only identified as a qadištu at the first mention of her name, a pattern that is found in other texts. Harris cites this text as evidence that “a qadištu might marry and apparently have children.”89 But it is impossible to determine from this text whether Erištum is the birth-mother or whether the daughter was adopted.90 Other texts that refer to adoption of children by qadištus, single and married, suggest that this is the case here too.91 86.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P372501. Hammurapi 3 (1789). Transliteration and translation: Meissner, BAP, 69 (no. 88); translation: Kohler and Ungnad, HG 3:5 (no. 4), with amendment: HG 4:80 (no. 4). 87.  Erishtum is a common qadištu name, and there is no evidence to prove or disprove a connection with the Erishtum of CT 6:42b. 88.  Following Raymond Westbrook, Old Babylonian Marriage Law (AfO Beiheft 23; Horn, Austria: Berger, 1988) 134. 89. Harris, Ancient Sippar, 329. 90.  A similar contract (M 90 [88-5-2, 150] = Schorr, Urkunden, 7–8 [no. 2]; Westbrook, Old Babylonian Marriage Law, 127) identifies the mother of the bride as a nadītu of Šamaš (“Maštum, daughter of Belessunu, the nadītu of Šamaš” [lines 1–2]), which is more surprising, since the nadītus of Šamaš were cloistered, unlike the nadītus of Marduk, and were generally understood to be prohibited from bearing children. Thus it appears likely that the daughter was adopted. The unmarried state of the nadītu seems to be confirmed in this case, since only the mother is mentioned in this tablet. More interesting, and perhaps confirmation of the irregular nature of this marriage, is the fact that the groom has no patronym, but is identified only as the son of a prostitute (“Rimum, der Sohn des Šamḫatum” [line 4]). Schorr renders ša-am-ḫa-tum as a name, as does Westbrook, and neither comment on this line. But šamḫatum is a recognized term for prostitute (discussed below, 63. Malku I 131, 133). 91. On qadištus adopting children, see Barberon, “Quand la mère,” 12–13.



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14. JCS 2 110 21:29 Record of large deliveries of barley received by the qadištu Elmeštum and “scribes.”92 This document records three deliveries of barley in enormous quantities received by the qadištu, Elmeštum, together with “the scribes” (namḫarti Elmeštum nu.gig/qadištim u mārī bīt ṭuppi [28–29]).93 The delivery amounts are: 91 kurrū of barley on the 29th day of Second Elulum (intercalary month 6) 959 kurrū, 2 bariga, 4 sâtum of barley on the following day. 237 kurrū and 4 bariga of barley on the 10th of Kinunum (month 8). The circumstances are unknown, but the size of the deliveries must imply some kind of large institution as the ultimate destination, perhaps the palace.94 This is the only document mentioning a qadištu in this collection of 45 tablets, which consist largely of receipts for animals and provisions in small amounts, many intended for sacrifices.95 Thus it is distinguished by the unusual cast of actors as well as the unusual size of the deliveries. Harris speculates that this text is a palace account, recording collections of grain from tenant farmers (babbilū).96 The latter term, translated “carriers” by Goetze, occurs in the accounts of the two largest deliveries, as in the second delivery, which reads as follows: “959 kurrū . . . barley, which [she received] from PN1, PN2, and the babbilū their colleagues (tappîšunu) (10–15).”97 Harris comments: “The men first mentioned may be in charge of the palace fields and responsible for the barley grown in them by the babbilū.”98 But the babbilū mentioned here can hardly be 92. Reign of Abi-ešuḫ (1711–1684). Hand copy, transliteration, and translation: Albrecht Goetze, “Thirty Tablets from the Reigns of Abī-ešuḫ and Ammī-ditānā,” JCS 2 (1948) 92–94 (no. 21); further treatment: Harris, Ancient Sippar, 239–40, 330–31. 93.  Goetze (“Thirty Tablets,” 94) translated “archivists” based on his reading ga2.dub.ba (= šandabakku). This is now read e2.dub.ba (= bīt ṭuppi). CAD Ṭ s.v. ṭuppu A in mār bīt ṭuppi (149–50) translates “scribe, scribal personnel.” Harris (Ancient Sippar, 330) translates “military scribe,” apparently believing that the grain is intended for provisioning troops. 94.  So Harris, Ancient Sippar, 239. Rosel Pientka (Die spätaltbabylonische Zeit: Abiešuḫ bis Samsuditana: Quellen, Jahresdaten, Geschichte [IMGULA 2; Münster: Rhema, 1998] 317, 325) argues that the texts in this collection do not all stem from Sippar, as originally supposed, but from a separate, smaller location with ties to both Sippar and Babylon. Thus the deliveries could be intended for the palace in Babylon as well as the temple of Šamaš in Sippar. 95.  A recurring figure in these documents is the nadītu Iltani, daughter of the king and resident in the cloister of the Šamaš temple in Sippar, who is the recipient of many of these deliveries and was the owner of large land-holdings. 96. Harris, Ancient Sippar, 239–40, citing CAD B 8. 97.  Goetze, “Thirty Tablets,” 93. The same pattern and language is repeated in lines 15–20 (third delivery). 98. Harris, Ancient Sippar, 240.

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the tenant farmers in general, since they appear to have had a role in delivering the produce.99 The role of the qadištu as the chief recipient of the three deliveries remains obscure, but one may speculate that the scribes, who also appear only here, may have had a role in counting and recording the unusually large quantities in these deliveries. Cultic Association 15. TCL 1 146:3 Adoption contract recording the adoption of a girl by Samidum, a qadištu of Adad.100 The cultic association in this text is limited to the identification of Adad as the deity to whom Samidum is dedicated, reinforcing the association seen earlier and documented by texts yet to be considered, an association that led Harris to conclude that “the qadištu seems to have had a special relationship with the god Adad.”101 A distinctive feature of this text is the Amorite affinities indicated by the names of witnesses.102 The opening lines read as follows: Yabliatum has given Alanitum, her daughter, to Samidum, the qadištu of Adad (nu.gig diškur [line 3]), daughter of Aškur-Adad, as her daughter. Yabliatum, her mother, has received the suckling-fee for three years.103 Here again, the father of the qadištu has a name compounded with Adad, showing a family connection with the deity. And here we have explicit evidence of a 99. The babbilū do not appear in the record of the first delivery, which is also distinguished by using a different standard of measure, namely “the ‘parsiktum of Marduk’ customary for received goods, measured according to the medium standard” (2–4). In contrast, the measurement of the larger deliveries is with “the parsiktum of 64 qû … according to the heavy standard” (9–10, 16–17). The significance of this distinction, which is found in the other documents as well, is unknown, although the Marduk measure may indicate a royal standard. Both measures are found in deliveries to the nadītu Iltani. 100.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view. php?ObjectID=P386582. Provenance: northwest region. Samsu-iluna 33 (1716). Translation: Kohler and Ungnad, HG 5:3 (no. 1088); transliteration, translation, and discussion: Arthur Ungnad, “Aus der altbabylonischen Kontraktliteratur,” OLZ 14 (1911) 107; Schorr, Urkunden, 127–28 (no. 83); Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 186–87. 101. Harris, Ancient Sippar, 328. Gruber adopts the translation “devotee of Adad” for qadištu in his article, “Breast-Feeding Practices in Biblical Israel and in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia,” JNES 19 (1989) 77. 102.  Attention to the Amorite names has led to a revised view of the tablet’s provenance, originally identified as Sippar (so Harris, Ancient Sippar, 331). Stol (Birth in Babylonia, 187 with n. 101) places its origin in the Amorite territory of the northwest, as does Schwemer (Wettergottgestalten, 318 n. 2434), who adds the name of Samidum’s father to the previously identified Amorite personal names, reading Aškur-Addu (348). 103.  Translation based on Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 187.



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qadištu adopting a daughter, suggested earlier with respect to the qadištu mother of the bride in VAS 8 92:4. Although a qadištu is sought to act as a wet nurse in CT 52 130, the qadištu here pays the birth mother for that service—presumably because the child has already been weaned and the payment is for past services.104 There is no indication here that Samidum is married. It may be that Samidum has adopted the daughter to care for her in her old age, but Stol has suggested another motive: the adopted girl may be intended to serve at puberty as a wet nurse in a nursing service overseen by the qadištu.105 That seems a long wait, however, for such an investment to pay off.106 The Amorite personal names in this text together with Adad identifications raise the question whether the qadištu institution might have a West-Semitic origin joined to a Sumerian nugig institution, a question that requires further investigation. But while Adad (Addu/Haddu) is a popular deity in the West, he is already attested in Old Akkadian texts, where he is equated with Sumerian Iškur (a relatively minor deity in the Sumerian pantheon and with no associations with the Sumerian nugig).107 16. TCL 1 157:4, 13, 20, 24, 48 A “claim relinquishment document” terminating the investigation of a complaint by the qadištu Ilša-ḫegal over a sale of property, including her seal inscription identifying her as “servant of Adad and Šala.”108 As confirmation of the qadištu’s special relationship with Adad, Harris cites the seal inscription from this document, which identifies the qadištu Ilša-ḫegal as “servant of Adad and Šala (geme2 diškur ù dša-la = amat Adad u Šala).”109 The seal itself does not contain the qadištu designation, but only “servant-of-DN” following the name and patronymic. In the text to which the seal was affixed, however, the name Ilša-ḫegal is followed by nu.gig/qadištu before the patronym in lines 4, 13, 104.  Or could it be for future service? The mother here acts alone, with no reference to the child’s father, inviting speculation about the circumstances of this transaction. 105.  Ibid., 87. Cf. Barberon, “Quand la mère,” 12–13. 106.  See discussion on CT 48:2, above, for a faster way to obtain a wet nurse. Whatever the ultimate motive for the adoption, an economic consideration is suggested by the concluding lines (9–13) of the contract, which state that if Alanitum should reject Samidum as her mother, Samidum is to “mark her and sell her” (Ungnad, “Aus der altbabylonischen Kontraktliteratur,” 107). 107.  J. J. M. Roberts, The Earliest Semitic Pantheon: A Study of the Semitic Deities Attested in Mesopotamia before Ur III (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972) 13–14, 59–60, 151, 153; Jonas C. Greenfield, “Hadad,” DDD, 377–79. See now Schwemer, Wettergottgestalten, 93–128, 196–99, 237–384. 108.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P386593. Kiš; after year 25 of Ammi-ditana (1658). Translation: Kohler and Ungnad, HG 5:36–37 (no. 1201); transliteration and translation: François Thureau-Dangin, “Un jugement sous Ammi-ditana,” RA 7 (1910) 121–27; Schorr, Urkunden, 390–95 (no. 280). 109.  Šala was a war goddess and spouse of Adad (and sometimes Dagan). On Šala, see the entry in RlA 11:2006; Schwemer, Wettergottgestalten, 397–400;

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20, 24, and 48.110 Of particular interest in the seal is the naming of Šala alongside Adad, raising the question of whether the qadištu’s service in the Adad cult might involve function(s) related specifically to Šala. The text to which this seal is attached is of interest as a further example of the engagement of qadištus, and nadītus, in real estate transactions, and in legal disputes over property. In this case, the key players are the qadištu Ilša-ḫegal, a nadītu of Marduk named Belissunu who has purchased property from Ilša-ḫegal, and Belissunu’s husband. When Ilša-ḫegal charged Belissunu with non-payment, her husband produced witnesses to the sale as well as the original sale document with Ilša-ḫegal’s seal acknowledging receipt of payment. As a consequence, she is required to issue a “claim relinquishment document” (this document) containing the history of the case and is warned by the judges never again to contest this property. The payment is verified by witnesses to the sale as well as the sale document itself. Ilša-ḫegal is “punished” and forbidden to make any future complaints, along with “her children, her siblings, and her family.”111 17. PBS 7 125:25 Letter from an unknown person to “my lady” regarding a dispute involving the nadītu-cloister of Sippar.112 A final Old Babylonian reference to a qadištu from Sippar occurs in a letter that was too broken for Harris to do more than note the occurrence and problems of interpretation.113 The letter refers to an unnamed qadištu in connection with a “dispute” (ṣēltum)114 which apparently takes place in the nadītu cloister of Sippar, or involves the cloister in some way. The broken nature of the text makes it difficult, or impossible, to determine the nature of the dispute, as well as the identities and relationships of key figures, including the writer, the female addressee (“my lady”), 110.  It occurs alone without nu.gig/qadištu or patronym in lines 43, 44, 46, and 60. On the title amat-DN as an alternate title for a qadištu or nadītu, cf. PBS 8/2 220 and 234, two contracts for the lease of a house belonging to a certain Ribatum. In 234 (and 218, another lease contract, treated above), she is identified as a “nadītu of Šamaš,” but in 220 simply as an “amat (MUNUS: maidservant, devotee) of Šamaš.” In another text in that volume (no. 181) Belessunu, a nadītu of Ninurta, exchanges a house from the “place of the nadītus” (line 8) with a certain Damiqtum, who is identified simply as amat dNinurta (line 11). 111.  The warning is extended to “her children, her siblings, and her family,” presumably a standard formula and not necessarily evidence that Ilša-ḫegal had children. 112.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P259045. Sippar. Reign of Ammiṣaduqa (1646–1626). Transliteration and translation: Ungnad, Altbabylonische Briefe aus dem Museum zu Philadelphia: Umschrieben und übersetzt (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1920) 88–90; Marten Stol, Letters from Collections in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Berkeley, Transliterated and Translated (AbB 11:125; Leiden: Brill, 1986) 80–83. 113. Harris, Ancient Sippar, 329 n. 102. 114.  Glenn: normalization following AHw: ṣāltu, ṣēltu, ṣīltu (1079), assuming a parVst-pattern nominal formation from ṣâlu, “to quarrel.” Cf. CAD Ṣ, 86: ṣaltu (ṣēltu).



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and someone identified only as “she who prays for you” (kāribtaki [21′/28]).115 The dispute appears to be the occasion of the letter, prompting the writer to travel from Babylon to Sippar; but the letter continues with concern for the house of the kāribtu, called a house of a “living” (i.e. livelihood), and the writer’s plea for prompt action in the case of her own “living” in Babylon, which she has entrusted to “her lady” (23′–29′/30–36). The obverse, from the first line of continuous text, reads as follows:116 (2′/9) and while . . . in Babylon, (4′/11) a serious dispute took place (ṣēltum kabit[tum] iš[šakin]) (3′/10)117 in the presence of the one who prays for you (ina maḫar kāri[bti]ki). (5′/12) In Babylon . . . the dispute . . . (6′/13) I arrived here in Sippar hurriedly, (7′/14) I investigated that dispute; and (8′/15) when . . . she who prays for you, (10′/17) they told her not to go out (9′/16) because of an investigation by the diviner.118 (11′/18) Concerning the dispute of the daughters of Ṣilliya,119 (13′/20) they told me (12′/19) . . . at the cloister gate (ana ka2 ka-ga-i),120 and (16′/23) I arrived (15′/22) hurriedly from Babylon in Sippar (14′/21) in order to investigate that dispute, and (17′/24) I did (16′–17′/23–24) investigate (16′/23) that dispute. The text continues on the reverse, introducing the qadištu: (18′–19′/25–26) A/the qadištu led the daughters of Ṣilliya (to me) (munusnu. gig/qadištum panī mārāt Ṣil[liya] iṣbatam).121 In the cloister (20′/27) she talked a lot (19′/26) to/about . . . and (22′/29) they repeatedly set (or “appointed”) (21′/28) her who prays for you alone . . . ” ([20′–22′/27–29] ina gagîm ana [ . . . ] magal idbu[b] u kāribtaki ēdē[nītam? . . . ] ištakkanū).122 115.  Not the writer of the letter, according to Stol (Letters, 81 n. a), who suggests it refers to “her steward or the like.” 116.  Translation based on Stol, Letters, 81, 83. The lines are numbered from the first line of preserved text, while the autograph (cited by CAD), numbers the lines from the estimated beginning of the tablet. Thus line 2 in Stol = line 9 of the autograph. 117.  CAD Ṣ, 88: “an important lawsuit was instituted.” 118. (9′/16) ina parās arkatim bārîm (or, in CAD’s interpretation: bārûm) (10′/17) ana la aṣêm iqbûšimma. Cf. CAD P, 174: “on the basis of the inquiry, the diviner told her not to leave.” 119.  CAD Ṣ, 88: “on behalf of the lawsuit of PN’s daughters.” 120.  Harris, “The Organization and Administration of the Cloister in Ancient Babylonia,” JESHO 6 (1963) 128–29: ana bāb ka-gi(!)-i, alongside the usual ga2.gi4.a. 121.  Or “the qadištu met the daughters of Ṣilliya.” This translation assumes, following Stol, that the verb is to be read iṣ-ba-tam, treating -at- as a scribal error. The form as written doesn’t make sense. CAD Q 48 reads iṣ-ba-at-ma, keeping the -at- but treating the final sign (tam [UD]) as a mistake for -ma. See the idiomatic usage of panu with ṣabātu in CAD Ṣ under mng. 8 (idiomatic phrases) in the subsection panu a “to lead, conduct” (28–29) (CAD instead includes this reference under subsection panu b, “to meet”). 122.  The dispute and the qadištu play no role in the closing lines of the letter and are omitted here.

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Among the many questions raised by this text is the question whether qadištu in line 18′/25 should be understood as definite or indefinite, whether she resides in the cloister and what her function there might be, what her relationship is with the daughters of Ṣilliya, and what is meant by the action in line 18′/25 and her “speaking at length” in line 20′/27 (to whom?). The broken nature of the text makes it impossible to answer any of these questions with confidence, but some surmises can be hazarded. The addressee is apparently a woman of some authority, including authority over, or at least interest in, the nadītu cloister in Sippar—or is her interest/authority limited to her kāribtu (prayer woman, intercessor)123 there? This kāribtu dominates the letter (appearing in lines 3′/10, 8′/15, 21′/28, and 24′/31), which begins by reference to a dispute that takes place in her presence (ina maḫar k.), and concludes with concern for her house, which constitutes her livelihood and which the writer is “looking after all the time” (25′/32). Does kāribtu designate a particular function of a nadītu within the Sippar cloister with a responsibility to bless or pray for the “lady” to whom the letter is addressed?124 None of the persons identified in this letter are referred to as nadītus, but references to the “gate of the cloister” and activity “in the cloister” suggest that the daughters of Ṣilliya were nadītus, or had property or interests within the cloister. The directive not to go out (10′/17)125 because of the investigation of the diviner also supports the notion that the kāribtu belonged to the cloister personnel—and her house was presumably within the cloister. Into this dispute a qadištu enters (18′/25), apparently acting as the spokesperson or advocate of the daughters of Ṣilliya.126 But the outcome, which involves the qadištu (?) “talking a lot” and some sort of action toward the kāribtu (lines 19′–22′/26–29), is not clear, although it apparently caused the writer anxiety about her127 own “living” (lines 23′–27′/30–34), since she shifts immediately to this con-

123.  CAD K 216: “kāribu (fem. kāribtu) adj.; 1. (designating a person performing a specific religious act)—a. designating a priest … b. designating a woman.” Examples of the feminine form include PBS 7 122:7 (where it refers to the writer), and ARMT 10 40 r. 5 (in the complaint: “I, the only one [of those] who pray for you [kāribtaka] am not provided for”). 124.  See Harris, “Nadītu Woman,” 121, with examples of a nadītu’s letters to her father declaring that she prays “constantly” for his well-being, or “daily, at noon” (PBS 7 105, 106); further examples in Bernard Frank Batto, Studies on Women at Mari (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974) 96. 125.  ana la aṣêm iqbûšimma (10). Stol translates the verb with an indeterminate “they” (the daughters of Ṣilliya?) as subject, while CAD P 174 makes the diviner the speaker: “on the basis of the inquiry, the diviner told her not to leave.” 126.  ṣabātu, with the basic meaning seize, take hold of, can also be used for taking up a position, but it is not usually used with pani (CAD Ṣ 5). 127.  Assuming that the writer is a woman, although there is no indication of gender in the preserved parts of the letter.



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cern.128 This account does not require that the qadištu be a resident of the cloister, which Harris notes as excluded by the Old Babylonian legal texts.129 Like the diviner (line 17), the qadištu can be an outside specialist (or simply an interested person) taking a role in the case. What is unclear is her place and function apart from this case and the nature and reason for her involvement in this case. It seems unlikely that the reference to the qadištu here simply indicates a representative of a class, whose action might be explained by known features of that class (as in the case of qadištu wet nurses). It seems more likely that this qadištu is a known individual and thus should be translated with the definite article (as “the diviner”).130 Sippar: Summary Although some of the texts identified originally with Sippar have proved to come from other sites in the region, and one even from a distant site in the northwest, the collection of texts documenting the presence and activities of qadištus in this region remains the largest concentration from a single site or period. While the texts cover almost two centuries and amount to only a fraction of the texts documenting nadītus, and while they are almost exclusively contracts or other types of legal and administrative documents giving no hint of cultic duties, they provide considerable information on the economic and marital status, family relationships, dwellings, and means of livelihood of individual qadištus. Often these are similar to those of the nadītus, with whom they are frequently grouped and sometimes related,131 with the distinction that the qadištus generally appear to represent a lower economic level. In cases where qadištus are recipients of rations, some type of service to, and dependence on, the provisioning estate is assumed, but the nature of the service is unspecified and the estate (municipal, temple, or individual) often unknown. Qadištus as (Adoptive) Mothers and Wet nurses Other qadištu texts from other cities expand on themes already encountered, offering some new details, but no new vistas, at least in this period and from the contracts and letters that are our primary sources. 128.  This might suggest that the dispute concerns property, though this is never spelled out. 129.  “The Old Babylonian letter PBS 7 125 … which mentions the cloister and qadištu women is too broken to permit the conclusion that they lived in the cloister especially since the legal texts exclude the possibility” (Ancient Sippar, 329 n. 102). Harris’s plural is apparently a generalization about the relationship of qadištus in general to the cloister, not an interpretation of the number of qadištus implied by this text. 130. So CAD Q 48: “the qadištu took the lead in front of those daughters of PN” (restoring [šināti] in the missing final third of the line). 131.  In multiple ways: as sister, mother/daughter, adopted heir, and in property transactions.

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18. VAS 7 10:3, 8, 13 Adoption contract.132 That qadištus often served as wet nurses (or managed wet-nursing services133), is attested by a number of texts involving wet-nursing contracts, as well as the letter treated above (CT 52 130). VAS 7 10 is a sale-adoption contract arising from an unfulfilled wet-nursing agreement with a qadištu by the name of Iltani. The mother of the child, Suḫḫuntum, wife of Ilum-kinum, has given her son to Iltani for wet-nursing (ana šūnuqim, line 4), but has been unable to pay the “nursing fee (tēnīq) of three years—grain, oil, and clothing” (lines 6–9).134 In this situation, she “gives” the child to Iltani (“Take the child; let him be your son” [10–11]) for the price of the unpaid fee and an additional three shekels of silver that Iltani agrees to pay (lines 10–19).135 In this text Iltani is identified as a nu.gig/qadištu each time her name appears (lines 3, 8, 13), except in the final occurrence (line 18). 19. VAS 7 37:16 Document attesting receipt of contested wet-nursing wages after qadištus are summoned by the judges for consultation.136 Another text that has been cited as evidence of wet-nursing contracts with qadištus is VAS 7 37; but the wet nurse named in this text is never identified as a qadištu, although qadištus play a pivotal role in the case. The class term appears only as a plural (nu.gig.meš: qašdātim, line 16) designating a collectivity summoned by the judges in a suit over non-payment of nursing fees. The text reads as follows: (1–6) Marduk-naṣir and Šat-Marduk gave their son to Waqartum for nursing (ana šūnuqim). 132.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P372234. Dilbat. Hammurapi 27 (1765). Translation: Kohler and Ungnad, HG 3:13 (no. 32); transliteration and translation: Schorr, Urkunden, 122–23 n. 78. 133.  Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 186. 134.  Three years was the standard period of breastfeeding and nursing contracts (Gruber, “Breast-Feeding,” 77); “grain, oil, and clothing (še.ba i3.ba ù sig2.ba)” is a common expression for maintenance in legal documents. See, e.g., LH §178 79. 135.  See the discussion of this text and the legal issues involved by B. L. Eichler, “Literary Structure in the Laws of Eshnunna,” in Language, Literature, and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner (ed. Francesca Rochberg-Halton; AOS 67; New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1987) 78, with n. 27. Schorr (Urkunden, 111–12) considers whether to treat this text as an adoption contract or a sale document, arguing for the latter on the basis of the sworn clause renouncing any future contesting of the agreement (line 21). 136.  CDLI link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P372260. Dilbat. Reign of Samsu-iluna or Abi-ešuḫ? (1749–1712 or 1711–1684). Translation and discussion: Kohler and Ungnad, HG 3:13, 231 (no. 33); transliteration and translation: Schorr, Urkunden, 324–25 (no. 241).



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(7–12) Waqartum and Ḫabil-kinum received the nursing fee of two years; they were satisfied (tēnīq šittā šanātim Waqartum u Ḫabil-kinum maḫrū libbašunu ṭāb). (13–15) Waqartum, on account of her nursing fee, went before the judges (Waqartum aššum tēnīqiša dayyānī imḫurma). (16–18) The judges summoned (the) nu.gig.meš/qadištus, and she received the nursing fee (dayyānū qašdātim issûma tēnīqam maḫrat). The suit is brought by a certain Waqartum, to whom the child was given for wet-nursing, and she receives the fee for two years—along with a second individual, Ḫabil-kinum—and they find it satisfactory (lit., “their heart was good” [libbašunu ṭāb], line 11]). Gruber understood Ḫabil-kinum as a second wet nurse, who shared the nursing duties and the fee, and identified the pair as the qadištus summoned by the judges in line 16–17.137 But Ḫabil-kinum appears to be a male name and the pronominal suffix in line 11 (libbašunu, “their heart”) is masculine (for male or mixed gender).138 Thus it appears likely that this pair represents a married couple or a woman and her male guardian.139 There is nothing in this text to suggest that Waqartum is a qadištu, and she cannot be included among the qadištus summoned by the judges, since they clearly represent a distinct voice in the case. It seems reasonable to assume that the unnamed qadištus represent a class of professionals understood to be experts in the practices and regulations of wet-nursing140 and that the complaint concerns non-payment of the customary third year of a wet-nursing contract. It shows that there could be more than one qadištu at the same time and place; but it also confirms that not all wet nurses were qadištus, a situation that is readily explained by the number of wet nurses required for a three-year service to infants whose mothers could not, or would not, nurse them over such a long period of time. Once again the question arises as to how and why qadištus, who seem to have been prohibited from bearing children, came to be specialists in this service. Stol argues that they supervised the wet nurses, but this 137.  Gruber, 143 n. 43, and idem, “Breast-Feeding Practices,” 76–77. 138.  Gruber “corrected” the autograph, reading -šina (fem. pl.), noting that confusion of pronouns was a common scribal error in ancient Babylon (ibid.) Glenn notes that Ḫabil-kinum is a “replacement name” (Ersatzname) meaning euphemistically “the true (son) is dead,” referring to a deceased brother of Ḫabil-kinum, and most “replacement names” are male. 139.  Cf. Schorr, Urkunden, 326 (no. 243), in which a child is given for nursing to a woman (not a qadištu) and another individual with a male name, whom Schorr understands to be her husband or possibly brother. There too the m.pl. suffix is used in recording their satisfaction with payment (“their heart was good,” line 9). 140.  So Kohler and Ungnad, HG 3:231 re: no. 33; Schorr, Urkunden, 198, 325; Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 181; Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 186; Barberon, “Quand la mère,” 13.

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does not answer the basic question of the association. While it has been suggested that wet-nursing was a way for qadištus to earn a living when they did not receive a “dowry” (šeriktum) or an inheritance adequate for maintenance, this does not explain the specialization of this class of “priestesses,” especially since it is limited by age and physical capacity. 20. YOS 14 121:3, 13 Adoption contract of a qadištu who adopts a daughter.141 A distinctive feature of this contract is its provision for the eventual marriage of the adoptee. The tablet, which has substantial breaks in lines 4–10, reads as follows: (Concerning the girl/woman) Ištar-milki:  / Tarmaya the nu.gig/ qadištu142 / took her as a daughter / from Nuriya the son of Sin-ibni. / Nuriya dressed her / in a [ . . . ]-garment. / [ . . . ] [i]f she does not give / Ištar-milki / to a husband, / Tarmaya the qadištu / has sworn by the name of the king that, / in the future, she will pay 2/3 mina of silver. (1–15) This appears to be related to the type of adoption contract described by Raymond Westbrook as a “matrimonial adoption,” in which “a woman adopted a girl from her parents ‘for daughtership and daughter-in-lawship’ (ana mārūtim u kallūtim), gave the parents a terḫatum as if for a daughter-in-law, and undertook to marry the girl off to a third party.”143 The provision for marrying off the adoptee appears to exclude the motive of securing an heir, although the penalty clause for non-compliance with the marriage stipulation suggests possible default on this obligation.144 The motive for such an adoption is unclear for the qadištu, since possible service as a wet nurse seems to be excluded by the stipulation to marry off the girl (and the father has already provided the bridal garment (line 7). Too little is known about the circumstances and expectations to do more than speculate. At least we can say that this contract presents 141.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P311166. Provenance unknown. Reign of Sumu-yamutbal (of a local dynasty in northern Babylonia) (ca. 1860–1850). Transliteration and translation: Stephen D. Simmons, “Early Old Babylonian Tablets from Harmal and Elsewhere,” JCS 15 (1961) 56 (no. 131); Peter Raymond Obermark, Adoption in the Old Babylonian Period (Ph.D. diss., Hebrew Union College, 1992) Part 2:152; discussion; Part 1:78–82. 142.  Simmons (ibid.) failed to recognize nu.gig (qadištu) in lines 3 and 23, reading these signs as part of a PN, “Anu-GIG.” 143.  “Old Babylonian Period,” in Westbrook, ed., A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 1:393; discussed in more detail in Westbrook, Old Babylonian Marriage Law, 38–39, and Obermark, “Adoption,” 1:78–82. 144.  Obermark suggests that the penalty is equivalent to the unpaid terḫatum (brideprice) normally paid to the parents by the bridegroom (ibid., 2:152).



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another example of a qadištu identified by class name, acting independently, and apparently living singly. 21. BIN 7 163:2 Adoption contract in which a qadištu adopts two brothers as sons and heirs.145 In this text, which has a number of unusual features, a couple give their two sons to the qadištu Erišti-Erra, along with a female slave, a house, and another unidentified female. The text reads as follows: (1–7) (Concerning) Erišti-Erra, the qadištu of Anum (nu.gig an.na [2]), and Dan-Šubula and Aḫua-ibnišu, the sons of Sin-iqišam and Dabitum: (8–13) Sin-iqišam and Dabitum gave: one female slave, named Aḫa-ṭabat; Bettatum;146 and a house to Erišti-Erra. (14–18) Erišti-Erra took Dan-Šubula and Aḫua-ibnišu as her sons. She established them as her heirs. (19–24) If Dan-Šubula or Aḫua-ibnišu says to Erišti-Erra, “You are not my mother,” he will forfeit her house. Of particular interest in this text is the identification of Erišti-Erra as a/the “qadištu of Anum (nu.gig an.na [2]),”147 an association attested only here in our qadištu texts. Sumerian An, Akkadianized as Anu(m), was the sky god (whose name is simply the name for sky or “heaven”) and king of the gods, whose main city was Uruk, with the temple Eanna (literally, “House/temple of An/heaven”) as his residence.148 What role a qadištu of Anu may have played in an Old Babylonian Anu cult is unknown.149 It is worth noting, however, that Adad, to whom all other qadištus are dedicated in Babylonian and Assyrian texts, is closely identified with Anu in Assur (capital of Assyria), where a double temple of Adad and Anu is the site of ritual actions involving qadištus in a Middle Assyrian text (KAR 154) examined below.

145.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P293373. Larsa? Warad-Sin 5 (1829). No published edition. I am indebted to Kathryn Slanski for providing me with a preliminary translation. Subsequent transliteration and translation is from Obermark, Adoption, Part 2:31. 146.  A female name. 147.  This contract is written entirely in Sumerian, which continued to be used in legal documents in the Old Babylonian period. 148.  The Eanna was also the chief temple of Inanna/Ištar, daughter of An/Anu. 149.  This text is dated to the reign of a ruler of Larsa, in the southern Sumerian heartland, and one might speculate that the nu.gig/qadištu of this text represented a continuation of the Sumerian nugig, whose title she shared with the divine nugig Inanna. See Appendix C.

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The identification of Erišti-Erra as a qadištu occurs only in the first mention of her name, and in the combination with Anu noted above. The conditions described here are unusual, and we don’t know the age of the sons (were they weaned or is the female slave meant to be a wet nurse?). But other texts associate qadištus with care of foundlings and with “mothering” functions, so we might suppose that the two boys were too much for this couple to handle and they gave them up to this qadištu to raise, providing a house and female assistants. 22. YOS 8 125:7 Contract for purchase (exchange?) of property belonging to Ṣilli-Erra, his qadištu wife Aḫatum, and his two sons.150 In this document, qadištu appears as a qualifier of Aḫatum, wife of Ṣilli-Erra, who is named with him and his sons, Apil-ilišu and Awil-Adad, as owners of a house that is purchased [or taken in exchange?] from them by an individual whose name is only partially preserved ([ . . . ]-Ištar [line 14]).151 [the house of Ṣi]illi-Erra, [Aḫat]um the qadištu his wife ([A-ḫa-t]um nu.gig dam.a.ni), Apil-ilišu his son, and Awil-Adad his son [ . . . ]-Ištar bought. (lines 6–9, 14) Aḫatum is not an independent actor in this document, and her status as a qadištu does not seem to play any role in the transaction. The designation is attached only to the first mention of her name (line 7) and not to the two subsequent occurrences (lines 11 and 27).152 It may have legal significance in establishing her status as a secondary wife, whose claims to the property might be distinguished from those of a normal wife. That marriage to a qadištu was considered a kind of second-class marriage is suggested by a number of texts, including the following. The sons in this text are both identified as sons of Ṣilli-Erra, not the pair, suggesting that their legal status is determined by their relationship to their father alone (whether as children of a different wife or as adopted, as in other cases of married qadištus).153 150.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P293272. Larsa. Rim-Sin 29 (1797) or later. Translation: Paul Koschaker and Arthur Ungnad, Hammurabi’s Gesetz, vol. 6: Übersetzte Urkunden mit Rechsterläuterungen (Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1923) (= HG 6) 5 (no. 1660). 151.  Koschaker and Ungnad (HG 6: 95) argue that this is a property exchange, rather than a purchase, since there is no reference to price. 152.  The full sequence of names, with identifying relationships, recorded in lines 6–9 is repeated in lines 11–13 (enabling restoration of broken text in the earlier lines), but only Ṣili-Erra and Aḫatum are named in lines 26–27. 153.  It may be significant in view of the association of qadištus with Adad in other texts, that one of the sons has a name compounded with Adad (Awil-Adad, meaning “man of Adad”). This suggests devotion to Adad on the part of the father (or Aḫatum if she had a role in the naming).



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23. Ana ittišu VII iii 7, 10 Compendium of legal terminology presented in sample cases, including two featuring qadištus.154 Ana ittišu [Ai.] is an Old Babylonian scribal document designed to teach the terminology and forms of legal composition through the presentation of sample cases. While the original Old Babylonian document was written entirely in Sumerian, the lines containing nu-gig/qadištu exist only in a Neo-Assyrian bilingual exemplar, with parallel columns of Sumerian and Akkadian.155 In it nu-gig// qadištu occurs twice, in contiguous and interconnected cases.156 The first case concludes a series treating special conditions of marriage defined by the status of the bride. These include marriage to a widow with a child (Ai. VII ii 20–22a), a prostitute (ii 23–25), a foreign woman (ii 27–31), a woman of unknown state (perhaps a minor taken by force)157 who is subsequently divorced on grounds of aversion (ii 32–iii 6),158 and a qadištu, taken on grounds of love (iii 7–10). The lines treating the nu-gig /qadištu read as follows:159 arkānu qá-di-iš-tum (nu-gig-am3) / ina sūqim ittaši / ina râmešu qašdūssu (nam-nu-gig-a-ni) iḫussu160 (Ai. VII iii 7–10) Afterward he took in a qadištu from the street. Because of his love for her, he married her even though she was a qadištu-woman.161

154.  Provenance: Nippur (Old Babylonian original). The lines referring to a qadištu are preserved only in a Neo-Assyrian tablet from Nineveh. Transliteration and translation: Benno Landsberger, MSL 1 (= Die Serie ana ittišu; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1937) 90 and 99–100; further treatment: Westenholz, 250–51. 155.  Although no Old Babylonian exemplar contains this segment, the legal phrases, terms, and concepts of this text are specific to the Old Babylonian period, according to Niek Veldhuis, with little practical relevance in later periods (History of the Cuneiform Lexical Tradition [Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record 6; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2014] 341). 156.  Or a single case with multiple dependent conditions. 157.  The first lines are broken, and Landsberger found suggestions of forced marriage in ii 38 (“vielleicht Verführung [ii 38] einer Minderjährigen” [MSL 1:247]). 158.  The divorce procedures (ii 50–iii 6) include a stipulation that the woman may marry “a man of her heart” (mūt libbišu, iii 4), without claim (“Anspruch”) from the former husband. 159.  Only the Akkadian text is cited in full below, with the corresponding Sumerian for the key terms given in parentheses. 160.  Mistake for iḫussa (“he took her”). 161.  Transliteration and translation after Westenholz, 251. Literal rendering of lines 9–10: “in his love for her he married her in her nu.gig/qadištu-state.” While each of the cases in this sequence represents an “irregular” marriage or a marriage that would not normally represent a man’s first choice, only the qadištu marriage is presented explicitly as a second choice, after a failed first marriage. For a case of a qadištu taken as a secondary wife, alongside a primary wife, see below, pp. 260–61.

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The second case concerns the same qadištu, now the subject, in a case of an adopted orphan: qadišta [šî] (nu-gig-ga-bi) māru / sū[qi išši]ma / [tulâ šizib amēlūti162 / ušēniqšu163] (Ai. VII iii 11–14) This qadištu-woman took in a child from the street.164 At the breast with human milk, [she nursed him].165 The identification of the qadištu with the “street” in lines 7–10 has led many scholars to see her as a prostitute, since the street is the location of the prostitute (ḫarīmtu) in other texts.166 Westenholz argues, however, that “street” is a “legal definition of [the qadištu’s] status within the sociological structure of Akkadian society, since the street was a place where people not belonging to organized households congregated.”167 This sense appears to be confirmed by the use of the same expression to describe the child as a foundling.168 But it is not used of the prostitute in the parallel construction in ii 23–23a. There we read: “in her prostitute-state from the public square he took her in” (nam-kar-kid-da-a-ni tilla2-ta / [ḫarmūssa ištu rebīti ittaši]169), followed by the marriage formula “in her prostitute-state he married her” (nam-kar-kid-da-a-ni ba-ni-in-tuk / ḫarmūssa ī-[ḫussi] ii 24).170 A further reference 162.  Following Landsberger’s reconstruction, MSL 1:100; reconstructed on the basis of the Sumerian and in comparison with Ana ittišu III iii 55 (ibid. n. 13). 163.  Following Westenholz’s (251) reconstruction. 164.  Lit., “child-of-the street.” Landsberger (MSL 1:247) understands these lines as describing an action prior to the marriage, with the man who contracted the marriage adopting the qadištu’s son in the process. 165.  Westenholz, 251. The following lines affirm that the child did not know its birth mother and father (iii 15) and describes the solicitous action of the adoptive father in rearing the boy, teaching him the scribal craft, and arranging his marriage (iii 16–21). 166.  E.g., Landsberger (MSL 1:99–100) translates nu-gig // qadištu in line 11 as “Dirne” and nam-nu-gig // qašdutu in line 9 as “Dirnenzustand,” although he employs the qualified “Kultdirne” for the first occurrence of the term (line 7). Cf. Lambert, “Prostitution,” 141, where he states: “The variation between kar-kid and nu-gig, and between city square and street is surely deliberate variation to give the learner scribe a bigger range of vocabulary. In this context the qadištu is clearly a common prostitute.” But the literary context does not allow this interpretation, since the two terms represent distinct cases in a sequence of “special cases” in which they are not contiguous, but separated by two other cases. They are clearly not literary or lexical “variations,” since the terms are never interchanged, and they are clearly not equated in the Middle Assyrian Laws (see analysis below, pp. 264–67). 167.  Westenholz, 251, citing CAD S, 402–3: sūqu 2a. 168.  Gruber (143 n. 44) cites the Mishna’s definition of an “adoptee” as “anyone who is adopted from the street (Heb. śūq = Akk. sūqu) and who does not know either his father or his mother” (m. Qidd. 4:2). 169. Reconstructed. 170.  Despite differing elaborations of circumstances, the three cases of widow, prostitute, and qadištu employ a common formula to describe the marriage: “in her X-state he married her.” Thus we have nam-nu-mu-un-zu-a-ni mi-ni-in-tuk / almanūssa īḫussu: “in her widow-state he married her” (ii 20–21); nam-kar-kid-da-a-ni ba-ni-in-tuk / ḫarmūssa ī-[ḫussi]: “in her prostitute-state he



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to the ḫarīmtu’s former location offers more closely defining terms: “he gave her back her tavern” (eš-dam-a-ni šu-mi-ni-in-gur: aštammaša utirrašši, ii 25).171 Here the prostitute (ḫarīmtu) is clearly distinguished from the qadištu, not simply as outside the family structure, but as identified more specifically with the “public house” (eš]dam: aštammu) and the public square (rebītu). If the “street” tells us nothing about the function of the qadištu in the society, the following clause describes an activity that appears to characterize, if not define, the qadištu in a variety of texts, namely, suckling a child that is not her own—elsewhere for a fee, here as a mother. Gruber cites this text as evidence that the qadištu was “typically a wet nurse”;172 but we do not need to know whether this was a typical function to spell out some of the implications of the conjoined nu-gig/ qadištu clauses in Ana ittišu for an understanding of the qadištu in Old Babylonian society. The marriage section shows that she was defined as outside the family structure, not simply by her association with the “street,” but by the fact that she is not identified by a patronym. It offers further evidence that she could marry, while implying that she was normally unmarried, and characterizing marriage to a qadištu as a second choice for the man, with negative connotations, which are overcome in this case by the man’s love for her. She brings no children with her (unlike the widow in ii 22173), but as a wet nurse, she must have born children or experienced pregnancy. The fact that she adopts a child “from the street” suggests that her qadištu-state restricts her from having children of her own, by and for her husband—one reason she would not be a first choice for a wife. It is clear from the following development that the man who married her considers the child as his own, even though the act of adoption is attributed only to the qadištu. So adopting a foundling and nursing it allows the qadištu to fulfill the functions of motherhood expected of a wife. A recently published Old Babylonian text describing a similar case of a qadištu adopting a foundling is a model contract published by Gabriella Spada.174 The relevant portions of the Sumerian text read as follows in Spada’s translation: married her” (ii 24); and nam-nu-gig-a-ni in-ne-in-tuk-tuk / qašdūssu īḫussi: “in her qadištu-state he married her” (iii 10). 171.  This clause precedes the final word of the marriage formula, “he brought her into his house,” so it appears to confirm that she was able to bring her business into the marriage with her, though it remains unclear what her continuing role in it was. Cf. Cooper, “Prostitution” (RlA 11:15), who interprets “gave back” to mean that she was to continue her profession after the marriage. Cooper translates: “returned her to her tavern,” with the note: “that is, the husband has her continue the practice of her profession.” I find this translation awkward, especially preceding the statement that “he brought her into his house.” 172.  Gruber, 143. 173.  Assuming that the reference to the child in this line belongs to the widow of the preceding line whom he “brings into his house” in 22a. 174.  “Two Old Babylonian Model Contracts,” CDLJ 2014–2 (http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/ cdlj/2014 cdlj2014_002.html) 3–4, with discussion, pp. 4–7.

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One suckling male child, found at a well, rescued from the street, SimatAdad, the nugig (qadištu), has snatched from the mouth of a dog, has made a raven drop from its mouth. Simat-Adad, the nugig (qadištu) has adopted him as her son (and) established him as her heir.175 The fact that the name of the qadištu is this model text is composed with the name of Adad reinforces the identification with this deity seen in historical texts. nu.gig/QadIštu in Ration Lists 24. VAS 7 183 i 18, ii 4, iii 3, iv 10 Ration list from a large private estate including a qadištu among recipients.176 In the legal documents examined above, the qadištu appears as an individual buying and selling property and contracting for wet-nursing services, occasionally married, but without institutional location or association. In one of the letters (Fish Letters 8) that opened this investigation, however, a disbursement of [oil?] to a qadištu showed that a qadištu might be attached to an estate.177 That is confirmed by ration lists in which qadištus appear alongside other individuals identified by class or occupation, showing something of the world of the qadištu, if not her own distinctive role in it. VAS 7 183 is a six-column tablet recording disbursements of grain and drink for a large household on six successive days in the month of Ayyarum.178 Each column contains approximately 28 entries of individuals identified by name (or “son of PN”), position (“man of the house,” “son of the house,” “lady of the house”), or occupation, as well as a number of collectives (including Kassites, “young people,” and harvest workers). Those identified by occupation alone are: a mason, a carpenter, a boat-builder, a baker, a female weaver, a barber, a “herdsman(?)” (na.⸢gada?⸣ = nāqidum), an “overseer of the Amorites” (ugula.mar. tu = ugulamartû), and a nu.gig/qadištu. The unnamed qadištu appears in each of the first four columns (i 18, ii 4, iii 3, iv 10), where the other professionals are also concentrated, and near the head of the list in columns ii and iii, as the first named professional. But what was her role or responsibility? What did she contribute to this household to warrant the 2 to 3 qû grain ration allotted to her? This appears to 175.  Ibid., 4. Spada describes the several formulae used to describe the baby as a foundling as “references to didactic collections of legal phraseology.” 176.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P372403. Dilbat. Reign of Ammiṣaduqa (1646–1626). Translation: Kohler and Ungnad, HG 5:65–66 (no. 1288). 177.  Whether of a god, municipality, or private individual cannot be determined from the few examples. In this case, it is the estate of a wealthy individual. 178.  Each column begins with the heading, “X amount of grain for the rations (kurrumatum) of the house” and concludes with a summary specifying an amount of beer (kaš = šikarum) in addition to the grain.



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be a private household, and no (other) religious personnel are mentioned.179 Is she attached to this household to perform the service of a wet nurse, or child care? In contrast to the wet-nursing contracts, which specify a set fee for a specified period (usually three years), the estate provides maintenance for continuous service (or availability for service). 25. VAS 7 186:19 Ration list with a qadištu.180 This document is from the same household as the preceding text and describes distributions on four consecutive days. The lists of those receiving the distributions are much shorter here, and contain fewer individuals identified by occupation alone. These are women weavers (plural), who appear in every column; the nu.gig/qadištu (col. 1 alone); a “herdsman(?)” (col. 2); and a “shepherd(?)” (col. 3). A new class designation in this tablet, appearing in each of the four columns, is “bride of the house” (e2.gi4.a e2 = kallat bītim, i 9, ii 11, iii 12, iv 14).181 The meaning of this expression is not clear, but one of the meanings given by CAD for kallatum is “wife of a son living in his father’s household.”182 26. CBS 7420:2 Record of delivery of two rams to the qadištu Inbatum.183 Administrative records from the city of Nippur during the Isin-Larsa Period attest the presence of a number of qadištus and provide further glimpses of their activities and place in the society.184 A qadištu by the name of Inbatum is mentioned in two texts, although she is identified as a qadištu in only one of them, CBS 7420. In this text she is the recipient of rams for a caravan to the city of Nawar. The legible portion of the tablet reads as follows:185 179.  Pientka (spätaltbabylonische Zeit, 180) lists this text, and the following, as having a close connection to ration lists relating to the palace (and the cult of Nanaya), but it lacks the royal and cultic personnel of those texts. 180.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P372406. Dilbat. Reign of Ammi-ṣaduqa (1646–1626). Translation: Kohler and Ungnad, HG 5:66–67 (no. 1289). 181.  A plural sign following the term in col. 3 appears to be copied from the preceding entry (female weavers), which precedes it only here. It seems unlikely that additional “brides” or “daughters-in-law” appeared in need on this single day. 182.  CAD K 79. 183.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P262421. Nippur. Reign of Rim-Sin (1822–1763). No publication. Transliteration and translation: John F. Robertson, Redistributive Economies in Ancient Mesopotamian Society: A Case Study from Isin-Larsa Period Nippur (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1981) 216–17. 184.  Eight texts, from a collection of 483 contemporary administrative-economic texts, were published by Robertson in a study entitled “The Internal Political and Economic Structure of Old Babylonian Nippur: The Guennakkum and His ‘House’,” JCS 36 (1984) 145–90. 185.  Transliteration and translation after Robertson, Redistributive Economies, 216.

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(1) 2 udu-nita2 2 male sheep (2) in-ba-tum nu-gig (for?) Inbatum, the qadištu, (3) kaskal uruna-wa-arki for the caravan to Nawar. (4) [na-gada?] dzuen-e-ri-im-šu [The herdsman (in charge)] (is) Sin-erimšu. (5) e2-tur3 nam-en-na (Delivered from) “the stockyard of lordship.” This text is part of a collection of 64 texts recording deliveries of a variety of animals to a number of destinations for a variety of purposes, cultic and otherwise.186 The stockyard named here is one of two frequently mentioned in these tablets, apparently under the control of a central authority, with Sin-erimšu an important administrative official (not a simple “herdsman”). This stockyard was a major supplier of animals for cultic use to a number of different temples, but also for subsistence—and possibly, in this case, for a commercial expedition (kaskal, line 3). Alternatively, Robertson suggests, the sheep might be for sacri­ fice to insure the success of the expedition.187 None of this explains the role of the qadištu Inbatum in this text or her relationship to the expedition. It does show a qadištu as a named individual singled out for a special delivery from a centrally controlled stockyard in relationship to a business enterprise with no apparent connection to wet-nursing or to cultic activity. Moreover, her second appearance in this collection of texts also associates her with an expedition, but in a ration list. 27. CBS 7625:5 Ration list with allocations for Inbatum and her living quarters.188 The same Inbatum that appears in the preceding text is named in this ration list without the designation qadištu, joined by a certain Duššuptum, identified elsewhere as a nadītu189 but here without the title. This suggests that a qadištu, or nadītu, known by name in a limited circle may appear without the class identification in texts, such as ration lists, that repeat the same names in multiple editions. In this small tablet, Inbatum stands in a list of just four named

186.  Ibid., 195. 187.  Ibid., 254–58 and 217. 188.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view. php?ObjectID=P262626. Nippur. Rim-Sin 31 (1791). Transliteration and translation: Robertson, “Internal Structure,” 169, and idem, Redistributive Economies, 302–4, with discussion. 189.  CBS 7416; she also appears without the nadītu identification in three other ration lists, in association with Damiqtum (Robertson, “Internal Structure,” 157 n. 23).



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recipients, headed by the guennakkum (“governor” of Nippur),190 and, like him, she receives a separate allocation for her “living quarters.” The text reads as follows:191 (1) [4?] sila of oil (for) the guennakkum (2) [4?] sila for his living quarters (ama5-ni-šè, lit., “woman’s house”) (3) 6 sila (for) Damiqtum (4) 1 sūtum192 (for) Duššuptum (5) 1 sūtum (for) Inbatum (6) 2 sūtum (for) her living quarters (ama5-ni-šè, lit., “woman’s house”) (7) (and for) the caravan to Isin (kaskal ì-si-inki-šè) (8) 2 sūtum (for) the house of the guennakkum193 (9) 3 sūtum 5 sila (for) the slave women who have given birth.194 This text contains new information about the qadištu and raises new questions about her role(s) and social location. It also confirms her association with trade caravans indicated in the preceding document. What unites the recipients in this list? Apart from the guennakkum, all of the individuals are women. Damiqtum, who heads the list of women, appears in multiple texts as a recipient of allotments for herself, but also of disbursements for others, and for sacrifices and offerings to various deities (Ninlil, Inanna, Enlil, and Ninurta). Robertson understands her as an agent of the organization that provided the distributions to temples and individuals recorded in these documents, but provides no information on her office, ancestry, or marital status.195 Duššuptum and Inbatum, as known from other texts, represent the two major classes of cult-related women, in the usual hierarchical order. Both receive larger allotments than either Damiqtum or the guennakkum. But Inbatum receives double the amount of her personal ration for her “living quarters” (ama5-ni-šè, lit., “woman’s house”) and for an expedition to Isin. The caravan does not receive a separate allotment from that for the “woman’s house,”

190.  Ibid., 156, citing CAD and AHw, with the caveat that there is little information on his actual role in the internal administration of Nippur. 191.  Transliteration and translation: Robertson, “Internal Structure,” 169. 192.  Sumerian: ban2, often transliterated “ban.” 1 sūtum (ban) = 10 sila, 1 sila = .82 liters. 193.  Robertson (ibid., 157) suggests that this represents the administrative quarters, in distinction to his living quarters. 194.  Ibid., 169. 195.  Ibid., 155; cf. 154–59. It may be that because she was well known, such identifications were unnecessary, as with Inbatum and Duššuptum. But one expects such influence to rest on some office, or family connection.

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suggest­ing that the expedition is part of the activities of her household. What could be the purpose of this expedition to Isin, and the expedition to Nawar in CBS 7420? The two references make it appear that she has some responsibility for these activities that is recognized by provisioning from the central storehouses, and this text, in which the provision is apparently oil, appears to confirm that the rams provided for the Nawar expedition were for consumption or trade rather than sacrifice. Finally, there are the “slave women who have given birth,” who receive the largest amount of the distribution. Elsewhere qadištus have been identified with wet-nursing, and here we have multiple women in a state required for that role—in close juxtaposition with a qadištu, but without any connection being drawn. It is noteworthy that it is not simply female slaves that are identified here but female slaves with the special needs of new mothers. This must imply a special need or use, since one would not normally expect slave women who have given birth to constitute a distinct group, all in the same condition. The infants are not mentioned; the concern is for the women. Are they nursing their own infants, or others’? This text raises many questions about the roles of slaves in the society and how they were used and maintained. Were these slave women married? Were they being used as prostitutes? Were they selected for service as wet nurses? What happened to their children? Were they a part of the “woman’s house”? Who were the members of the qadištus’ “woman’s house”?196 So much of the qadištu’s life is hidden in the documents left to us, but this text gives some further glimpses into her activities and the organization that supported, and controlled, them. 28. CBS 7111:23, 25 Ration list from the same collection as CBS 7420 and 7625 including distributions to the qadištu Ummiyatum and a collectivity of qadištus.197 This tablet records allotments on two consecutive days and a third day. The first allotments relate to a building project, with multiple disbursements for hired laborers, craftsmen, and building supplies.198 The third day’s allotments begin with grain for a “diviner (?)”199 (line 19) and for the “slave women of Damiqtum” (line 196.  Robertson comments on this reference by noting that Inbatum “had her own domicile and personal household” (“Internal Structure,” 157), but the size of the ration suggests a major enterprise beyond her immediate household needs—and those of the guennakkum’s “household.” 197.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P262150. Nippur. Reign of Rim-Sin (1822–1763). Transliteration and translation: Robertson, “Internal Structure,” 172–74, and idem, Redistributive Economies, 320–34, with discussion. 198.  Ibid., 172. The tablet is written mostly in Sumerian, with the exception of personal names. 199.  Robertson’s conjecture (“Internal Structure,” 175).



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20), entrusted to a certain Lu-Inanna (= Awil-Ištar?200) (21). Following a broken line, the allotments are as follows:201 (23) 2 bariga202 [of grain] (for) Ummiyatum, the qadištu (nu-gig) (24) 2 sūtum (of grain) (for) Ninurta-mušallim203 (25) 1 sūtum (of grain) for the qadištus (nu-gig-me) (26) entrusted to Damiqtum. Brewers, and hired laborers (of?) the “house” complete the list. Here we have a picture of multiple qadištus, one identified by name receiving her own allotment, others simply as a group, who are on the municipal “payroll.” This provides us with no information as to the service(s) they provided—but it does show them as a recognized class receiving support from the city’s storehouses. They exist alongside Ninisina A and some live independently, with their own households. But the reference to an allotment to qadištus as a collectivity suggests that some may have lived together, although the fact that the allotment is entrusted to Damiqtum for disbursement might point to dispersed quarters of women who are simply treated as a group for administrative records. Unfortunately we know nothing about Damiqtum’s role or office and relationship to the qadištus. Three additional texts from the same period, but from the Amorite kingdom of Mari to the west, confirm the main outlines of this portrait from Babylonia while adding new details and variations. Texts from Mari

The city of Mari on the Middle Euphrates in eastern Syria lay 150 miles upriver from Babylon and was the center of a flourishing Amorite kingdom during the Old Babylonian period until it fell to its former ally, Hammurapi ca. 1760. The texts, which number more than 20,000 tablets, come from the palace of Zimri-Lim, which was destroyed in the Babylonian conquest, and represent correspondence with the king or administrative documents. Most date from the reigns of Zimri-Lim (ca. 1775–1762) and his predecessor Yasmaḫ-Addu (ca. 1795–1776) and 200.  So Robertson, 173 (= “Man of Ištar”). 201.  Text and translation: ibid. 202. 1 bariga (also transliterated “nigida”) = 6 sūtum. 203.  Mentioned in line 9 as entrusted with grain and beer for “the god Gula (in?) the shrine/ temple of the fathers” (e2-ad-da-na) (line 8). See ibid., 174–75. Robertson’s reference to a “god Gula” is problematic, as Gula is known only as a goddess, specifically a goddess of healing, identified with Baba and Ninisina in Sumerian texts containing references to nu-gig. See Appendix C, p. 435.

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thus document the religion and culture of a period in which Amorite influence had come to dominate.204 Two letters containing the noun qadištu are known from Mari together with a number of administrative documents containing lists of women’s names, some identified by the Amorite byform qaššatu.205 29. ARM 10 59: r. 3 Letter to Zimri-Lim from Addu-duri with a reference to a qadištu of Annunitum.206 This letter contains a report to the king on a poorly understood incident involving a man, stolen money, and a qadištu of Annunitum. The sender, Addu-duri, appears in numerous Mari letters as a woman with oversight over both palace and cultic affairs who regularly reports to the king on temples, sacrifices, etc., but also on legal and financial matters.207 The obverse of the tablet is poorly preserved, with only a reference to money and the place names of Babylon and Saggaratum clearly established. The reverse begins as follows:208 awīlam šuāti itti / napṭartišu / uterrūnim munus qa-di-iš-tum / ša Annunitim munus dumu-Simʾal / awīlum ša Suḫimma (1′–5′). 204.  I. J. Gelb, “Mari and the Kish Civilization,” in Mari in Retrospect: Fifty Years of Mari and Mari Studies (ed. Gordon D. Young; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1992) 125. According to Gelb, the early writing system and language of Mari was distinct from Babylonian Akkadian and Amorite, but texts, and especially personal names, from the period just prior to the city’s fall to Hammurapi show that fully half of the population belonged to a more recent wave of West Semites, known in Babylonian records as “Amurru” (Amorites) and caricatured as “barbarian” nomads. The First Dynasty of Babylon was founded by Amorites, who melded their language and culture with the local East Semitic culture. So too was the Old Assyrian kingdom. At Mari, however, the Amorite influence was more dominant and distinct, as evidenced in personal names and persisting “tribal” organization. For an introductory overview of Mari and its archives, see Wolfgang Heimpel, Letters to the King of Mari: A New Translation, with Historical Introduction, Notes, and Commentary (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003) 13–28, and Jack M. Sasson, From the Mari Archives: An Anthology of Old Babylonian Letters (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2015) 1–18. 205.  There appear to be multiple lists of this type, but only two have been published with transliteration and translation and are treated here. 206.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P350023. Transliteration and translation: Georges Dossin, Correspondance féminine (ARMT 10; Paris: Geuthner, 1978) 96–97 (no. 59), 264; translation: Jean-Marie Durand, Les documents épistolaires du palais de Mari (LAPO 18; Paris: Cerf, 2000) 3:286–87 (no. 1104). Further treatments: [Durand, “Trois études sur Mari,” MARI 3 (1984) 127–80]; Sasson, From the Mari Archives, 265, n. 93 (partial translation). 207. Batto, Studies, 64–72, 75 n. 30. Stephanie Dalley emphasizes Addu-duri’s cultic concerns, noting that her letters “chiefly contain information about omens and presages, and the minutiae of the cults,” and that Zimri-Lim’s letters to her are also preoccupied with religious observances (Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian Cities [London: Longman, 1984] 100). She concludes that Adduduri was second only to Shibtu, the queen, in importance among Mari women. Batto (Studies, 65) compares her reports to those of the queen, arguing that she “seemingly served in an official capacity,” although we cannot determine her exact title. 208.  Text from Dossin, Correspondance, 96, with Durand’s collations; translation after Durand, Documents épistolaires 3:286 (no. 1104), and Sasson, From the Mari Archives, 265 n. 93.



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That man / along with his napṭartum / they brought back. The woman is a qadištu / of Annunitum, a Sim’alite woman; / the man is from Suḫum. The text continues with reference to the money: “I have conveyed all the money found in his leather bag. When Asqudun saw this money, he said, ‘This is from the delivery of Yarim-Addu’”209 (6′–11′).210 This text presents multiple problems of interpretation, exacerbated by its truncated state. A critical question for understanding the status and role of the qadištu in this text is the meaning of napṭartu and her relationship to the man to whom she is explicitly bound (“his napṭartu”). CAD (N/2, 324–25) identifies napṭartu as the feminine form of napṭaru, “person with certain privileges,” suggesting that it should “possibly” be understood in the same sense as an Akkadogram in Hittite (sal nap-ṭar-ti) with the meaning “wife of second rank.” Sasson translates “his escaped woman,” without comment, while Dossin conjectures “sa concubine(?).”211 We have already seen an Old Babylonian case in which a qadištu was taken as a wife, with certain limitations,212 and an Old Assyrian text (treated below) deals with the case of a merchant who takes a qadištu as a second wife, in a city distant from his home and first wife. Thus the notion that this qadištu was a concubine/second-rank wife is not in itself problematic, but the use of this rare term warns against a simple equation with a wife of low status, especially in light of the CAD reference to a person “with certain privileges.” Durand suggests a “travel companion” (“compagne de voyage”), citing a Sumerian parallel, lukur kaskal-la, which he describes as having the status of a “Mädchen für alles,” while noting that lukur is the Sumerian term used in Akkadian documents for nadītu.213 Durand emphasizes the fact that neither qadištu nor nadītu are under male guardianship (tutelle) as the key attribute determining the social position of both. Thus the qadištu might be free to enter into short-term or long-term relationships with men lacking women (such as merchants travelling away from their homes).214 We do not know what rules or customs governed qadištus’ relationships with men, but the designation of the qadištu in this text by a term unknown in Babylonian Akkadian 209.  Dossin (Correspondance, 96–27): “(Il provient) des ‘rognures’/ de la maison de Yarim-Addu” (lines 10–11). 210. Ibid. 211.  Ibid.; Dossin, Correspondance, 97. 212.  Ai. VII iii 7–10. 213.  Durand, “La Religion amorrite en Syrie à l’époque des archives de Mari,” in Mythologie et Religion des Sémites Occidentaux, vol. 1: Ebla, Mari (ed. G. del Olmo Lete; OLA 162; Peeters, 2008) 408. Elsewhere (Documents épistolaires, 287) he writes that the merchant of Suhûm had to hire as a servant “à toute faire” “one of those local women without a man (qadištum) which the census lists of Mari attest so well (une de ces femmes sans homme [qadištum] locales que nous attestent si bien les listes de recensement de Mari).” 214. Ibid.

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and of possible Hittite origin is a further sign that Mari is a distinct cultural area with distinct ethnic and linguistic influences from the west. These distinct influences are exhibited in this qadištu’s identification with Annunitum and designation as a Sim’alite. The Sim’alites were one of the two main divisions of the “Haneans,” a term designating the “(semi-)nomadic” population of the region,215 but caution should be exercised in extrapolating a “tribal” lifestyle from this designation alone; Zimri-Lim, whose 300-room palace was the wonder of the ancient world, was a Sim’alite. The designation is significant nevertheless, because it shows that “tribal” association played a role in identifying people in Mari. The identification with Annunitum is also significant, as the first attestation of a qadištu dedicated to a female deity. Annunitum was the chief goddess at Mari, and her temple had a close association with the palace and royal administration—although she was not an Amorite deity, unlike the West Semitic Dagan, the patron deity of the dynasty and the city. She belongs to an older Akkadian stratum, attested originally as an epithet of Eštar (Ištar) with the meaning “SheWho-­Continually-Skirmishes/The-Skirmisher,” but acquiring the status of an independent deity by the end of the Old Akkadian period.216 If, as Batto argues, Addu-duri had supervisory control over temples and temple personnel, then her identification of this woman as a “qadištu of Annunitum” might serve to link this incident the temple. But too much is lost or unexpressed in this fragmentary communication to draw any firm conclusions about the status or role of this qadištu. The identification with a female deity does raise the question, however, of whether a qadištu’s religious role varied with the deity to which she was dedicated, and if so, how. It also suggests, as in the earlier case of the identification with Šala, that dedication to a male deity might actually involve roles and activities related to a female partner or counterpart. Batto, who treats this qadištu reference in isolation from the surrounding text, argues that the absence of any name to identify “the qadištu of Annunitum” must indicate that “there was only one qadištu in the service of this goddess,” with the suggested implication that qadištu must represent a rather high-ranking office.217 He also argues that qadištu “priestesses” must have been relatively few in Mari, since this was the only one attested at the time of his study (1974). That argument no longer stands; a recently published letter adds another qadištu reference to the Mari corpus, and the title qaššatu, borne by a considerable number of women in 215.  The other was the Yaminites (Marti Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East [WAW 12; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003] 33 n. c and 51 n. c). See Dominique Charpin and Jean-Marie Durand, “‘Fils de Sim’al’: les origines tribal des Rois de Mari,” RA 80 (1986) 141–83; cf. Heimpel, Letters, 34–36. 216. Roberts, Earliest Semitic Pantheon, 146–48. 217. Batto, Studies, 111.



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several administrative lists, is generally understood as a by-form of qadištu, greatly expanding the references to this class at Mari and raising questions about the relationship between the two groups of designees. 30. A.1186 Letter of Yarim-Addu to Zimri-Lin concerning the slave of a qadištu.218 This text confirms practices of dedicating and endowing a qadištu recorded in the Old Babylonian documents examined above. Coming from a slightly earlier period and a region with distinct linguistic and cultural features, it points to a common qadištu institution over the entire region. Sasson describes YarimAddu as a “diplomat and merchant,” noting that the same name occurs in the preceding letter,219 but he cautions that they may not be the same individual since this is a common name. The text of the letter is presented here in full in Sasson’s translation.220 Regarding Ka’alalum, about which my lord wrote (to me) saying, “a servant of yours must come with him.” This man is a slave of a qadištum. When as a young girl her father consecrated her as a qadištum (inūma munus.tur qadištam abiša uqaddišuši) and set her up as a qadištum (u ana munus qadištim iššûši), Ka’alalum was given to her as her collar (unqum)221 and as her inheritance (niḫlatum). This man is, consequently, a slave—not a freeman (dumu awīlim). Now when his master, the father of the young girl, died, Iddinma-ilum deceived him, saying “Come to me and I will adopt you as an heir.” So (Ka’alalum) took away the assets of his mistress: an ox, 11 sheep, 2,400 liters of grain, and gave them to Iddinma-ilum. To secure for himself the assets of his mistress, having placed his own name on him, he (Iddinma-ilum) brought him out (of the town) and was ready to be on his way. Before he could go, she took hold of him and shouted in outrage, “You are my slave; he who seized you from me should come here.” Iddinma-ilum came to me, grabbed him and said, “You are my male son. I have adopted you as heir!” But I told him, “Is it acceptable that I validate the adoption of a 218.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P341872. Translation: Durand, “La Religion amorrite,” 408; English adaptation of Durand’s French translation: Sasson, From the Mari Archives, 265 (5.5.b.iv). 219.  In line 11, where the money is identified as “from the delivery [Dossin: “maison”] of YarimAddu” (Sasson, From the Mari Archives, 265 n. 93). 220. Ibid. 221.  Cf. Durand (“La Religion amorrite,” 408): “anneau” and CAD U, 167: “1. Ring (as piece of jewelry), 2. Ring (of office), (royal) seal, 3. Sealed document.… ” See 5′b “as part of a dowry, marriage gift, peculium: (PN gave to his daughter) … one ring of gold” (168). The significance of this term is not clear, but it appears to confirm that the slave is a gift associated with her office.

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slave, born non-free, and belonging to a qadištum?” This is what I told Iddinma-ilum. I am now herewith sending him to my lord. My lord should consider his case. A free woman, a qadištum, must not be wronged. (Ka’alalum) is a slave; he is no free man. A notable feature of this text is the fact that the qadištu is never named, only her slave and the man who has tried to lay claim to him (and his mistress’s assets) by adopting him. At issue here is the status of the qadištu as a free woman and her legal right to the slave bestowed on her by her father in connection with her consecration/dedication—as her “collar” or “ring” (unqum) and as her inheritance (niḫlatum). Thus the writer, Yarim-Addu, responds to the king’s request for one of his servants to accompany Ka’alalum (to Zimri-Lim?): “This man is a slave of a qadištum” (and therefore cannot be treated as a free man) and concludes his message: “A free woman, a qadištum, must not be wronged. (Ka’alalum) is a slave; he is no free man.” In this letter a qadištu appears to be defined as a free woman, and characterized as a woman of some means. Thus Durand characterizes the qadištu as “une femme fortune et, surtout, indépendente.”222 This insistence on her status as a free woman may appear at odds with the previous text, but it should caution against reading a sense of dominance into the possessive suffix in that text. What this text shows is that the qadištu’s independence also makes her vulnerable. When her father dies, she has no male protector and becomes the target of a predator who seeks through her slave to take her property as well as the slave. Another feature of particular interest in this text is the way it supports the assertion that Ka’alalum is the slave of a qadištu by relating the history of her consecration/dedication in which he was given to her as her special possession and inheritance. While the account here corresponds to the picture presented by qadištu inheritance documents from Babylonian sources, it adds something new. Here for the first time the cognate verb for “consecrating” (quddušu: uqaddišu-ši) appears alongside the usual Babylonian verb for “dedicating” (našû: iššû-ši). Do the two verbs refer to two stages in the dedication of a qadištu, a “consecration” (at a young age) and a subsequent “dedication” at the time of her installation? Or do they represent the use of an Amorite dialectal term for the dedication, followed by the standard Babylonian term? It may be significant that nu.gig does not appear here, although the syllabic writing could simply be a feature of epistolary style. I am inclined to view the use of quddušu here as an “Amorite-ism,” since none of the Babylonian texts make a clear distinction between two stages of dedication. 222.  “La Religion amorrite,” 408. Sasson writes “In this letter, the qadištum is treated as if a nadītum” (From the Mari Archives, 265).



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31. ARMT 9 291 (qaššatu) List of women with identifications as “wife of PN,” “widow,” or qaššatum.223 The noun qaššatum224 occurs eighteen times in a list containing the names of more than 200 women.225 Each name is followed by one of three class identifications: geme2 (amat)-PN (“wife226 of MN”: 144 of 183 names where the identity can be determined), almattum (“widow”: 25), and qaššatum (18). The questions posed by this text include not only the meaning of qaššatum, which is now confirmed from other similar lists,227 but also the purpose of the list, which appeared to be unique in character. Maurice Birot, the editor, argued that qaššatum should be understood as a by-form of qadištu, based on an original *qašdatu with assimilation of dš to šš. Such assimilation, he noted, is well attested in eššum < edšum (“new”) and šeššum < šedšum (“sixth”);228 and qa-áš-[datu] occurs in an Akkadian vocabulary as equivalent to nu-gig.229 Further support for the proposal was provided by comparison with Old Assyrian kaššum = qaššum < *qadšum (“holy”).230 The identification seems now to be generally accepted.231 Batto questioned the identification on philological and sociological grounds. He found “the existence of an otherwise unattested dialectal variant in simultaneous usage in one and the same locale with the universal and normal qadištum . . . most unlikely.” And, assuming that these women must have shared a common status with the two other classes of women in the list, the majority of which were understood as slave women at the time, he found it “in no way apparent how these [qaššatu] women can be considered priestesses.”232 The revised view of the “slave 223.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P341872. Transliteration and translation: Maurice Birot, “Un recensement de femmes au royaume de Mari,” Syria 35 (1958) 9–26 (with commentary); idem, Textes administratifs de la salle 5 du palais, transcrits, traduits, et commentés (ARMT 9; Paris: Geuthner, 1960) 228–37, 344 (no. 291). 224.  qa-aš-ša-tum; twice qa-aš-ša-at (I 21; IV 20′). 225.  Not all of the names and identifications can be read, so the numbers pertain only to those that can be recovered. 226.  Citing this text, Ignace Gelb concludes that “the word geme2 = amtum or amtum apparently has the meaning ‘wife’ … and not ‘servant-woman’.” Further, he notes, “whenever the term geme2, like the corresponding guruš [‘man’ (vir)], occurs in ration lists and parallel lists of the personnel of large palace and temple households, it does not represent the slave-class” (“The Ancient Mesopotamian Ration System,” JNES 24 [1965] 239). 227.  See ARM 23 236, below. 228.  Birot, “Recensement,” 20 n. 6. 229.  MSL IV p. 17, line 78 (treated below); cf. nam-nu-gig = qa-aš-du-tu (Birot, “Recensement,” 20–21 n. 6). 230.  Hans Hirsch, Review of Archives royales de Mari, IX: Textes administratifs de la sale 5, by Maurice Birot, ZA N.F. 22 (1964) 284 (cited by Batto, Studies, 113 n. 6). 231.  It was endorsed by Goetze, Renger, and von Soden (after initial rejection), and adopted by CAD (Q 146, with the translation: “a consecrated woman,” and the note: “apparently … a Mari byform to qadištu”). Cf. CAD Q 48, s.v. qadištu, which avoids the language of consecration in its definition of “a woman of special status.” 232. Batto, Studies, 111.

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women” as wives relieves the problem of status inconsistency, but the problem of inappropriate assumptions based on the “priestess” label remains for some interpreters. A woman who lived on her own, but might marry (under circumstances and conditions that are still not clear, but seem to carry second-class status), and who earned a living by wet-nursing, does not fit the image of “priestess” conveyed by most uses of this term today. Nor does the man’s napṭartu in ARMT 10 59. So the problem of dissonance with traditional views of “priestesses” pertains to qadištus as much as qaššatus. Harris rejected the “priestess” nomenclature for the Old Babylonian nadītus as carrying inappropriate notions of cultic office and ritual performance, and I have avoided it for the same reason.233 While we know nothing about the qadištu’s cultic roles or responsibilities from the documents examined thus far, we do know that dedication as a qadištu placed her in a category apart from the ordinary married woman, whose status and livelihood depended on her relationship to her husband. Thus the Mari dialectal form of the name, qaššatu, is found in a list that recognizes three distinct socio-legal categories of free women: wife, widow, and qaššatu.234 But what is the purpose of this list? And why do qaššatus form such a sizable group within it? Birot’s discussion of the nature of the list was based on the common understanding at the time that amat-PN signified “female slave of PN,” rather than “wife of PN,” as Gelb later recognized.235 Birot noted that this list was unparalleled in kind, distinct from ration lists and lists of palace or temple personnel, the only other types of lists comprised of, or containing, women’s names. It most resembles a census list, he argued, but those are exclusively male, designed for military or revenue purposes. Like a census list, it pertains to a particular territory (the district of Terqa), and the names are tallied by localities (e.g., “18 women of Zarri-Rabbiyum,” I 19). Noting that the names are not grouped by class or occupation, Birot asked why the redactor united precisely these three “very different” elements of the female population to the exclusion of all others.236 A general census of the population would normally list individuals by families, he argued, suggesting that this list might have served to complete the census by enumerating the isolated women,237 or it might represent recognition of the 233.  Cf. Cécile Michel, “Les filles consacrées des marchands assyriens” (Topoi Suppléments 2009 ) 148, who prefers the designation “femmes consacrées.” 234.  Westenholz (252) recognized a distinction in the list between women under the control and authority of a man (the amtu women, with one exception) and the widow and the qaššatu, who were apparently under their own control and authority. 235.  See n. 226 above. CAD A 80–85: amtu does not recognize any meaning other than “slave girl,” including in Mari (a 4′, p. 82). 236.  Birot, “Recensement,” 24. 237.  Though slaves (as he assumed) attached to men, as here, are hardly “isolated women.” A question that should have been asked is why all of these female slaves belonged only to male owners.



New Sources from the Ancient Near East 257

economically precarious situation of these classes of women and constitute a list of persons enjoying certain fiscal exemptions.238 While the purpose of the list may remain obscure, its importance for understanding the place of the qadištu / qaššatu in ancient Mesopotamia is its witness to the existence of this class at Mari as a significant social class, of considerable size and recognized in administrative documents. The number of women with the qaššatu designation should not deter identification with the qadištus previously identified. The other attestations come primarily from contracts or documents pertaining to particular individuals, and are therefore only chance samples of the population. And from Sippar at least we have evidence of multiple qadištus, including some at the same time. Here, the nature of the document as a census (?) covering a wide area, by municipalities, makes it reasonable to believe that there might have been at least several qaššatus in a single locality. As for the philological argument against the occurrence of two forms of the same term in use at the same time and place, Mari, with its mixed Amorite and Akkadian population, is certainly the most likely place to exhibit such dialectal variation. The case for ethnic and dialectal differentiation is strengthened by a closer examination of the names and locations represented in this list. First, it covers the district of Terqa, which lies upriver from Mari, a region of strong West Semitic influence. Birot’s analysis of the names of the men in the list (which he identified as owners of the “slave-women”) yielded only 15 authentic Akkadian names of a total of around 120.239 From this striking statistic he concluded that the overwhelming preponderance of West Semitic names demonstrated that the dominant social class was recruited primarily from West Semites, some of whom belonged to nomadic groups that were more or less recently “stabilized.”240 The names of the women, however, showed a different distribution, with approximately half of uncertain origin and the rest dividing almost exactly between Akkadian and west-Semitic. A further distinction was apparent among the three classes: while the wives and widows were divided evenly, the usable qaššatum names counted four Akkadian and eight West Semitic. If the qaššatum names are preponderantly West Semitic, should we not conclude that the term itself represents the dialectal usage of this region and population? The usage of the capital and the temple of its chief goddess might be assumed to conform to the standard Babylonian Akkadian usage, even if the 238.  Birot, “Recensement,” 25–26. The relatively marginal economic status of the qadištu, as well as the fact that they were not cloistered like the nadītu or ugbabtu, would also explain why no other classes of women dedicated to a deity are included in this list (an ugbabtu of Dagan in Terqa is known, and possibly three nadītus, of whom the best known is the daughter of Zimri-Lim, who was in the cloister in Sippar, not in the kingdom of Mari). 239.  Ibid., 22. 240.  Ibid., 23.

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qadištu herself was of West-Semitic origin, as the Sim’alite qadištu of Annunitum. Whether the institution/practice represented by the qaššatus of this list was essentially the same as that of the capital and/or the temple of Annunitum is impossible to determine. Were these qaššatu women of the western frontier also dedicated to Annunitum, or were they dedicated to (H/)Adad, or to some other deity? And do they represent an institution diffused from Babylon with whatever ties it may have had with the earlier Sumerian nu-gig, or a western version of a more generic institution of women dedicated to a deity that may have taken on different character in different areas (and times)? This is a question that cannot be answered at this point, if at all, but we now have further lists of women, identified by the same three categories—with the purpose stated explicitly. 32. ARM 23 236 (qaššatum) List of women identified as “wife of PN,” “widow,” or qaššatum.241 This is another list of women from the district of Terqa, identified in the same way as the previous list and comprising 61 names grouped by towns.242 Most of the names are followed by geme2 (amat)-MN, but four are tagged with almatu and four with qaššatu.243 The names of the four qaššatus are Maliktum (21) and Ali-ummi (22), from Ḫišamta, and Ḫamadu (52) and Basuma (62) from Ḫanna. None of the women have patronyms. The purpose of the list is described in the summary as a list of “women who have taken an oath by a god to Guru-ilim” (munus.meš ša nīš ilim ina guru-ilim izkurā [66–67]). Why is this oath-taking recorded for women only? Who imposed it? For what purpose was it instituted and recorded? Francis Joannès indicates that this text should be compared with that published by Birot (ARMT 9 291, treated above), arguing that they have the same structure—and the same purpose, namely to register the taking of oaths, either to Guru-ilim or “dans l’adaššum.”244 He also notes that there are many more parallel texts that remain unedited. The questions remain: Why women only, and why these women? Whatever the purpose and Sitz-im-Leben of these lists, they present a picture of qadištus/qaššatus scattered throughout the region and comprising as large a 241.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P353024. Bardet et al., Archives administratives de Mari I, 211–13 (no. 236). Sasson mentions this text, which he describes as “one of many documents of oath-taking imposed on diverse segments of the Mari population (From the Mari Archives, 265 n. 91). He also states: “In Mari, there are lists of qadištums in which they are linked to husbands, less often fathers or brothers” (ibid.), but without any examples or references. 242.  The towns are Zururban, Ḫišamta, Ḫimmaran, and Ḫanna, with 13–18 names from each. 243.  And one is identified as aḫat (“sister of ”)-PN. 244.  Bardet et al., Archives administratives de Mari I, 213 n. a. In the Mari texts, adaššu refers to the outer or lower city (Stol in Charpin et al., Mesopotamien: Die altbabylonische Zeit [OBO 160/4; Fribourg: Academic Press, 2004] 668).



New Sources from the Ancient Near East 259

portion of the adult female population as widows (at least as sampled by these texts). These lists also seem to place them under the same rules and obligations as the other women in the lists. The limitation of the classificatory categories to these three (with the one exception of a “sister”) is also noteworthy and may relate to the purpose of these texts—which remains at present unknown. Old Assyrian Texts To complete the picture of the range of distribution and uses of qadištu in its earliest attestations we must consider the evidence from the Old Assyrian (OA) texts, where it appears in the by-form. It is limited to two occurrences, both written syllabically and both involving marriage. Both come from the archives of the Assyrian merchant colony at Kanesh (present-day Kültepe) in Anatolia, the primary source of Old Assyrian texts, but one locates the qadištu in Aššur, the Assyrian capital on the upper Tigris. The Kanesh archive covers a period of three generations ending with the decline of the colony shortly after the beginning of the second millennium BCE. Thus these references represent our oldest evidence for Akkadian qadištu, and its widest geographical distribution.245 33. ICK 1 3:6 Marriage contract of the Assyrian trader La-qepum to a local (non-Assyrian) woman Ḫatala.246 The reference to a qadištu in this contract appears in stipulations concerning the type of secondary marriage that La-qepum may make. A common practice of Assyrian traders in Anatolia, where they often remained for years, was taking a secondary wife (identified as an amtu but having the status of a free woman and “full” wife in Anatolia) while having a primary wife (aššatum) “back home” in Assyria.247 But in later generations of Assyrian merchant families an Anatolian wife might be the primary wife. The state of this tablet at the end of line 4 makes the stipulations concerning a secondary marriage in Anatolia uncertain, but the 245.  Edzard, “The Old Babylonian Period,” in The Near East: The Early Civilizations (ed. Jean Bottéro, Elena Cassin, Jean Vercoutter; trans. R. F. Tannenbaum; Delcorte World History; New York: Delcorte, 1967), 194–98. 246.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P359402. Kanesh. Transliteration and translation: Bedric Hrozný, “Über eine unveöffentlichte Urkunde vom Kültepe (ca. 2000 v. Chr.),” in Symbolae ad jura Orientis antiqui pertinentes Paulo Koschaker dedicatae (ed. Theunis Folkers et al.; SDJOAP 2; Leiden: Brill, 1939) 108–11; translation and discussion: Julius Lewy, “On Some Institutions of the Old Assyrian Empire,” HUCA 27 (1956) 8–10; translation: ANET, 543. 247.  On mixed marriages of Assyrians and Anatolians, see Cécile Michel, “Les Assyriens et leurs Femmes Anatoliennes,” in Anatolia and the Jazira during the Old Assyrian Period (ed. J. G. Dercksen; Old Assyrian Archives Studies 3; Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2008) 209–29, and Mogens Trolle Larsen, Ancient Kanesh: A Merchant Colony in Bronze Age Anatolia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) 249–52.

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allowance of a qadištu wife in Assur (the Assyrian capital) is clear. The opening lines read as follows: (1–3a) La-qepum has married Ḫatala, the daughter of Enišru. (3b–5) La-qepum in (this) country (i.e. Anatolia) may not marry another amtum (i.e.  another Anatolian wife) (ina mātim amtam[?] šanītam la eḫḫaz).248 (6–7a) In the city (i.e. Assur), he may marry a qadištu (ina ālim qadištam eḫḫaz). It seems clear that the text considers Ḫatala to be the primary wife, with the status of a full wife.249 The stipulations that follow the allowance of a secondary wife in the distant capital concern the eventuality of Ḫatala failing to provide La-qepum with offspring within 2 years, permitting her to buy a maidservant to achieve that end. Here we see a qadištu considered as a possible choice for a wife away from home, in circumstances where sexual companionship is the apparent aim of the alliance, rather than heirs. The parallelism of the clauses ina mātim šanītam [ . . . ] la eḫḫaz (4–5) // ina ālim qadištam eḫḫaz (6–7) makes it clear that what is envisioned is marriage to a consort of a special (restricted) class.250 34. BIN 6 222:9 Final will of Amur-Ištar, apparently bequeathing his possessions to his qadištu wife, Lamassi.251 248.  Lewy (“On Some Institutions,” 9) took the end of line 4 as either an erasure: (4) i-na ma-tim {3 erased signs} (5) ša-ni-tám la e-ḫa-az (“In [this] country, he shall not take another”) or as dam (= aššutum [= Babylonian aššatum, with Assyrian vowel harmony]) plus an erasure: (4) i-na ma-tim ⸢dam⸣ {2 erased signs} (5) ša-ni-tám la e-ḫa-az (“In [this] country, he shall not take another wife”). Karl Hecker (“tibʾimma atalkim: Assyrerinnen im kārumzeitlichen Anatolien,” Or 47 [1978] 409 n. 35) acknowledges both possibilities and suggests a third: to read geme2 (= amtum) in the place of the erasure. This is apparently based on the well-attested, specialized meaning of the term amtum at Kanesh to refer to the Anatolian wife or secondary wife of an Assyrian merchant (Larsen, Ancient Kanesh, 250–52; but cf. Michel, “Les Assyriens,” 214–15). I have adopted Hecker’s reading. 249.  Lewy (“On Some Institutions,” 9 n. 39) notes that the social standing of her father (a wellknown non-Assyrian money-lender) would certainly guarantee her the status of a full wife. See idem, “Ḫatta, Ḫattu, Ḫatti, Ḫattuša and ‘Old Assyrian’ Ḫattum,” in Symbolae ad Studia Orientis Pertinentes Frederico Hrozný dedicatae (ed. Vaclav Čihař; ArOr18/3 [1950]) 421. 250.  It does not grant permission to visit an Ishtar temple whenever La-qepum was in Assur on business, as Hrozný suggested (“Über eine unveröffentlichte Urkunde,” 110). Michel (“Les Assyriens et leurs femmes anatoliennes,” 213 n. 20) appears to believe that qadištu in this text can only be a secondary wife. See her conjecture in “Les filles consacrées,” 150 (on this text): “la qadištum, prise pour épouse à Aššur, peut n’être qu’une épouse de statut secondaire.” 251.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P297419. Kaneš. Transliteration and discussion: Wolfram von Soden, “Ein altassyrisches Testament,” WO 8 (1976), 216–17; partial transliteration and translation: Hans Hirsch, Untersuchungen zur altassyrischen Religion (AfOB 13/14; Graz: Hirsch, 1961) 58.



New Sources from the Ancient Near East 261

The most that is certain concerning the qadištu in this broken text is her name Lamassi and, if the restoration is correct, her designation as the wife of Amur-Ištar. The obverse reads as follows: (1–6) Amur-Ištar šīmti bētišu ša Kaniš išīmma . . . u amātim . . . mala īšû (7) [unclear]252 (8–9) ša Lamassi ašši[tišu] qadištim Amur-Ištar has drawn up a will concerning his house in Kaneš, . . . and female slaves . . . and all [unceratin] . . . of his of Lamassi, [his wi]fe (ašši[tišu]), the qadištu. Since so little context is preserved, generalizations are hazardous. The reference to Amur-Ištar’s “house in Kaneš” (line 2) would appear to locate all of the property and personnel mentioned here. But “Lamassi, his wife, the qadištu” (8–9) is separated from the opening lines, so one may ask whether Lamassi is also in Kaneš, since the hypothetical qadištu wife of the preceding text is in Assur. The identification of Lamassi as Amur-Ištar’s aššatu (assuming the reconstruction is correct) rather than amtu suggests that she is the primary wife (or does this simply distinguish an Assyrian wife from an Anatolian wife?). If Lamassi is Amur-Ištar’s wife in Kaneš, this would be the first reference to a qadištu in Anatolia.253 Whether she had any cultic connections or responsibilities there is unknown; it seems more likely that her role as wife has superseded her cultic role, but her status as a qadištu remains significant as a distinct social category. Summary of Evidence from the Earliest Period From Cappadocia to the eastern banks of the Tigris during the first third of the second millennium BCE, a class of women identified by the Akkadian term qadištu (“consecrated”), though most frequently written with the Sumerogram nu.gig, is recognized in administrative records, laws, contracts, letters, and other legal documents, as well as in an Old Babylonian literary text. From these scattered and diverse records a number of common features emerge, but the attributes revealed or highlighted differ markedly according to the nature of the document, and/ or the author’s interests. Most of the texts deal with economic and legal matters (such as inheritance, adoption, transfer of property, maintenance, and payment for services) and contain no references to a deity or recognizable cultic activity; and even the texts that identify a qadištu with a deity (Adad, Anu, Šala, and Annunitum) are silent on their religious service. The one activity with which the qadištu 252.  Text according to von Soden’s transliteration and Foster’s collations: ú-ši-nu-ma-an ú-za⸢zu?⸣ (or -⸢x⸣). Von Soden takes Ušinuman as a personal name. 253.  Lewy (“On Some Institutions,” 9 n. 40) cites this text as referring to “a married qadištum who lived at Kaniš.”

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is explicitly associated is wet-nursing, while the Atraḫasis epic identifies a qadištu with the birth process. Textual evidence for the qadištu is rare after the Old Babylonian period in records from daily life, with only a single, anomalous Middle Babylonian occurrence cited by CAD. Middle Assyrian records suggest that qadištus continued to have a significant place in the society and provide new information on their status and ritual activities. Whether the sparse record of the qadištu in the post-OB period reflects the accidents of archaeology or of history is impossible to determine. Unlike the nadītu, who was closely identified with the Old Babylonian royal house and cult, the qadištu did not disappear completely in the succeeding period, but the institution does seem to be considerably more limited. Middle Babylonian Texts 35. PBS 2/2 122:22 List of male names with one identified as “son of qadiltu.”254 The single example of qadištu from the MB period identified by CAD (Q 49) occurs, in the MB spelling qadiltu255 in a list of names from the temple archives of Nippur dating to the period of Kassite rule. Line 22, the next-to-the-last preserved line of text, reads as follows: mu-lib-ši dumu munusqá-di-il-ti Šumu-libši, son of Qadiltu/the qadištu lu₂

While CAD capitalizes as a personal name, the fact that it is clearly inflected as a genitive (qadilti) speaks against treating it as a name.256 Yet whether it is viewed as a professional noun or a matronym, it stands out as a female name in this list of male names and patronyms, calling attention to a man who is identified by his mother.257 If this is indeed a reference to a qadiš/ltu woman, it suggests that 254.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P259903. Nippur. Date unknown. Hand copy only: Albert T. Clay, Documents from the Temple Archives of Nippur Dated in the Reigns of Cassite Rulers (PBS 2/2; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1912) pl. 59. 255.  The spelling with l represents an MB shift of š to l before dentals (GAG §190 a). 256.  On the practice of using a profession-name as a patronym and/or personal name in the MB period, see J. A. Brinkman, “The Use of Occupation Names as Patronyms in the Kassite Period: A Forerunner of Neo-Babylonian Ancestral Names?” in If a Man Builds a Joyful House: Assyriological Studies in Honor of Erle Verdun Leichty (ed. Ann K. Guinan et al.; Cuneiform Monographs 31; Leiden: Brill, 2006) 23–43. Brinkman observes that the only example of a female name in his dataset is qadištu/ qadiltu, citing this text as evidence, as well as UM 29-15-765:5 (= MUN 373) and possibly MUN 348:5 (25, 29). He also notes that Qadiltu occurs as a personal name in the MA period, citing Saporetti, Onomastica 1, 373 (p. 29). 257.  Cf. Judg 11:1, where Jephthah is introduced as the “son of a prostitute woman” (‫ן־אּׁשָ ה‬ ִ ֶ‫ּב‬ ‫)זֹונָה‬. But his father is named. In this text, being identified by one’s mother (alone) implies that the father is unknown.



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qadištus continued to find a place in the society of the Kassite period—but in what role or function is unknown. Middle Assyrian Texts 36. AfO 17 268:11 “Palace Edict” mentioning a midwife and a qadiltu.258 This reference occurs in the damaged and fragmentary text of the first of 23 decrees known as the Middle Assyrian Palace Decrees (aka “Harem Edicts”). These decrees, issued by nine Assyrian kings over a period of almost three centuries (1363 to 1076 BCE), contained “regulations dealing with the internal activities and behavior of the palace personnel, and in particular of the palace women (the “harem”) and those male officials who interact with them.”259 This edict is clearly concerned with setting boundaries around a section of the palace and restricting passage in and out,260 but it is poorly preserved, with only a quarter of each line legible, frustrating attempts to determine the context and connections of the paired terms that constitute all that remains of line 11: sabsūtu261 u qadiltu: “midwife262 and qadiltu.” No other persons or classes of the women’s quarter are named, and the preceding lines (8–10) are concerned with the roof. Thus the context provides no clues as to why these two classes are singled out. The final three lines of the edict read as follows: (10) [ . . . ] according to the building plans (11) [ . . . ] the midwife and the qadiltu-woman (munussa-ab-su-tu ù munus qa-di-il-tu) (12) [ . . . ] shall not go in and out. Without the first three-quarters of line 11, the sabsutu u qadiltu pair appear to be singled out and may represent particular attention to personnel associated with birthing and childcare. But they may also represent the final pair in a listing of all classes of palace women, from highest rank to lowest, missing in the rest of the 258.  Reign of Aššur-uballiṭ I (1363–1328) in compilation of ca. 1076. Transliteration and translation: Ernst Weidner, “Hof- und Harems-Erlasse assyrischer Könige,” AfO 17 (1956) 269–70 (§1); Roth, Law Collections, 196–97. 259.  Ibid., 195. See also Piotr Bienkowski, “Harem,” in Dictionary of the Ancient Near East (ed. P. Bienkowski and Alan Millar; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000) 139–40, and Dalley, Mari and Karana, 99–101. 260.  Weidner (“Hof- und Harems-Erlasse,” 270) suggested that the restrictions concerning access were related to repairs of a section of the palace, but that is not clear and is not needed to explain the restrictions, which are the primary concern of the decrees as a whole. 261.  MA and NA form of šabsūtu. 262.  Wolfram von Soden, “Die Hebamme in Babylonien und Assyrien,” AfO 18 (1957–58) 119–20, correcting Weidner’s translation of “Sackwirkerin.”

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line.263 But whether singled out for special attention or part of a larger roster of palace women, they appear to belong to the queen’s household. This association with the women’s quarters recalls the Old Babylonian ration list VAS 7 186 from a large private household, where a qadištu appeared among personnel associated with the “bride of the house.” The qadiltu’s association here with the midwife recalls the same pairing in the Old Babylonian version of Atraḫasis (CT 6 5 IV 20).264 It also recalls the identification of qadištus with wet-nursing in multiple Old Babylonian texts. 37. KAV 1 v 61 (= MAL §40 v 61) Middle Assyrian Laws (MAL).265 The series of tablets known collectively as the Middle Assyrian Laws (MAL) includes one tablet (MAL A) whose 59 provisions deal almost exclusively with women, in a wide variety of situations.266 The appearance of qadiltu (the standard MA spelling of qadištu) in paragraph 40 of this tablet testifies to the existence of this class in fourteenth-century Assyria,267 and also to the recognition of both married and unmarried qadiltus, presented in ranked relationship to other classes of women. The paragraph concerns the rules of veiling or head covering for women when they appear in public,268 regulated according to class and marital status. Thus it serves to give a kind of overview of the various classes of women recognized in Assyrian society of the time, at least with regard to public appearance. It begins as follows:269 Wives of a man (aššāt aʾīle), or [widows], or any [Assyrian] women (sinnišātu) who go out into the main thoroughfare [shall not have] their heads [bare]. Daughters of a man (mārāt aʾīle)270 [ . . . with] either a . . . -cloth 263.  Unfortunately, the references to palace women in the successive edicts use only general terms to designate them, such as “woman/women of the palace” (sinnišāt ekalle/sinniltu ša ekalle), apart from “king’s wife/wives” (aššāt šarre), “king’s mother” (ummi šarre), and “slave woman” of a palace woman. 264.  Treated below, pp. 283–84. 265.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P281779. Assur, ca. 1076. Most recent edition (transliteration and translation): Roth, Law Collections, 167–69. 266.  Ibid., 153. 267.  While the extant tablets, excavated in the capital Assur, were written during the eleventh or twelfth century BCE, they are copies of fourteenth-century originals (ibid., 154)—which appear to refer to contemporary practice, but may preserve earlier traditions. 268.  ina ribēte (lines 44, 56, 59, 62, 64) “in the street/thoroughfare,” in the sense of “public place” (CAD R 318). The law is only concerned with the public sphere, the sphere of male control. 269.  Translation and transliteration cited from Roth, Law Collections, 167–69. 270.  Cf. G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, The Assyrian Laws, Edited with Translation and Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1935) 407, 479; 15–17, which translates “ladies by birth” (i.e. females born into the aʾīlum class), arguing that mārāt aʾīle does not necessarily refer to an unmarried woman. aʾīlu (Babylonian awīlu) is the free man, not any male. Cf. Roth, Law Collections, 154.



New Sources from the Ancient Near East 265

or garments or [ . . . ] shall be veiled, [ . . . ] their heads [ . . . (gap of ca. 6 lines) . . . ] When they go about [ . . . ] in the main thoroughfare during the daytime, they shall be veiled. A concubine (esirtu271) who goes about in the main thoroughfare with her mistress is to be veiled. A married qadiltu-woman (qadiltu ša mutu aḫzušini)272 is to be veiled (when she goes about) in the main thoroughfare, but an unmarried one (ša mutu la aḫzušini)273 is to leave her head bare in the main thoroughfare, she shall not veil herself. (lines 42–67) The paragraph continues with attention to prostitutes and slave women, now specifying punishment for noncompliant women, but also for men (specifically aʾīlu) who see an offending woman, but do not bring her to the authorities for punishment: A prostitute (ḫarīmtu) shall not be veiled, her head shall be bare. (68) Whoever sees a veiled prostitute shall seize her, secure witnesses, and bring her to the palace entrance. They shall not take away her jewelry, but he who has seized her takes her clothing; they shall strike her 50 blows . . . . (70) And if a man should see a veiled prostitute and release her, they shall strike that man 50 blows . . . . (88) Slave women (amātu) shall not be veiled, and he who sees a veiled slave woman shall seize her and bring her to the palace entrance; they shall cut off her ears . . . . This passage shows clearly that the qadiltu was not considered a prostitute or reckoned to the same social stratum. It also shows that, when married, she fell within a broader category of women whose public appearance required a head-covering. Of interest in the construction of this law is the use of dual criteria in determining who must be veiled.274 The law begins with the criterion of social status (and nationality?): women of the aʾīlum class, including unmarried daughters275 as well 271.  Lit. a “bound woman.” Driver and Miles (Assyrian Laws, 127–28) believe the term described a war captive, yet not just any war captive designated to become a slave, but a captive taken by a man as a secondary/inferior wife, i.e. a concubine. Cf. Guillaume Cardascia, Les lois assyriennes: Introduction, traduction, commentaire (Littératures anciennes du Proche-Orient 2; Paris: Cerf, 1969) 204. 272.  Lit. “qadiltu whom a husband has taken.” 273.  Lit. “whom a husband has not taken.” 274.  Also of interest is the apodictic form of this paragraph, constructed as a command rather than a set of conditions (“if …, then …”), which is the almost universal form of this tablet and all but Tablet F of this collection. See Driver and Miles, Assyrian Laws, 126–27, who suggest that this paragraph has been added to an existing collection, introduced at this point to prepare the way for §41 (marriage of an esirtu by veiling) by establishing that veiling was the mark of a married woman (ibid., 127). 275.  See n. 270 above.

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as wives, and other “Assyrian women.”276 The “concubine,” who may well be a foreigner, is included by virtue of marriage, presumably to a man of the aʾīlum class.277 Marriage also brings the qadiltu into the class of those who must cover their heads. In this case, however, it is not the status of an aʾīlum husband that determines public dress, but simply a recognized marriage. The language shifts from “wife of a man” to “a qadiltu whom a husband (mutu) has taken [in marriage] (aḫzušini qašdātu [GAG §36b] > qaldātu [GAG §30g]), although CAD normalizes qašdātu/qašdāte. I retain the Sumerogram in the Akkadian transcriptions and employ qadištus in the translation—as an English plural of an unvariable foreign word, since no phonetic rendering is provided in this text. 283.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P282614. Assur; no earlier than late twelfth century. Transliteration, translation, and discussion: Brigitte Menzel, Assyrische Tempel (2 vols.; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1981; hereafter “Menzel”). Gruber (139–41) highlights this text, quoting extensive segments, with his own English translation, transliteration, and suggested emendations. Further treatment (selected): Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Religion and Ideology in Assyria (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 6; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015; hereafter “Pongratz-Leisten”) 382–84 (complete translation and discussion).

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The most extensive description and revealing portrait of qadištus engaged in any activity is a prescription for a ritual procession from the Adad temple of Assur “on the day . . . when they lead forth the qadištus (nu.gig.meš: qaldāte).”284 It is a prescription for ritual actions, not a description of an observed event, and describes the procession of the god Adad from his temple to the temple of Aššur and return making a circuit of the citadel.285 The extant text contains only the beginning and end of the document, but within this remnant are no fewer than twelve references to qadištus, all plural and all in the form nu.gig.meš.286 The text is cited below in its entirety, omitting only some lists of offerings.287 (1) On the day when they . . . (i-ša-tu-qu-ni)288 Adad, (and) they lead forth the qadištus (nu.gig.meš ušeṣṣûni),289 (2) They prepare [ ] ½ qû bread, 7 bowls, 1 qû aromatic plants (riqqa), (and) 2 sūtu beer in the bīt šalīme290 (3) Fom there 3 qû of bread (and) 7 bowls (with beer)291 before the temple of Adad (and) 1 qû of bread (and) 1 bowl (with beer).292 (4) The qadištus recite the inḫu-chant293 before (the statue of) Adad; they finish294 the inḫu-chant (nu.gig.meš i[nḫ]a ana pāni Adad inaddiā inḫa ipaššarā). 284.  Or “let the qadištus come out” (Pongratz-Leisten with CAD Q 49). This temple is generally dated to the efforts of Tiglath-pileser I (1112–1074), who (re)built it as part of a double Anu-Adad temple, with twin ziggurats and twin sanctuaries set side by side (Gwendolyn Leick, A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Architecture [London: Routledge, 1988], 22). It was founded in the Old Assyrian period as a temple to Adad. 285.  Pongratz-Leisten, 282 286.  The tablet is broken off at the lower edge, with only approximately one third of the original text preserved, according to Menzel (1:67). Since the text describes a procession, with repeated actions of the šangû priest and qadištus at various points along the way, the lost portion likely duplicated key elements of the preserved sections. Most of the qadištu references are in a recurring fixed formula. 287.  The translation is based on Menzel and Pongratz-Leisten. 288.  Meaning uncertain; see Menzel 2:T 3–4; Gruber (139) and CAD Š/1 194 leave untranslated. 289.  Pongratz-Leisten with CAD Q 49: “they let the qadištu-women come out.” 290.  Menzel (2:T 4) suggests this may be a part of the Adad temple, pointing to ša-li-mu in r-6′. 291.  Pongratz-Leisten, 383, as interpretive addition. 292.  There is no verb in line 3, so one must understand the offerings specified there as still governed by the verb in line 2. 293. With CAD I/J 148, Q 49; Gruber (139): “intone the chant”; Menzel (2:T 3): “stimmen … den inḫu(-Gesang) an.” Gruber (139 n. 22) notes that the expression inḫa nadû is attested only in this text, but nadû is widely attested in the sense of “intone, utter, sing, recite.” 294.  Pongratz-Leisten, 383, with CAD Q 49 (“the qadištu-women recite [?] the inḫu-song [?], they finish [?] the inḫu-song”, citing lines 4–5 and 7–8 as further examples). Gruber (139 n. 24) follows CAD I/J 148 (s.v. inḫu) in translating pašāru, “prolong,” recognizing it as a conjecture; elsewhere the verb means “interpret.”



New Sources from the Ancient Near East 269

(5) The šangû-priest295 performs the purification.296 The qadištus praise297 the god (šangû ša [tēlil]te ullal nu.gig.meš ila ullâ). (6) The šangû-priest and the qadištus go forth from the temple of Adad (sanga nu.[gig.meš i]š-tu e2 diškur ú-ṣu-né), (6) The šangû-priest and the qadištus go forth from the temple of Adad (šangû nu.[gig.meš i]štu bēt Adad uṣṣûne), (7) they go to the g[ate of the storehou]se of Ninurta, which belongs to the temple of Assur, (and) the šangû-priest takes a seat. The qadištus (8) recite the inḫu-chant, the qadištus finish the inḫu-chant. The šangû-priest performs the purification. (9) The qadištus extol the god. He298 goes out (uṣṣâ) through the Assur-Gate and goes (illak) to the Sammuḫ-Gate. The qadištus recite the inḫu-chant; (10) they finsh the inḫu-chant. The šangû-priest performs the purification. The qadištus praise the god. He offers 1 qû bread, (11) 1 bowl, 1 qû beer by spilling six times from the bowl [ ], (12) (and) he pours from the libation bowl.299 He invokes the name of Ea-šarru and of divine Tigris (didigna/Idiglat), ditto Šamaš.300

295.  “Purification priest.” 296.  Menzel: “reinigt mit dem Reinigungsgerät.” Cf. CAD T 329 s.v. tēlitu: “the šangû-priest cleanses the (censer) of purification.” 297.  Pongratz-Leisten, 383, with Menzel (2:T 3), who cites AHw 208 D4: ullâ with the sense of “raise the voice” or “lift praise.” Gruber (139): “elevate the [statue of the] god,” with CAD Q 49: “lift up the god,” understanding the verb to describe a literal elevation of the statue that is carried in procession. Despite her figurative translation, Menzel (262) describes the task of the qadištus in the procession as carrying the image of the god (though at this point they have not left the temple). This seems an unlikely task for women, unless the statue was very small. No reference is made in the text to transporting the god, so it is unclear who performed that service, but one clear example of gods being transported (ANEP 538, from the campaigns of Tiglath-pileser III) shows four muscular soldiers bearing each statue. And illustrations of modern and medieval religious processions typically depict men in this role. 298.  The unexpressed subject of the masc. sing. verbs is presumably the šangû-priest (so Henshaw, Female and Male, 274); or should one understand the god? In lines 6–7 the movement of the šangû-priest is described together with the qadištus using plural verbs, and also in r 6′, but in line 13 the qadištus alone are described as going (illakā) to the bīt ḫamri, although the following action is that of the šangû-priest. 299. The šangû-priest is presumably the subject of the masc. sing. verb inaqqi in line 12, as well as the following (largely reconstructed) verb. CAD M/1 123, however, takes the qadištus of line 10 as the subject, eliminating u2-la-a (clearly present in the text) and emending the verb in line 12 to read as fem. pl. This elimination of u2-la-a ignores the identical sequence of nu.gig.meš dingir u2-la-a in lines 5 and 9 and misreads dingir (generic) as a divine name (DN), creating an elsewhere unattested genitive relationship with nu.gig.meš (note that ša is used to indicate this relationship in šanga ša d im: “šangû-priest of Adad,” line 13). 300.  All three names are preceded by the determinative for a deity and represented as deities in Menzel’s translation (2:T-3).

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(13) The qadištus go to the sacred precinct of Adad (bēt ḫamri).301 The šangû-priest sits. The qadištus (14) recite the inḫu-chant. The šangû-priest performs the purification. 1 qû bread, 1 qû beer [ . . . ] (15) [ ] x sacred precinct of Adad (bēt ḫamri) [ . . . missing or illegible . . . ] [Break containing approximately two-thirds of the text] (r 1′–2′) [broken] (r 3′) 1½ qû bread, 5 qû beer, 1 thigh for the šangû-priest [ . . . the temple] (r 4′) of Aššur, ditto of Adad he provided.302 The length (arikta) of the leg [ ] (r 5′) they destroy. The leftovers (rēḫti) of the bread and beer at the Harbor Gate the šangû-priest and the qadištu[s . . . ]303 (r 6′) The šangû-priest and the qadištus return to the temple of Adad; the jewels (dumāqī) of the qadištus (r 7′) they remove (ipaṭṭurū).304 3 qû bread, 1 sūtu beer, 1 sheep, 1 qû aromatics are presented (innepp[ušū])305 before Adad. (r 8′–11′) From this sheep the breast, shoulder, hocks, 1 thigh . . . before (ana pāni) Šala; 3 ribs (and) 3 back vertebrae before Taramuya; 3 ribs (and) 3 back vertebrae before Kubu (dku-be) of the Adad temple, the left shoulder (before) Anu, the buqurru-piece before Kubu (dku-be) of the Anu temple. The entrails [are the share of] the chief singer (nargallu),306 (r 12′) the forelegs (are the share of) the alaḫḫinu-official. The qadištus consume the leftovers of the meat (rēḫti šīrī qašdātu ikkalā). (r 13′) The šangû-priest of Adad307 receives (ilaqqe) the skin, sinews, and back meat.308 [ 301.  Gruber (140 n. 26) interprets bīt ḫamri as “sacred precinct of Adad.” See now Schwemer, Wettergottgestalten, 245–48, who finds it associated with judicial proceedings. Menzel (2:T-4) simply transliterates. Here only the movement of the qadištus is mentioned (with a fem. pl. verb), in contrast to lines 6 and r 6′. But the šangû-priest is mentioned immediately following, and both are described performing their usual ritual acts. 302.  Again assuming the šangû-priest as the subject of the masc. sing. verb (e-pal: eppal). 303.  It is unclear who is the subject of the plural verb (u2-šal-pu-tu / ušalputū) that begins the line or what is lost at the end of the preceding line. Is this again a case of unspecified actors who perform the sacrifices? It seems unlikely that it was the šangû-priest and qadištus, who consume the leftovers (here of bread and beer; in r 2′ of meat). See Gruber, 140 and nn. 27, 28. 304.  Here again the subject of the plural verb is unspecified. 305.  Note that here the N-stem is used to indicate action without specifying the actors. 306.  Pongratz-Leisten, 384: “musician.” 307.  sanga ša diškur, the first occurrence of this specific identification. 308.  In the distribution of the parts of the sheep sacrifice for Adad, the “first cut,” and the largest, goes to Šala, the spouse of Adad, with further distributions to other gods associated with the Adad and Anu temples and finally temple personnel, with the qadištus and šangû receiving the leftovers. No special relationship is suggested here between the qadištus and Šala that might be analogous to the relationship between the nadītus of Šamaš and his spouse Aya described by Harris (“Nadītu Woman,”



New Sources from the Ancient Near East 271

(r 14′) before ([a]na pāni309) Adad the chief singer (narx.gal/nargallu), the qadištus, and the apprentice singers (tur.meš/ṣeḫrū) [sing] their songs (zimrīšunu [ ]).310 (r 15′–16′) [broken, with references to wood, water, and bowls] This text describes a ritual procession in honor of Adad performed by cultic personnel associated with the Adad (-Anu) temple in Assur.311 It places qadištus in the realm of the “official cult”312 and gives them a prominent place as ritual specialists alongside the šangû-priest, as the primary actors in the public celebration; in alternating acts of purification and praise, šangû and qadištus perform the prescribed actions at each station of the procession, and conclude the celebration by sharing the leftovers of bread and beer (r 5′) from the final offerings before returning to the temple. Of particular significance is the singling out of the qadištus in the first line of the text, which identifies this celebration with the “letting go out” of the qadištus. The verb (ušeṣṣûni) need not imply that qadištus were normally confined to the temple or associated quarters, but it does suggest that their usual realm of activity was within the temple complex, or otherwise apart from public view, and it highlights their distinguishing role in this particular ritual activity. The special attention given to the qadištus at the beginning of the account is matched by the attention given to them at the end with the removal of their jewels (r 6′) after re-entering the temple. This latter detail stands out in the report of activities in the temple that conclude the account, including the animal sacrifice and distribution of parts to the chief gods, temple officials, and ritual performers. It shows that the jewels were a significant feature of the qadištus’ public appearance/performance. But what is the meaning of the jewels (dumāqu)? The term dumāqu is limited to MA and NA texts, where it describes the jewels put on by the king after triumphing over his foes (K. 10209 r. 14 and 18 [NA]) and jewels of the chapel of Kar-TukultiNinurta (VAT 13759 r. iv 30 [MA inventory]), as well as a wife’s jewels (MAL §26 and §38, etc.).313 Specific associations are lacking in this context, but they certainly point to the special honor accorded the qadištus and the visual, as well as vocal, 113–14, 116–22). But we are simply in the dark about the life of the qadištus behind the closed doors of the temple compound. 309.  Reading with Gruber (140 n. 29), whose restoration and reading of the partially preserved sign at the beginning of the line appears preferable to Menzel’s restoration of [ki-m]a. 310.  Pongratz-Leisten (384), following Menzel (2:T-4): “after the chief musician, the qadištuwomen and the pupils? Have finished their songs.” Note that this is the first appearance of the root z-m-r, in contrast to the terms describing the activity of the qadištus during the procession. 311.  Schwemer (Wettergottgestalten, 580) notes that this is the only ritual text we have for this temple in this period. 312.  Menzel, 1:262. 313.  CAD D 179.

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role they play in this ritual performance. Can we infer more from their signal vocal activity identified by inḫu? CAD I/J recognizes two distinct meanings of the term, the first (A) “suffering,” and the second (B) “a tune or song.” In this second sense, it is performed by a “singer” (lú.nar) and paired with a lament performed by a “temple-singer” (WVDOG 4 12). It is also sung (anāḫu) by an assinnu in a SB ritual text (KAR 42:29), and is identified as a “hymn” to Ištar in two other texts.314 It is difficult to know what place a song of this type might have in an Adad festival, especially since we do not know the occasion of this festival.315 There is no (explicit) association with Ištar (who had a temple of her own in Assur) in this text, nor with Šala, although the first (and largest) share of the sacrifice offered to Adad at the close of the ritual goes to Šala. Despite the lack of explicit connections with the goddess Ištar, Pongratz-Leisten asserts that “the cultic actions performed for Adad only make sense through his association with her.”316 She points to a catalogue of songs (KAR 158) in which the inḫu-songs are supposed to be addressed to Ištar, the appearance of Adad and Ištar together in MA royal curse formulas, Ištar’s role as midwife for the king in the Neo-Assyrian period, and the role of nu-gig in the cult of Inanna in the Early Dynastic period.317 While these widely scattered references from diverse sources do not build a case for the qadištu as an Ištar devotee or representation, the attention given to the jewels and the association of the inḫu-song with Ištar, suggest that the qadištu’s role in the Adad cult may well be as one who plays the role of the divine consort, traditionally identified with Inanna/Ištar. But must it be Ištar? Could the qadištus also play the role of Šala? None of these questions can be answered here, but they suggest directions to be explored in examining further texts. There are other new and noteworthy features in this account. Our first evidence of qadištus engaged in cultic activity is also our first evidence of nu.gig in an Assyrian source. Is this accidental, or does nu.gig, at least in Assyrian usage, represent a specifically religious office, in contrast to syllabically written qadištu?318 Another 314.  CAD I/J 148, citing in-ḫi-ia šūnuḫūti Ištar išmēma “Ištar heard my sorrowful i.-songs (Streck Asb. 190:23); and 2 in-ḫu.meš, referring to two hymns to Ištar (KAR 158 r. iii 24 [catalog of songs]). 315.  In fact, we know very little about the cult of Adad in the MA period, as Schwemer (Wettergottgestalten, 580) emphasizes in underscoring the importance of this text as our primary source. 316.  Pongratz-Leisten, 384. 317.  Ibid. The connections adduced by Pongratz-Leisten (384) between the nu-gig/qadištu and Ištar link different genres of texts from disparate cultural contexts dating from Early Dynastic to Neo-Assyrian times. The Sumerian nu-gig is not “a central figure in the cult of Inanna,” as Pongratz-Leisten asserts, and while Inanna does bear the title nu-gig, Annette Zgoll (“Inanna als nugig,” ZA 87 [1997] 181–95), cited by Pongratz-Leisten, sharply distinguishes the divine and human titles. See Appendix C for a discussion of nu-gig as a human office and divine epithet in Sumerian texts and society. 318.  Noting the exclusive use of nu.gig in this account, Menzel (1:262) asked whether nu.gig should really be read as qadištu in all texts and all periods. See the following text (PRU 6. 93:26) for evidence of an early scribal equation of nu.gig with Semitic professional nouns based on the root



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new feature of this text is the plural that shows qadištus as a group acting together,319 and in a role not hitherto documented, as singers, or reciters, in some form of vocal performance. This appears to be the distinctive liturgical activity of the qadištus, confirmed by their inclusion with two other classes of singers in the group that offer their songs “before Adad” at the conclusion of the account. In Menzel’s (and my) reading of the text, the qadištus’ role does not include the offering of libations or sacrifices.320 It did include some form of direct action toward the god, either lifting the statue or exalting the god in some other way. However these acts are interpreted, the nu.gig/qadištus stand alongside the šangû as essential players in the public ritual. 39. PRU 6. 93:26 List of professions from Ugarit written in Sumero-Babylonian cuneiform.321 There is one other text that juxtaposes sanga and nu.gig, but it is a male nu. gig. It occurs in a list containing names of professions found in the palace archives at Ugarit (present-day Ras Shamra). Lines 26 and 27 of the 28-line text read as follows: “(26) lu2nu.gig 3 ditto (27) lu2sanga 3 ditto,” where “ditto” = “lu2/amīlu” “man” and the masculine profession-name determinative precedes each noun. A male nu.gig is otherwise unattested in Akkadian sources, and a closer look at the text shows that although it is written in Sumero-Babylonian cuneiform,322 at least some of the terms are Ugaritic. This suggests that the Sumerograms may also have been read with Ugaritic, rather than Akkadian, values.323 Thus sanga would represent Ugaritic khn, rather than šangû, and nu.gig Ugaritic qadšu, terms that are paired in alphabetic cuneiform lists. Consequently, this text is included with q-d-š. This is the only use of nu.gig in Assyrian nu.gig/qadištu texts from all periods, but the sample is small and diverse, and this is this is the only liturgical text, so the orthography may simply reflect religious tradition. But it does highlight continuity with an older Sumerian institution. 319.  We do not know how many qadištus were represented by this plural, but it could be only two (the qadištu of the Adad temple and the qadištu of the Anu temple) if the pattern exhibited by the Sumerian, and OB, ration lists pertains here, since they typically contained only one nu-gig/qadištu per administrative unit. This suggestion is strengthened by the fact that separate offerings were made to the Kubu of the Adad temple and the Kubu of the Anu temple. 320.  It is not entirely clear who presented the offerings that are enumerated at various points in the procession, since they are often reported with verbs that lack explicit subjects, or with no verbs at all. 321.  Ugarit; fourteenth–thirteenth centuries BCE. Autograph, transliteration, and translation: Jean Nougayrol, Le palais royal d’Ugarit, vol. 6: Textes en cunéiforms babyloniens des archives du grand palais et du palais sud d’Ugarit (= PRU 6) (Mission de Ras Shamra 12; Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1970) 85–87 (no. 93 [= RS 17.131]). See Préface by Claude F.-A. Schaeffer, xiii. 322.  Also referred to as “syllabic cuneiform” to distinguish it from the alphabetic cuneiform normally used for texts in the Ugaritic language. 323.  Nougayrol (ibid., 85 n. 2) notes the mixed languages of the writing and the difficulty of determining whether an ideogram should be read with an Akkadian or Ugaritic value. In this case, he transliterates šangû and qadšu (86).

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other Ugaritic evidence and will be treated in the analysis of those sources. It does have a bearing, however, on the analysis of the Akkadian evidence. It shows that the Akkadian scribe understood the Sumerogram nu.gig to stand for a noun from the Semitic root q-d-š, so that it was applied to a noun from that root that is (otherwise) unattested in Akkadian. Thus Menzel’s question about the reading of nu.gig seems to be answered in favor of the Akkadian reading qadištu. 40. BWL 160:7 Disputation between the tamarisk and the date palm.324 A final Middle Assyrian attestation of qadištu is found in the literary composition entitled “The Tamarisk and the Palm,” in which the two trees engage in a verbal contest with each presenting arguments for its own superior merits and prestige. While the composition is now attested in four distinct versions, ranging from Old Babylonian to Neo-Assyrian times, only the Middle Babylonian version contains qadištu (in syllabic orthography) in its preserved text.325 The reference occurs in the speech of the tamarisk, in the fourth of five (preserved) interchanges (each initiated by the tamarisk) as the two contestants alternate their assertions of superiority. The speech reads as follows:326 (43′) [The tamarisk made ready to speak, responded grandiloquently], full of pride, (44′) “Come, let us go, you and I, to the district where the craftsmen work me, (45′) see if in fact there is not “manna”(?)327 round about me, 324.  Of four versions now known the most extensive recoverable text is a thirteenth century BCE Middle Babylonian version from Emar in Syria, assembled from fragments and published by Wilcke (“Die Emar-Version von ‘Dattelpalme und Tamariske’—ein Rekonstruktionversuch,” ZA 79 [1989] 161–90) with score transliteration, translation, comparison of versions, and commentary. It is closely parallel to the Middle Assyrian version (KAR 145) published by Wilfried G. Lambert, with transliteration and translation, in Babylonian Wisdom Literature (= BWL) (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960) 158–61, with introduction (151–54) and Old Babylonian recension (155–57). Further treatment of the Middle Assyrian version: Yoram Cohen, Wisdom from the Late Bronze Age (Writings from the Ancient World 29; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013) 177–98 (normalized transliteration, translation, and discussion). English translation of the Emar (E) version: Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (3rd ed.; 2 vols.; Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1993) 2:927–28. 325.  The damaged text and substantial variants of the Old Babylonian version make it impossible to determine whether qadištu might have been present there as well, and the Neo-Assyrian text breaks off before the point where qadištu appears in the Middle Assyrian version. While the Emar text (E) corresponds closely to the Middle Assyrian text, the line in which qadištu appears in the MA parallel is broken in the E text. Foster (ibid., 928) supplies it from the MA version in his translation. 326.  Except where noted, the text is presented in Foster’s translation of the Emar text (Before the Muses, 3rd ed., 2:928) based on Wilcke’s corrected version (Ab) and thus diverges from the better known version of Lambert, in particular in text preceding the qadištu reference. 327.  Some aromatic substance resembling pearls.



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(46′ / Ab 34′) lā malâ qatrēni qadištu mê [bīni (x) ma x x x]328 nor aromatic scent. The qadištu329 takes my sap,330 (47′ / Ab 35′) ilaqqēma idallalūma ippašū isinna and they worship and hold a festival.331 (48′) Meanwhile, the date palm is in the hands of the slaughterer (49′) and he [slobbers] its core(?) with offal and gore. A religious context for the qadištu’s appearance in the text is suggested by the references to a festival and aromatics, typically used in ritual actions. It is forefronted in the A (OB) text where “time of festivals” (ú-mi i-si-nim) follows directly on the invitation, “Come!”332 Although the exact nature of the qadištu’s actions is not clear,333 she has a strikingly prominent role in this speech, with the tamarisk grounding his superiority in her use of his sap. Thus the qadištu appears as a figure of recognized status in the society, with an essential role in opening the unidentified festival. Neither the occasion nor the location of this festival are mentioned in the surviving text, so it is impossible to say more about the cultic connections of this qadištu. The fact that her role here appears quite distinct from that of the qadištus in the roughly contemporary Adad ritual text from Assur should be a warning against defining the qadištu’s status and role too narrowly or uniformly. Note that here she appears singly, acting alone. Neo-Assyrian Texts The final two attestations of qadištu in Assyrian texts both occur in ritual contexts, and both present difficulties of interpretation. 41. ABL 1126 (= LAS 187):13 Letter to King Esarhaddon with reference to a ritual involving a qadissu (NA form of qadištu).334 328.  Wilcke, “Emar-Version,” 176. Ab = KAR 145 = BWL 160. E line 46′ = BWL 160 R7′. 329.  Foster, 1:928: “sacrosanct woman”; BWL: “prostitute.” 330. Cf. BWL 160–61: (R 7′ = E 46′) lā malâ qatrēni qadištu mê is[sariq]-ma, “Not full of incense. The prostitute has sprinkled water and [ … .].” 331.  Line 47′ from BWL; Foster: [“takes my sap /] and gives thanks, then a festival begins.” 332.  “Come! in the time of festivals” (alkīm ina ūmi isinnim) (BWL 156–57 r 13). 333.  The text presupposes familiarity with (ritual) actions by qadištus using tamarisk sap, which is not spelled out in the text. The reading of the damaged end of the line by Lambert (BWL r 7′) presumed a better known cultic action: sprinkling water. 334.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P334744. Nineveh; 669–670 BCE. Transliteration, translation, and commentary: Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal (= LAS), 2 vols. (AOAT 5/1–2; Kevelaer: Butzon & Berker, 1970, 1983) 1:138–40 (no. 187), 2:181–83. Text and translation online: SAA 10 246 (http:// oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/corpus, SAA 10: Chapter 11 (Marduk–šakin-šumi, Chief Exorcist). Text numbers are indicated by the non-italic abbreviation LAS, followed by line number(s) (LAS 186,

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The best preserved and historically situated of the two texts is a letter to the Assyrian king Esarhaddon from his chief exorcist, Marduk-šakin-šumi,335 describing the performance of a ritual in which the primary actor is an unidentified woman, together with a qadištu, “the people,” and an(other) exorcist (āšipu). The main action involves placing garments before the sun-god, Šamaš, and casting piširāti upon them, which Simo Parpola understands as “solvents” in the sense of “materia magica for undoing illness (caused by witchcraft, etc.).”336 Because of the problems concerning the identity of the unnamed woman and the nature of the activity, I provide the full text of the section in which the qadištu appears.337 The beginning of the letter (about seven lines) is lost, but the first three lines correspond to the final words of the salutation (lines 15–17) of LAS 186, which Parpola views as this text’s antecedent and on which he draws for his interpretation of this text.338 (3) [As to what the king, my lord, said:]339 (4) mā atta lā tērâba340 [ina pānika] “Will you not enter? [In your presence] (5) lā teppaš kī maṣi šarru [bēlī] will she not perform341 (the ritual)?” As long as the k[ing, my lord],

r. 11); translation and commentary is indicated by italic LAS followed by volume and page numbers (LAS 2:181). 335.  Although the beginning of the tablet, containing the scribe’s name, is lost, Parpola (LAS 2: xvi, 164, 180–82) attributes this letter to the chief exorcist, Marduk-šakin-šumi, on the basis of connections with the preceding letter (LAS 186). 336. Parpola, LAS 2:181, correcting his 1970 translation of “interpretations” (1:137, 139). See below. 337.  The text and translation are from Parpola, SAA 10 246, with the translation reordered in places to conform more closely to the word order of the Akkadian text. Collated signs are marked with asterisks. 338.  In that letter (LAS 1:137–38), the scribe Marduk-šakin-šumi reports that he has recorded an order from the king spoken to him by unidentified intermediaries, writing it on a tablet, “word for word … as the king … had said with his own mouth.” With the assurance that “it is safe,” he continues: “Now—as the king, my lord, says—if she comes to Calah, let them send Aḫūnī here. He should lift (and) bring (the tablets), so she can deliver the solvents (basi piširāti lū takrur)” (LAS 186, r. 11–12, with corrections, LAS 2:181). 339.  All of the restorations and additions in square brackets and parentheses are Parpola’s, unless otherwise indicated. For this restoration, cf. line 8 and elsewhere in this correspondence where citing a communication from the king is a recurring pattern. 340.  Parpola (LAS 2:182) explains the final -a as a “paragogic vowel indicating a question,” rather than a ventive. 341.  The problem of interpreting t-prefixed verb forms in this letter is a recurring one, as will be seen below, with some scholars reading them as 2 masc. sing. and others as 3 fem. sing., or as both in differing contexts. In the case of the 3 fem. sing. readings, opinions also differ on the identity of the female subject.



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(6) iqbûni lērub lazz[iz] said to me, I shall enter (and) stay,342 (7) ina pāniya lū tēpuš ina muḫḫi [kuzippī] and she may perform (it) in my presence.343 As regards [the clothes] (8) ša šarru bēlī iqbûni mā kuzippī a[yāka] of which the king, my lord, said to me; “The clothes,344 w[here] (9) išakkunū ūla ina muḫḫi nišē mā will they place [them]?” or about the people, “Why (10) ana mīni nišē izzâzu will the people be present?” (11) kuzippīma ina tarṣi Šamaš lū šaknū The clothes should be placed before Šamaš (12) [ina] muḫḫi piširāti lū takrur (and) she should “cast345 the solvents”346 upon them. (13) [ù] qadissu (munusqa-di-su) memmēni (14) [i]bašši teppaš (13–14) A sacred woman (qadissu) will be there to perform a certain rite.347 (Edge) (15) [The peop]le should be present (lizzizū) and (16) perform their [rituals] ([dulla]šunu lēpušū) (17) There[upon] an exorcist (āšipu) [will take over] ([idd]āti lu2maš.maš) (Reverse)348

342.  Ibid.: “I shall enter (and) stay as long as the ki[ng, my lord], said.” 343. “she may perform (it)”: This does not seem to catch the force of the precatives that are used throughout to describe the actions to be performed. Cf. line 12, “she should throw.” 344.  kuzippu: CAD K 615: “a cloak,” “clothing” for the body. 345.  Cf. Gruber, 141 n. 31, who reads the verb as second person: “Please present the interpretations upon them.” Although the t-prefixed verbal forms can often be read as either 2 masc. sing. or 3 fem. sing., the second-person reading is excluded here by the precative particle lu, which is not used with second-person verbs (GAG §81c); cf. LAS 186 r’ 11–12, where the context requires a third-person reading of the identical phrase, piširāti lū takrur. 346. Parpola, LAS 2:181, correcting his original reading of šar to šir3, and his original translation: “the interpretations should be delivered upon them” (LAS 1:137). In the 1983 commentary he argues that piširāti (pl. of piširtu) in letters 186 and 187 should be distinguished from the homophonous plural of pišru (meaning “magical / astrological solution, interpretation”). The term piširtu, he notes, is primarily attested in ušburruda / namerimburruda rituals and incantations, including Maqlû and Šurpu (see below), in which the piširtu, as “symbolic representation of the evil combated,” is thrown into fire. 347.  SAA 10 246 (SAAo); cf. LAS 1:138: “the sacred woman will certainly [also] do something.” Gruber (141 n. 31): “do whatever it is.” On ibašši, “it is certain, certainly,” see CAD B 155. 348.  The reverse begins with a new reference to a previous request of the king and continues with the assurance that the action will be carried out. It also appears to involve casting “solvents” upon garments set before the sun-god.

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Lines 13–14 introduce the qadištu as a new actor, performing some unspecified, but certain, action. This action is not elaborated in the following text, which moves to the “people” and their rituals, and then to an exorcist. Who is this unnamed qadištu and how is she related to the unidentified female whose activity is referred to in lines 5, 7, and 12? At least one interpreter has seen her as the subject of the preceding action with the piširāti, translating line 12: “she (the qadištu woman) should place the p. on (the kuzippu cloaks).”349 But she appears to be introduced in line 13 as a new actor, with a distinct role, just as the exorcist in line 17,350 and Parpola makes a convincing argument that the unnamed woman, who is also involved on the reverse and in LAS 186, is the queen herself. The statement concerning the qadištu is the only statement in the indicative in a series of responses formulated exclusively with precatives. It also interrupts a pattern of paired questions followed by paired responses, in this case the double question concerning the placement of the clothes and the action of the people (lines 8–10).351 The response concerning the people comes only in lines 14–15, after the word about the qadištu. So the qadištu’s action has to be seen as closely tied to the preceding action, and limited to that context. It appears that the action with the clothes was designed to induce an action by the qadištu, or that some kind of action by a qadištu is an expected consequence or response. Since the action is unspecified, it raises the question: What kind of services were expected from a qadištu in this period and locale? Our only clues in this text are the ritual with she is most closely identified, and the other professional in the text, the exorcist (āšipu). Parpola interprets the ritual as an exorcism, or purificatory ritual performed by the queen mother 349.  CAD P 429. Westenholz (254) apparently shares this understanding, since she refers to the “qadištu-woman’s involvement with the vestments of Shamash,” in reference to line 13. But the subject-verb word order throughout this composition requires that the qadištu be named earlier in the letter if she is to be understood as the subject of the verb in line 12 (or lines 5 and 7), and the unidentified woman has a distinct role. 350.  Since the writer is himself the chief exorcist, one might ask why an additional exorcist is needed, but it appears that the writer is overseeing the procedures (“in my presence,” line 7), rather than taking an active role in them. Note that both qadištu and āšipu are identified by title only (although Parpola translates the first as definite and the second as indefinite). 351.  The pattern of questions followed by responses with precative verbs is as follows: (4) Will you not enter? (lā tērâba) (6) I will enter (lērub) + I will remain (lazz[iz]) (5) Will she not perform (the ritual)? (lā teppaš) (7) She shall perform (it) (lū tēpuš) (8–9) Where will the clothes be placed? (išakkunū) (11) The clothes should be placed before the sun-god/Šamaš (lū šaknū) (12) + she should throw the solvents upon them (lū takrur) (10) Why will the people be present? (izzâzū) (15) [The peop]le should be present (lizzizu) (16) + they should perform their [rituals] (lēpušū)



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to remove an illness.352 The clothes in such rituals are those of the patient, he argues, the removal of which signals symbolic release from his or her contaminated state.353 The garment is placed here before the sun-god Šamaš as the divine judge;354 the piširāti represent purging agents, which are thrown upon the garment by the person with the illness.355 If the primary action to this point is that of the ill person, then the qadištu must be seen here as a specialist in matters of exorcism, whose action reinforces or responds to the throwing of the piširāti.356 For Parpola, the presence of the qadištu in this text is a key to the nature of the ritual. Describing the qadištu (which he equates with biblical qedešah) as “a hierodule serving in fertility rites and as a wet nurse, and very probably also practicing (cultic) prostitution,”357 he observes that this is “not the kind of person one 352.  Parpola ties his interpretation to the preceding letter, LAS 186, arguing that although the wording of the two “is so vague that it is impossible to identify the rites mentioned in them with absolute certainty … the data available make it very likely that rituals of the Maqlû and Šurpu type are in question.” Further, he argues, “such rituals constituted an essential part of the cure of the queen mother in … June, 670” (reported in LAS 159 and 160). Considering the probable dating of LAS 186, 187 to the period when the Maqlû and Šurpu rituals were commonly performed, he finds the likelihood that such a ritual is described here “enhanced by the prominent part played in them by the unnamed women … who can hardly be anybody but the queen mother herself ” (LAS 2:180). He also notes the association of the queen mother (Naqia) with the periodic Maqlû and Šurpu rites in LAS 208. Cf. LAS 2:181. 353. Parpola, LAS 2:182 re line 8. “Such purificatory stripping rituals … are best known from anti-witchcraft magic,” he notes, an association he develops further in his comments on the qadištu (below). Cf. Westenholz, 254, who refers to the clothes as “the vestments of Shamash.” 354. Parpola LAS 2:182: “The role of the sun in magical rituals … was that of Supreme Judge, who doomed the wicked and let free the innocent, and whom the exorcists approached to save their patients from the evil forces harassing them.” Cf. LAS 2:181: “Throwing the solvents before the sun (upon the garments of the patients) served for magically deferring the case to the judgment of the god Šamaš.” 355.  Parpola (LAS 2:181 re LAS 186 r 11–12) notes that in KAR 141:8 the patient is clearly the one performing the throwing ritual, arguing that this supports the hypothesis that the woman figuring in the present rites was the patient, and “thus most likely the queen mother herself.” 356.  In Parpola’s terms, she “officiate[s]” in exorcistic rituals (LAS 2:183). In interpreting this text, and the role of the qadištu in it, one should note that the ritual does not end with the qadištu’s action, but involves actions by “the people” and the (other) exorcist. Parpola does not comment on these other actors, but since “the people” are mentioned in the initial questions of the king, they must have an essential role in the full procedure. 357. Parpola LAS 2:182. For this definition he cites Renger, “Untersuchungen,” 179ff., and, for qedešah, Driver, Iraq 6 (1939) 68 [n. 4?] and 182 n. 321. “That the qadištu practiced prostitution is clear,” he argues, “from her association with ḫarīmtu ‘whore’ in the Middle Assyrian Laws.… The primary difference between the terms ḫarīmtu and qadištu seems to have been simply that women of the former class operated in brothels (aštammu) whereas the latter were attached to temples.” In my analysis of the texts thus far, neither of these claims appears justified, although it is impossible to say on the basis of this evidence that qadištus never engaged in prostitution. Parpola’s interpretation of the Adad temple ritual (KAR 154) as “a fertility ritual involving the participation of several hierodules” appears equally unfounded. A fertility motive may lie behind this celebration, but nothing in the acts as described requires, or even points to, it. It appears that the assumed nature of the qadištu has determined Parpola’s interpretation of the text.

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would expect to officiate in exorcistic rituals.” But, he continues, “the fact that she is found in that function here actually strongly supports the hypothesis . . . that the rites alluded to in LAS 186–187 were anti-witchcraft in character.”358 As evidence for this association he cites the appearance of the qadištu in the anti-witchcraft composition Maqlû.359 I will consider that evidence below and its implications for this text. In the meantime, I note that the texts examined thus far offer no evidence of the qadištu as “a hierodule serving in fertility rites” or “practicing (cultic) prostitution,” while her well-attested association with wet-nursing offers no basis for interpreting her role in this text. This text places the qadištu in a new context. Whatever the specific nature of her action here, it clearly links her to the realm of magic and exorcism, presenting her in a previously unattested role or activity. It identifies her by office, rather than name, whether as a known individual or as a category of cultic actors. It confirms the existence of the qadištu as a recognized, contemporary office or institution in seventh-century Assyria, and as a figure who operated in circles close to the king or of interest to the king. 42. VAT 10568a:5 Fragment of a ritual prescription text with a qadištu.360 This two-column fragment consists of ritual prescriptions in 2 masc. sing. address, which Ebeling interpreted as belonging to a New Year ritual, involving oath-taking by officials.361 Parpola, however, refers to this text as “an Assyrian ritual designed to undo [a] lightheartedly sworn oath . . . where a MI2.qa-diš-tu . . . appears to be closely cooperating with an exorcist (lu2.maš.maš),”362 a description repeated by Westenholz.363 Although the text stems from Assur, Esagila (mentioned in r ii 11), the place of the “oath-taking” (or undoing), appears to be the great Marduk temple Esagila of Babylon. The primary deity addressed in this ceremony, however, is the underworld deity Belit-ṣeri, named in obv. i 3 as the recipient of praise. Most of the preserved text consists of detailed instructions on the preparation and presentation of offerings of various types of meat, meal, bread, oil, and drink. The reverse begins with the heading “Ritual before the ‘Daughter of the River,’” which is followed by instructions for scattering incense and beer, placing a purification device, and strewing salt. An admonition not to forget the 358. Parpola, LAS 2:182–83. 359.  Ibid., 183. 360.  Assur; unknown date. Transcription, translation, and commentary: Erich Ebeling, “Kultische Texte aus Assur (Fortsetzung),” Orientalia 22 (1953) 41–46 (hereafter “Ebeling”). 361.  Ebeling (41) links this text with two others, VAT 10448 and 10568b, as fragments of the same ritual text, admitting that the association with the New Year’s celebration cannot be established with certainty. 362. Parpola, LAS 2:183. Parpola’s description is not accompanied by any alternative translation. 363.  Although Westenholz (254 n. 39) cites only Ebeling, her description of the text (cited below) clearly rests on Parpola.



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salt preparation (r ii 4–5) is followed by instructions concerning a qadištu and oath-swearing (r ii 5–6).364 The text reads as follows, based on Ebeling’s transliteration and translation: (1) Ritual before the “daughter of the river” [ . . . ] (2) You sprinkle an aromatic offering, you libate fine beer [ . . . ] (3) You place a purification-sprinkler with the figs. (4) ṭābtu takarrar riksū ṭābti You scatter salt; the ritual preparations of salt365 (5) lā tamašši munusqa-diš-tú tunassaḫ ⸢x⸣ [x] do not forget. The qadištu removes/expels ⸢x⸣ [x]?366 (6) rubû tutamma tukappar You make (or: she makes) the prince/nobleman(?) take an oath and you purify (or: she purifies) him (lit: wipe(s) him clean).367 Ebeling’s suggested reading in line 5 of “you shall remove the qadištu” is problematic on a number of grounds, and CAD Q 49 leaves it untranslated, with the comment, “in obscure context.”368 The relationship of this action to that in the following line is also unclear, as is the object and meaning of that action. The main problem with Ebeling’s reading is that the qadištu, who elsewhere performs rituals of purification, is presented here not as an actor, but as the object of a purificatory action. Moreover her presence here, as well as the need to remove her, is wholly unexplained. It seems better to take qadištu as the subject, rather than the object, of the verb, the 2 masc. sing. and 3 fem. sing. verb forms being identical in Neo Assyrian. Thus I would translate: “The qadištu removes/expels x.”369 This appears to 364.  This appears to conclude the actions of the first day, since the following line (r ii 7) begins with a reference to “the second day.” It reads as follows: ina 2-e ud(-)ša lu₂maš.maš me-⸢e?⸣ šuII du₃⸢uš?⸣, which can be translated either (1) “On the second day of the exorcist), you/he/she prepare a hand-washing basin” (cf. Ebeling, 45) or (2) “On her second day, the exorcist prepares a hand-washing basin (cf. Ebeling, 45 n. 1). 365.  Gruber (141): “salt covenant”; see n. 369 below. 366.  Ebeling: “die Hierodule sollst du entfernen, ...” 367.  Or: “You conjure and purify . . .” (so CAD T 167). 368.  The reading tu-na-saḫ seems clear, but the following ši, which Ebeling reads with a question mark, does not resemble the ši sign earlier in the line, and there is room at the end of the line for another, or a larger, sign. If the ši is understood as a resumptive pronoun, it is the only example in this text. 369.  The verb nasāḫu is used for removing someone from office and deporting people, but it is more commonly associated with eradicating, uprooting, and expelling evil, demons, and sickness (CAD N 1–3). Cf. Gruber (141), who translates lines 4–5 as follows: “You shall put on salt. / You shall not forget the salt covenant. / The qadishtu shall not neglect it.” He offers no explanation for how he gets “shall not neglect it” out of tunassaḫši; and for his interpretation of riksa ṭabta as “salt covenant,” he offers only comparisons with biblical texts (Lev 2:13; Num 18:19; 2 Chr 23:5), citing

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be the way that Westenholz understood this text, since she describes it as “an Assyrian ritual requiring her [the qadištu’s] use of salt to undo a lightheartedly sworn oath.”370 The association of the qadištu with the salt is not clear and at best indirect, but the action with which she is immediately identified (nasāḫu) clearly links her to the purification / exorcism activities seen in ABL 1126. This association is reinforced by the following two verbs (“conjure and purify”),371 which raises the question whether they too might be understood as governed by qadištu, a question I cannot answer. Parpola’s reference to close cooperation with an exorcist is another link with the exorcism ritual ABL 1126, but in both texts the nature of the relationship is not spelled out, and the āšipu (lu₂maš.maš) here appears to be connected with the following day’s activity (unless he oversees the whole ritual). Whether the qadištu is only associated with the activity of line 5, or of the following line as well, she is clearly involved in some type of purification ritual; she is identified by office, rather than name, just as the āšipu; and she appears singly. If this text describes contemporary practice, it means that the qadištu had a recognized place in Assyrian society as late as the seventh or sixth century BCE. Literary Texts This survey of Akkadian qadištu references began with Old Babylonian historical documents, which offered the fullest evidence of contemporary practice from letters, laws, contracts, and administrative documents. Because documentation of this type ceases in Babylonia after the Old Babylonian period,372 the survey shifted to Assyrian documents to trace the history of usage, extending the witness to contemporary presence and practice from the beginning of the second millennium to the seventh and sixth century BCE.373 To complete this survey attention must Moshe Weinfeld, “bĕrît,” TWAT 1:791. Weinfeld, however, cites no Akkadian parallel for the biblical formulation, and CAD riksu (R 347–54) has only a handful of examples of NA usage with the sense of “treaty” or “agreement” (354) and none with salt, while providing abundant examples of usage with the sense of “ritual arrangement, preparation” (351–52). 370.  Westenholz, 254. Unfortunately she does not provide a translation of the text, though her interpretation of the nature and purpose of the action rests on Parpola (LAS 2:183). Does her reference to the qadištu’s use of salt require qadištu to be understood as the subject of the preceding verbs? That seems to be excluded by the normal subject-verb word order and the fact that the preceding verbs present a series, which Ebeling interpreted as second-person prescriptions. Either the whole series must have qadištu as its subject, or qadištu in line 5 represents a change of subject—unless Ebeling’s original treatment of qadištu as the object of the verb is accepted. 371.  See n. 367 above. 372.  A single MB reference, to the son of a qadištu, is treated above, pp. 262–63. 373.  One MA literary text, BWL 160, was included in the survey of Assyrian texts in order to complete the chronological series and provide a thematic link to the following NA ritual texts, one of which was firmly grounded in datable contemporary practice.



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now be given to nu.gig/qadištu references contained in literary and ritual texts, written for the most part in Babylonian dialects.374 While most of the documents date from the latest period, some have much earlier origins. Because of the nature of these texts, which are loosed from particular historical contexts, it is difficult to determine whether their references to qadištus and other religious women represent current institutions and activity, historical memory, or historical reality at all, especially in the latest texts. A salient feature of the literary texts is that qadištu rarely occurs alone, as an individual. Rather, she is paired or grouped with other dedicated women or women of assumed common attributes. Thus she is treated as an instance of some more general category, showing how qadištus were classified within ancient Mesopotamian society. 43. CT 6 5 IV 20 (Atraḫasis) Babylonian myth of origins.375 The final Babylonian example of syllabically written qadištu cited by CAD is in the Old Babylonian version of the Atraḫasis epic, in a use that is one of the most enigmatic—and possibly most revealing. It appears in the section describing the work of the birth goddess Nintu (also called Mami) in creating humankind, which takes the form of a hieros logos of a birthing ritual. The text, in its larger context, reads as follows in the translation of Lambert and Millard:376 (283) With a beaming, joyful face (284) And covered head she performed the midwifery. (285) She girded her loins as she pronounced the blessing, (286) She drew a pattern in meal and placed the brick, (287) “I have created, my hands have made it. (288) ša[b]sūtum ina bīt qadišti liḫdu Let the midwife rejoice in the prostitute’s house (bīt qadišti) (289) Where the pregnant woman gives birth (290) And the mother of the babe severs herself, (291) Let the brick be in place for nine days, (292) That Nintu, the birth-goddess, may be honored.” 374.  The language of most of these texts is Standard Babylonian (SB), an artificial literary offshoot of OB, cultivated by scribes from the middle of the second millennium through the first millennium BCE until Akkadian ceased to be used. Late Babylonian (LB) is the last surviving “living” dialect, which finally petered out in the Seleucid period (Encyclopedia Judaica: “Akkadian Language” [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0001 _0_00636.html]). 375.  Transliteration and translation: W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-ḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969) 62–65; translation: Foster, Before the Muses, 3rd ed., 1:238. Commentary: Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 112–18. 376.  Atra-ḫasīs, 62–63 (CT 6 5 IV 13–24 = [E] I 283–95 in Lambert and Millard’s composite text).

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This translation of bīt qadišti as “prostitute’s house” (line 288) highlights the tension between traditional interpretations of qadištu as a (sacred) prostitute and the context in which it appears.377 The goddess Nintu is not associated with prostitutes, and neither are midwives. And a prostitute’s house as a place of birthing is even more incongruous, since the prostitute is commonly associated with the tavern as her place of operation. This reference is unique in the corpus of Akkadian nu.gig/qadištu texts cited by CAD, although an association with midwives and parturient women may be suggested by the late synonym list malku = šarru.378 Its uniqueness is reinforced by the apparent substitution in the Late Assyrian version of the epic, where the corresponding clause reads as follows: (17) šabsūtumma ina bīt ḫarišti liḫdu Let the midwife rejoice in the house of the parturient woman.379 What this variant suggests is that an institution of the First Dynasty of Babylon, or earlier, was no longer functioning or understood by the Late Assyrian scribe, who reflected the birthing practice of his day when he placed the midwife in the home of the pregnant woman.380 44. Gilg III iv 20:122 (= George, SB Gilgamesh III 123) Gilgamesh Epic (SB recension).381 A reference to qadištu appears in the Standard Babylonian (SB) recension of the Gilgamesh Epic is known from Neo-Assyrian tablets in the library of Assurbanipal (668–627 BCE) and Late Babylonian (LB) fragments.382 Although the epic is 377.  Other scholars have proposed alternative translations, pointing to the occurrences of qadištu elsewhere as a term for a class of priestesses. Thus Foster (Before the Muses, 3rd ed., 1:238) translates qadištu, “sacrosanct woman,” with the remark that “it is possible that certain sacrosanct women ran lying-in facilities and the birth took place there” (n. 1, citing Stol, Birth in Babylonia, 117). In countering Lambert and Millard’s translation, Foster also counters a proposal of William Moran (“Atrahasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood,” Biblica 52 [1971] 58–59), who suggested that qadištu here referred to a woman who has just given birth, and so could not have intercourse for a “taboo” period—an idea that draws on Sumerian nu-gig, traditionally understood to mean “tabooed woman.” On this etymology and its associations, see “Conclusions” and Appendix C. 378.  Treated below, pp. 322–25. 379.  Lambert and Millard, Atra-ḫasīs, 63, line 17: “woman in confinement.” 380.  Cf. S iii 15: ina bīt ālitte ḫarišti 7 ūmī linnadi libittu: “In the house of the pregnant woman in confinement let the brick be in place for seven days” (ibid., 62–63). See analysis of Sumerian nu-gig texts (Appendix C) and discussion below. 381.  Main edition (transliteration, translation, and commentary): A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts (2 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 203; hereafter “George”) 1:379–534, 572–85. 382.  According to George (1:382), none of the Nineveh manuscripts of the epic employs Babylonian script, which leads him to conclude that they were probably all written in Assyria. At present, he notes, it cannot be determined whether any were copied directly from Babylonian imports, only



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extant in an Old Babylonian recension, Tablet III of the Neo-Assyrian recension, in which qadištu occurs, represents a completely new episode in the account of Gilgamesh’s and Enkidu’s departure to the Cedar Forest, in which they first visit Gilgamesh’s mother, the goddess Ninsun, in her temple in Uruk (lines 13–22).383 The bulk of the tablet is devoted to Ninsun’s petition to Šamaš to protect Gilgamesh, followed by an address to Enkidu in which she adopts him as her son, before the tablet concludes with the beginning of the journey to the Cedar Forest. The qadištu reference occurs in Ninsun’s address to Enkidu:384 (121) Enkidu dannu ul ṣīt ūriya atta “O mighty Enkidu, you are not the offspring of my womb, (122) eninna atmūka itti širkī ša Gilgameš but now your brood385 (will be) with the oblates386 of Gilgamesh, (122a)387 that they cannot be counted among the Babylonian documents collected by Ashurbanipal (668– 627 BCE). The passage containing qadištu is attested in a single tablet from Nineveh and a Late Babylonian tablet from Uruk (George 1:572–73). 383.  On the differences from the Old Babylonian recension, see George 1:459. It is impossible to know when the motif including the qadištu originated, but it is not in any of the intermediate fragments. That does not necessarily mean that it must represent conceptions of the qadištu current in seventh-century Assyria. According to George (1:30), this version may have been composed in the late second-millennium, in which case the reference to qadištu, and the associated classes, might reflect late second millennium conceptions of the institutions. That possibility is strengthened by the genre; as a literary composition about primordial times, it is likely to draw on traditions of earlier times rather than depict current institutions. 384.  Text and translation from George, 1:580–81; synopsis and exegesis: 1:458–62. 385.  For the interpretation of at-mu-ka as a noun in a nominal clause, as opposed to various verbal interpretations, see George 2:815. CAD A 497: atmu A 1. “small young animal a) a fledgling”; 2. “young man.” George argues that “The word atmu, ‘hatchling, chick’ … is chosen carefully, for it vividly conveys the helpless plight of orphaned children when first taken into a temple’s care and service,” noting additionally that “when Humbaba addresses Enkidu as someone ‘who knew no father’ or ‘mother,’ he calls him an atmu.” Most interpreters have treated at-mu-ka as a verbal form, as, e.g., CAD Q 49: “I discussed you (i.e., your case) with the oblates of Gilgameš.” See other proposals in George 2:815. Cf. Maureen Gallery Kovacs, The Epic of Gilgamesh (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989) 27: “But now I speak to you along with the sacred votaries of Gilgamesh, the high priestesses, the holy women, the temple servants”; and A. Leo Oppenheim, “Mesopotamian Mythology II,” Orientalia 17 (1948) 33: “herewith I pronounce you / a širqu of Gilgamesh (lit.: as [belonging] to a širqu)! / (Be it as if) the enîtu-priestesses, the sacred (prostitutes) (or) the kulmašîtu-females / had put the indu-tag around Enkidu’s neck.” 386.  CAD Š/2: širku A: “oblate” SB (only here), NA (exceptionally, when referring to Babylonians), NB (very frequent). See Kristin Kleber, “Neither Slave Nor Truly Free: The Status of the Dependents of the Babylonian Temple Households,” in Slaves and Households in the Near East (ed. Laura Culbertson; Oriental Institute Seminars 7; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011) 101–11, and Asher Ragen, The Neo-Babylonian širku: A Social History (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2007) 9–11, 461–68. 387.  Another line is added here in the LB manuscript (MS aa rev.), but it is too poorly preserved to translate (George 1:581 n. 15).

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(123) ugbakkāti (ereš.dingir.ra.meš) qašdāti (qa-áš-da-ti) ⸢u⸣ kulmašāti (kul-ma-šá-a-ti) the ugbabtus, qadištus, and kulmašītus, (124) indī ittadi ana tikki Enkidu She placed the symbols (indī) on Enkidu’s neck: (125) ugbakkāti (ereš.dingir.ra.meš) ilqâ liqûtu “The ugbabtus hereby take in the foundling, (126) u mārāt ili (dumu.munus dingir.meš) urabbâ tarbûta and the Divine Daughters will bring up the foster-child. (127) anāku Enkidu ša [arammu?] elqâ ana mārūtu I myself hereby adopt Enkidu, whom [I love], as a son (ana mārūtu), (128) Enkidu ana [aḫḫūti?] [Gil]gameš lidammeqšu Let Gilgamesh in [brotherhood] treat Enkidu with favor! I myself hereby adopt Enkidu, whom [I love], as a son (ana mārūtu), (128) Enkidu ana [aḫḫūti?] [Gil]gameš lidammeqšu Let Gilgamesh in [brotherhood] treat Enkidu with favor! The appearance of qadištu (here in the syllabically written plural, qašdātu) in a sequence with ugbabtu (ereš.dingir.ra) and kulmašītu (also as plurals) recalls the sequence in LH §181: nadītu (lukur), qadištu (nu.gig), kulmašītu (nu.bar); and LL §22: ugbabtu (ereš.dingir.ra), nadītu (lukur), qadištu (nu.gig).388 This grouping places the qadištu in a larger class, with attention here to shared function, rather than legal status. That shared function appears to be the care of foundlings or children given to the temple (liqûtu, tarbûtu).389 This larger class of temple servants, to which Ninsun apparently commits Enkidu,390 while adopting him as her own son,391 is identified here as širkī (“oblates”), more specifically, the “oblates of Gilgameš.” According to CAD Š/2 110, the širkus were “socially, juridically, and economically bound to the temples, but [were] not . . . religious personnel active in the performance of the cult.”392 They were donated to temples by their parents, 388.  Cf. also the similar sequences without qadištu in LH §178–179: ereš.dingir (ugbabtu), lukur (nadītu), munusse2.ek.ru.um (sekrētu). 389.  George (2:816) writes that lines 125–26 “can be taken as quoting the protocol by which foundlings were inducted into the temple personnel.” For liqûtu and tarbûtu, see CAD L 208 and B, 225. 390.  at-mu-ka is difficult however it is translated (see above, n. 385). George’s “Your brood” suggests offspring, rather than companions or others who share Enkidu’s “orphan” status. 391.  The language of line 127 is the language of Old Babylonian adoption contracts (George 2:816). 392.  While female as well as male širkus are known, most of the examples given in CAD (Š/2 106–10) are male. Although a few occupied administrative posts or managed agricultural properties or herds, the great majority (of this largely male class) were skilled craftsmen, farm hands, or common laborers. Presumably, the roles of the female oblates were the typical gender-specific roles of female servants or dependents.



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or owners in the case of slaves, and were protected by their širku status against sale as slaves and against other civil claims.393 In the sequence here, the three classes of female devotees are aligned with the širkī,394 but distinct. Since their duty is to serve as foster mothers for the children donated to the temple, they are presumably to be understood as temple personnel. But of which deity and temple? Ninsun and her temple, the Egalmaḫ? Or Ištar and the Eanna?395 Within that female triad, the qadištu is “hidden,” without distinct attributes or functions to distinguish her from her associates. As in LH §181, qadištu is paired with kulmašītu (both written syllabically here), but the nadītu (lukur) of the Old Babylonian period has been replaced by the ugbabtu (ereš.dingir.ra),396 which appears as the defining term for the series, since it stands alone in the resumptive clause (124) that presumably describes the activity of the whole class as adoptive mothers.397 Does the characterization “divine daughters” (125) likewise apply to the triad, or only to the ugbabtu-women? We do not know whether the author assumed distinct functions for the three classes, or whether they had come to share the same functions—or reputation.398 In Old Babylonian texts the qadištu appeared as a wet nurse, and that may be her specialty here too. But “original” distinctions may no longer apply in this late period. The absence of the nadītu suggests that the three classes do not simply represent a literary assemblage of figures from the “classical” age, but reflect contemporary, or at least post-OB, practice, since the nadītu institution ceased to exist with the end of the Old Babylonian kingdom.399 The clearest 393.  The majority of the large number of examples cited by CAD associate the širku with the “Lady-of-Uruk,” Ištar, no doubt a consequence of the excavations of the goddess’s temple Eanna at Uruk. Other deities with which širkus are identified are Nergal, Šamaš, Bēl, and (once) Marduk. Should the “širkus of Gilgameš” (found only here) be understood as širku’s of Ištar, or the Eanna? 394.  They are apparently all governed by the preposition itti (122). It is difficult to know what might be in the extra line in MS aa, since line 123 must continue the series of genitives based on itti, and nothing seems to be lacking. 395. The širkī are called “širkī of Gilgamesh,” who is identified with the divine determinative throughout this composition; but he does not appear to have had a cult of his own. In the Old Babylonian and Middle Assyrian texts, the qadištu is associated with Adad. This may be a case where qadištu, or the memory of qadištus, has led to the construction of an inclusive list that is no longer tied to a particular (or “original”) temple or deity. 396.  For the plural ugbakkātu, George (2:815) cites OB Atrahasis III vii 6. 397.  Cf. Oppenheim (“Mesopotamian Mythology,” 34), who identifies these women as “certain priestesses … who were not allowed to bear children and therefore used to pick up exposed babes and rear them in order to ensure for themselves help and assistance for their old age.” 398.  The list may be a purely literary assemblage. 399.  Harris, “The Nadītu Woman,” 135. According to CAD E 173, “the term ēntu [ereš.dingir. ra] disappears in Mesopotamia, as do all special designations of priestesses, in the Old Babylonian period, but it is preserved in Nippur and Ur in MB … and was revived by Nabonidus.” It is not clear what is understood by “all special designations of priestesses,” since we have evidence of qadištus functioning in the Middle Assyrian period. It does suggest that the perpetuation of these titles in the later texts is largely a literary phenomenon, rather than testimony to a continuing social institution.

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sign of contemporary grounding, however, is the use of širku, a distinctively late Babylonian term.400 Although much is unclear about the precise arrangements and activities assumed by this text, it is clear that the qadištu here was understood as one of a number of cult-related women whose functions included the care of children given to a temple. Thus it provides an institutional setting for the qadištu in the Late Babylonian period—or the period assumed by the narrative. A similar series of religious women including qadištus is highlighted in an SB composition praising the women of Babylon. There the presence of nadītu, and the general character of the text, suggests that the classes mentioned belong to Babylon’s “golden age” and cannot be taken as evidence for the late Babylonian period to which the composition belongs. 45. KAR 321:7 Excerpt of a Neo-Babylonian composition highlighting the women of Babylon.401 KAR 321 is a tablet containing excerpts from a number of compositions, with lines 1–11 forming a distinct work, described by Harris as a “paean to the greatness of Marduk and his city Babylon.”402 Although the text ends with a reference to the population of Babylon as a whole employing a masc. pl. pronoun and adjective (line 11), all of those identified in lines 1–9 are classes of women, and the verbs in the first line (which lack subjects) are 3 fem. pl. In lines 6–7, paired couplets name particular classes of women, beginning with “women experienced in their crafts (or tasks),” which appears to be a general category exemplified by the three classes that follow: ereš.dingir.ra, lukur, and nu.gig. The lines following this series (8–9) appear to refer back to these religious specialists, identified collectively in line 9 as mārāt ili (“daughters of the gods”).403 Lines 10–11 refer to the whole of Babylon (kullat Babili, line 10), concluding with a collective designation of its citizens as the šubarrê ša Marduk, “persons [masc. pl.] freed from service obligations

400.  This does not exclude the possibility of combining terms for current institutions with “historical” references, though it does strengthen the idea that the activity is conceived in terms of current institutions and practice. 401.  CDLI Link: http://cdli.ucla.edu/search/archival_view.php?ObjectID=P369286. Assur. No published transliteration; scattered references throughout CAD provide piecemeal transliterations and translations. Translation only: Foster, Before the Muses, 3rd ed., 2:878; partial transliteration and translation (lines 5–7 only): Lambert, “Prostitution,” 143. 402. “The Nadītu Woman,” 135. The composition was originally identified as a portion of the Erra epic (Ebeling, KAR 2 [1923] 265), later corrected by Landsberger (JNES 14 [1955] 21 n. 26). It is presumed to be a student work. 403.  In view of the distance of this phrase from the cluster in lines 6–7, it seems less likely that it would introduce a new class of religious women. This usage suggests that the same expression in the Gilgamesh passage should also be understood as a collective reference to women devoted to a deity. See CAD M 304 (mārtu) and I/J 103–04 (ilu in mārat ili).



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by Marduk.” Thus it appears that the women, and among them the named classes, comprise the final segment of the population lifted up for praise.404 The complete excerpt (with omission of unclear and/or non-essential lines) is presented below in order to provide context for the targeted lines.405 (2) They [fem.] set out (offering) shares of beverage,   How reverently they bless the g[od]! (3) They are heedful of divine judgment, observant of truth . . . (4) . . . (5) They have seemly ways (?), are well-advised and pleasing,   They brighten their mood and m[ake] merriment. (6) sinnišātu ša ina šiprīšina tašīmta aḫzū ⋮ Women who have gained understanding in their tasks,   ēnētu/ugbakkātu (ereš.dingir.ra.meš) ša ina ḫāmerīšina kittu na[ṣrā]406   High priestesses (ēnētu/ugbakkātu) who [?are always faithful to their (divine) husbands?],407 (7) nadâte ša ina ina nēmeqi uballaṭā rēmu ⋮ nadītus who with skill heal the womb;408   qašdātu (munusnu.gig.meš) ša ina mê tēlilte i[šak]kanū(?)409 [ . . . ]   qadištus who fix (?) [ . . . ] with water of purification.410 404.  Foster (Before the Muses, 3rd ed., 2:770) notes that “the text may not be complete.” The fact that the first line contains no expressed subject and the last line uses masculine plural grammatical forms (šunuma / šubarrê) to describe the citizenry clearly presupposes a more extensive composition in which the male population was also praised, in the normal male–female sequence—unless the masculine forms are simply student errors. 405.  The translation generally follows Foster (ibid.), with modifications as indicated. The composition begins on line 2 of the tablet, which is line 1of Foster’s translation. 406.  Reconstruction following Lambert, “Prostitution,” 143. 407.  Foster’s translation here (in square brackets with question marks) is problematic in sense and structure, deviating from the three parallel cola. Lines 6–7 consist of paired bicola in which each of the four members exhibits an identical structure. Each colon begins with a plural feminine noun designating a class of women, followed by the relative pronoun ša, an adverbial phrase (ina-x), and the verb or verbal phrase that describes the basic activity. In the three other cola, the ina-x phrase describes the manner or means by which the action is performed, and in 6a and 7a it refers to some special skill or knowledge. Lambert (ibid.) comes closer to duplicating the common structure when he translates “Entus (or: Ugbabtus) who [guard] truth in their husbands,” but “in their husbands” is only superficially parallel. The meaning remains unclear. 408.  Harris (“Nadītu Woman,” 135) translates rêmu, “foetus,” followed by Gruber (141) and Westenholz (253); Foster (2:770): “Cloistered women who are skilled in keeping the unborn child alive.” I have chosen a literal translation in order to identify the term for “womb” in the original. Cf. Lambert (“Prostitution,” 143): “… preserve the womb by their skill.” 409.  Reconstruction following Lambert, ibid. 410.  Translation from Lambert, ibid. Foster (2:770): “Holy Women who place [ ] in purifying water.”

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(8) Observing interdicts, adhering to what is sacred,411   They bless [ ] . . . (9) Reverent, circumspect, mindful of virtue,412   The daughters of the gods (mārāt ili) always . . . (10) Well-tried in good works, they can (do) what is see[mly?],   The [ ] of all Babylon . . . (11) These (masc.) are the ones whom Marduk freed of obligations,   [I have] extolled . . . , nor do I impugn them! Here we have three classes that are often grouped together in late texts recalling Babylon’s past, but in contrast to the collective representation of most texts, here each of the classes is identified by a distinctive skill or function. Thus it shows how these figures from Babylon’s past were remembered in the Neo-Babylonian period, raising the inevitable, but largely unanswerable, question of how closely that corresponded to the historical past. At least we can say that the qadištu in this text is firmly situated in the cultic sphere, both by the nature of the activity with which she is identified and the company with which she is associated. And, as in ABL 1126, some sort of purifying action seems to be indicated. If the qadištu is associated with purification rituals, we do not know in what context(s) this activity was performed. Is the water of purification to be associated more specifically with childbirth, and does the pairing of the qadištu with the nadītu suggest some common sphere of activity? Or do the three classes share only the common state of being dedicated to a deity, while exercising quite distinct functions? Elsewhere nadītus and qadištus are not described as working together, and nadītus are not associated with childbirth or nurture of infants. Perhaps that is why CAD B 62 understands the womb mentioned in line 7 as the nadītus’ own, translating “the nadītu-women who by clever means keep their wombs intact”—an interpretation that seems to emphasize potential, rather than restriction, for a class known in the vernacular as “fallowed” (kept out of production).413 Since we do not know what particular skill is associated with the ereš. 411.  Foster (2:770): “Who observe.…” Cf. CAD I/J 57 (ikkibu): “qašdāti ša … anzillu šuṣṣuru … the qadištu-women who respect (special) interdicts … .” I have adopted a more literal rendering to show that the structure changes in line 8, with infinitives followed by the main verb. There is no relative pronoun (ša: “who”), and I understand lines 8–11 to refer to the whole series of women singled out in lines 6–7, not simply the qadištu. 412. Cf. CAD Ḫ 124 (ḫasāsu): “taking care of the meek, keeping in mind what is good.” 413.  Or does it have a sense of purity? Cf. CAD N/2 162: “the nadītu women who keep the womb inviolate through (their) cunning.” This seems a strange way to refer to whatever efforts nadītus may have made to avoid prohibited pregnancies or births. The verb bulluṭu, with its meanings of “healing” or “keeping alive … safe, or intact” (CAD B 52), seems to focus on saving or securing life that is endangered. Cf. AHw 99 balāṭu D 3, “gesund machen, heilen,” citing this passage: “Priesterinnen, ša u2-bal-la-ṭa den Mutterleib (bei der Geburt).” Harris understood the womb as



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dingir.ra, we cannot say whether a common sphere of activity was assumed. But the Gilgamesh text clearly identifies a whole series of female classes with the rescue and nurture of foundlings. So, although nadītu does not appear in the Gilgamesh series, it may well be that both texts place the “daughters of the god(s)” collectively in much the same sphere of activity in their portraits of former times. A similar series of cult-related women including qadištu is found in another SB text that appears to ascribe special powers to these women, but they are malevolent powers in this case. 46. Šurpu III:116, VIII:69 Collection of incantations for dispelling evil.414 The collection of incantations, prayers, and instructions for magic practices assembled under the title Šurpu415 contains two occurrences of nu.gig, which are essentially duplicates, with variations. Although the composition as a whole likely dates from the Kassite period (MB), with portions going back to Old Babylonian times, the text in which the nu.gig references occur is a late (Neo-Assyrian) copy.416 The composition comprises nine tablets, of which Tablet III constitutes a long list of 173 “oaths,” many with double referents, as in the case of paired lukur and nu.gig in line 116. A second occurrence of this pair appears in Tablet VIII 69, in an expanded context. According to Reiner’s analysis, Tablets VII–IX consist of variations on the themes presented in an original series of Tablets I–VI, added to the original core when the Nineveh series was established.417 Thus the second occurrence of the paired terms should be understood as a seventh-century variation of an earlier reference in Tablet III. that of women having difficulty in pregnancy when she translates “heal the foetus,” and Foster’s translation assumes a similar understanding. A further consideration favoring Harris’ interpretation is the context of praise; as the purifications of the qadištus appear to be seen as activity benefiting the city and its inhabitants, it seems reasonable to assume that the nadītus’ skill was also intended to be understood as a social benefit. Harris (“Nadītu Woman,” 135), comments on this attribution as follows: “In a description of the fine women of Babylon the nadītus of this city are praised for their great proficiency, perhaps even magical powers, in saving the foetus who might otherwise have died. The nadītu then who was not permitted to bear children was later associated with the saving of infants!” 414.  Transliteration, translation, and commentary: Erica Reiner, Šurpu: A Collection of Sumerian and Akkadian Incantations (AfOB 11; Graz: E. Weidner, 1958). Further treatment: Rykle Borger, “Šurpu II, III, IV und VIII in ‘Partitur’,” in Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert (ed. A. R. George and I. L. Finkel; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000) 15–90 (score transliteration). 415.  The title Šurpu (“burning”) refers to the magic operations to be performed while the incantations and prayers were being recited. 416. Reiner, Šurpu, 2. For the manuscripts containing qadištu (from Assur and Nineveh), see Borger, “Šurpu,” 36, 47–48, 75. 417. Reiner, Šurpu, 6.

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Tablet III opens with a petition to Asalluḫi (Marduk), “exorcist among the gods” (maš.maš dingir.meš: āšip ilī, line 2), to undo any “oath” (māmītu418) the petitioner is under. This is followed by a list of “oaths” identifying every conceivable object or agent by which the petitioner might have sworn, bringing upon him the evil he now seeks to dispel.419 In this list, lines 116–117 form a pair naming several classes of “religious women” and set off from the surrounding lines, none of which refer to persons. (116) māmīt nadīti (lukur/munusna-di-ti) u qadišti (munusnu.gig!) u the oath/curse of the nadītu and the qadištu (117) māmīt Kūbi (dku₃-bi) ēnti/ugbabti (ereš.dingir.ra) ú   the oath/curse of the kūbu of(?) the ēntu/ugbabtu420 But the paired lines are not parallel. There is no conjunction between dkù-bi and ereš.dingir.ra, suggesting a genitive relationship rather than a pair.421 Does the kūbu then stand for the ēntu/ugbabtu, as the effective power that is invoked alongside the nadītu and the qadištu? In VIII 69 the same series of terms occur, but now with the relative pronoun šá between kù-bi and ereš.dingir.ra making the subordination explicit. Expansions at the beginning and end of the original two-line cluster (now in reversed order) create a “comprehensive” enumeration of “divine daughters”: (69) itti māmīt mārāt ili (dumu.munus dingir.meš) kūbi (kù-bi) ša ēnti/ ugbabti (ereš.dingir.ra) qadišti (munusnu.gig) u kulmašītu min min min Together with the oath/curse of the divine daughters, the kūbu of the ēntu/ ugbabtu, the nadītu, the qadištu, and the kulmašītu ditto ditto ditto

418.  Here in the sense of curse, as the “consequences of a broken oath attacking a person who took it” (CAD M/1 192). 419.  Each of the 173 lines of oaths concludes with the refrain: “Asalluḫi, exorcist among the gods, will undo” (Reiner, Šurpu, 2). 420.  Line 118 reads: māmīt keppê u kiṣallim, “oath/curse of the skipping rope and the knucklebone,” which does not seem to have a close relationship to either of the surrounding lines (the following line names barley and silver). The skipping rope is associated with Ištar in CT 25 45:27 (Descent of Ishtar) where she is described as “holding the great skipping ropes” (CAD K 312), and Reiner’s translation of ki-za-lim (