Guys, please be aware that this article is written by Ancient Origins, a website that describes itself as “the only Pop Archaeology site combining scientific research with out-of-the-box perspectives”. It’s well-known for spreading conspiracy theories, especially ancient aliens.
A cursory look through their article headlines will show you what kind of content they publish: “Maya: Science Only Acknowledges Now What Ancient Sages Knew About Reality 5000 Years Ago”, “Ancient Race of White Giants Described in Native Legends From Many Tribes”, “Rh-Negative Blood: An Exotic Bloodline or Random Mutation?”, “Is This a Tiny Alien Skeleton? Scientists Say “No”, But Not Everyone is Convinced”. In their defence, they do debunk some of the conspiracy theories within their articles, but they still give them equal attention, and the clickbait titles show what kind of audience these articles are meant to attract. This is the equivalent of writing an article titled “Do Vaccines Cause Autism?” and having one scientist and one anti-vaxxer sit down to have an even debate. It doesn’t reflect reality.
Getting back to the linked article, the premise itself is not wrong. Sacred prostitution in Mesopotamia is now doubted by many scholars. However, the article (or what I can read of it, since I surprisingly don’t have a premium subscription to Ancient Origins) makes some glaring mistakes:
Ishtar was not called the Goddess Har. A couple of Google searches enabled me to trace the origin of this idea to The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine by Nancy Qualls-Corbett (1988, and you can feel it). Qualls-Corbett believes in the existence of sacred prostitutes, and her theories rest exactly on what modern academics are trying to disprove - the translation of Akkadian terms ḫarimtu, nadītu and qadištu as “prostitute”. She also perpetuates the idea that matriarchal societies (which Mesopotamia was NOT) were peaceful and in tune with nature. Lastly, she claims the Gilgamesh Epic was “completed about 7000 B.C.E., though possibly it comes from a much older oral tradition” (p. 33). What on Earth, Nancy? What on Earth?
Nancy’s source for Ishtar as the Goddess Har is Barbara Walker’s The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983), which I’m not going to delve into because it’s even worse and I don’t feel like debunking the theory that Greek hora, Arabic harem and English harlot have the same origin.
While we’re at it, the idea that “Ishtar was sometimes called the Goddess Har since she was the mother of the harlots” (quote from Ancient Origins) is preposterous, since it makes the assumption that the Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamians knew the English word “harlot”. In fact, the word “harlot” definitely has no links to Mesopotamia, and the simplest of Wiktionary searches will tell you that.
Next up: Spanish puta comes from the Latin word for “well”. Surprisingly, it doesn’t. There is a Latin word puteus meaning “pit” or “well”, but there is no etymological link. Go figure.
Puticuli, the Latin word for “grave-pits”, actually means “the womb of rebirth”? Wow, I would’ve thought it came from puteus + the diminutive culus.
Don’t mind me, I’m just burying myself in the puticuli.
At this point, you can probably tell I’m pretty done with this article. In summary, the article was published on a non-academic website dedicated to fringe theories, uses outdated sources written by people from a different field, and presents some very shoddy etymologies as fact. Its core may reflect current research, but please, guys, there are far better sources out there. Try @bayoread‘s book recommendation of The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity. Try this academic article about sacred prostitutes in Greek and Roman times. Even this Tumblr post does a better job of explaining it than Ancient Origins.
I’ll conclude by linking my guide to online research and reminding you all to please check the content of what you’re sharing. Sharing without reading spreads misinformation - and this kind of misinformation is particularly harmful to Mesopotamian studies. I genuinely don’t care if people believe Ishtar was called the Goddess Har (though I will roll my eyes at it), but when people start believing aliens were responsible for Mesopotamian civilisation - thus discrediting the actual, Middle Eastern people behind it - and buying cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals on the black market so they can own something made by aliens, it becomes a serious problem. It’s much easier to check what you share and avoid supporting this kind of misinformation altogether.
