Sex in Service of the Goddess
“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... 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, from place to place....
Sanctuary of Aphrodite at Paphos (now Kouklia, Cyprus).
(Source: Nikodem Nijaki, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
“...at Babylon every woman, whether rich or poor, had once in her life to submit to the embraces of a stranger at the temple of Mylitta, that is, of Ishtar or Astarte, and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this sanctified harlotry. The sacred precinct was crowded with women waiting to observe the custom. Some of them had to wait there for years.
An engraving of the goddess Mylitta, by Daniël met de Penningen (1690).
(Source: Rijksmuseum, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
“At Heliopolis or Baalbec in Syria [i.e., Lebanon], famous for the imposing grandeur of its ruined temples, 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. The emperor Constantine abolished the custom, destroyed the temple, and built a church in its stead.
Panoramic shot of a Baalbek temple complex in modern-day Lebanon.
(Source: © Guillaume Piolle / CC BY 3.0 / Wikimedia)
“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 favour. ‘It was a law of the Amorites, that she who was about to marry should sit in fornication seven days by the gate.’
An Amorite penitent.
(Source: Dosseman, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
“At Byblus the people shaved their heads in the annual mourning for Adonis. Women who refused to sacrifice their hair had to give themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival, and the money which they thus earned was devoted to the goddess….
A Roman-era Astarte statuette from Byblos.
(Source: taller romano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
“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. The suspicion is confirmed by a Greek inscription found at Tralles in Lydia, which proves that the practice of religious prostitution survived in that country as late as the second century of our era. It records of a certain woman, Aurelia Aemilia by name, not only that she herself served the god in the capacity of a harlot at his express command, but that her mother and other female ancestors had done the same before her; and the publicity of the record, engraved on a marble column which supported a votive offering, shows that no stain attached to such a life and such a parentage.
Greek inscription found in Tralles, Lydia (part of modern-day Republic of Türkiye), telling of Aurelia Aemilia's life as a hierodule.
(Source: W. M. Ramsay, "Unedited Inscriptions of Asia Minor," Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, vii. [1883] p. 276.)
“In Armenia the noblest families dedicated their daughters to the service of the goddess Anaitis in her temple at Acilisena, where the damsels acted as prostitutes for a long time before they were given in marriage. Nobody scrupled to take one of these girls to wife when her period of service was over.
Modern-day depiction of the goddess Anahit (Anaitis), sculpted by Hagop Ishkanian (1964).
(Source: Hagop Ishkanian, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
“Again, the goddess Ma was served by a multitude of sacred harlots at Comana in Pontus, and crowds of men and women flocked to her sanctuary from the neighbouring cities and country to attend the biennial festivals or to pay their vows to the goddess."
A dedication to the goddess Ma, imprinted by one of the faithful, c. 1st cent. BCE.
(Source: National Museum in Warsaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
—J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. V, 1914, pp. 36-39)
