PROSTITUTION, SACRED (pros'il-tri-shim, sa'kred).
(1) In Babylonia. According to Herodotus, every woman born in Babylonia 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.
(2) In Armenia. Strabo relates that in Ar menia the sons and daughters of the leading families were consecrated to the service of Anaitis for a longer or shorter period. Their duty was to entertain strangers, and those females who had received the greatest number were on their return home the most sought after in marriage.
(3) In Phoenicia. The Phoenician worship of Astarte was no less distinguished by sacred prosti tution, to which was added a promiscuous inter course between the sexes during certain religious fetes.
(4) Probably in Egypt. Some writers deny that sacred prostitution was practiced in Egypt, but the great similarity between the worship of Osiris and Isis and that of Venus and Adonis renders the contrary opinion highly probable. On their way to the fetes of Isis at Bubastis the female pilgrims executed indecent dances when the vessels passed the villagers on the banks of the river. These obscenities, says Dufour, were such only as were about to happen at the tem ple, which was visited each year by seven hundred thousand pilgrims who gave themselves up to in credible excesses. Strabo asserts that a class called pellices were dedicated to the service of the patron deity of Thebes, and they "were permitted to cohabit with anyone they chose." (5) In India. Sir John Lubbock says the life led by the courtezans attached to the Hindu tem ples is not considered shameful, because they continue the old custom of the country under re ligious sanction.
The ease with which any doctrine or practice, however absurd or monstrous, will be accepted, if it possesses a religious sanction, would alone account for the respect entertained for religious prostitutes.
(6) A Hospitable Custom. The Hindus have a custom widely spread of providing for a guest a female companion, who i6 usually the wife or daughter of the host.
Such a connection with a stranger is even per mitted among peoples who are otherwise jealous preservers of female chastity.
This custom of sexual hospitality is said to have been practiced by the Babylonians in the time of Alexander, although according to the his torian, parents and husbands did not decline to accept money in return for favors thus accorded.
In Armenia also strangers alone were entitled to seek sexual hospitality in the sacred enclosures at the temple of Anaitis. Dufour says, "it may be surprising that the inhabitants of the country were so impressed with a worship in which their wonicn had all the benefit of the mysteries of Venus." "However," he adds, "the worship of Venus was in some sort stationary for the women, nomadic for the men, seeing that the latter could visit in towns the different fetes and temples of the goddesses, profiting everywhere in these sensual pilgrimages by the advantages reserved to guests and to strangers." (7) The Ambition of Oriental Women. In the East, the great aim of woman's life is mar riage and bearing children. We have a curious reference to this fact in the lament of Jephthah's daughter, which appears to have been occasioned less by her death than by the recorded fact that "she knew no man." (See JEPHTHAH'S Vow.) (8) Worship of the Goddess of Fecundity. In Babylonia sexual union was in the nature of an offering to the goddess of Fecundity, and a life of prostitution in the service of the goddess might well come to be viewed as pleasing to her and deserving of respect at the hands of her wor shipers. Sacred prostitution is only remotely connected, if at all, with communal marriage. The only association between them is the sexual hos pitality to strangers, which the former was estab lished to supply; but the association is only ap parent, as the providing of that hospitality is per fectly consistent with the recognition of female chastity and is quite independent of any ideas entertained as to marriage.
(9) Propriety of Relations in the Heroic Age. Mr. Gladstone says, "in the earliest heroic ages the intercourse between husband and wife was thoroughly natural, full of warmth, dignity, reciprocal deference, and substantial if not con ventional delicacy." The same writer further says: "The relation of youth and maiden generally is indicated with ex treme beauty and tenderness in the Iliad; and those of the unmarried woman to a suitor or probable spouse are so portrayed in the case of the incomparable Nausicaa as to show a delicacy and freedom that no period of history or state of manners can surpass. (Sir John Lubbock's Origin of Civilication, 3d ed., p. 96, sq.) (See ASIITO