"PrayHeF; Excerpt from "Eau Naturelle." Photo: Elke Scholz, 1996 'Eau Naturelie' represents a photographic collaborationbetween Artists Elke Scholz and Zoya to honour the female form and spirit h Nature. Elke's work has been published and is included in collections h Canada, the U.S.,Africa, Australia, and Europe. An exhibition of her work, "A Pad of One Woman's Journey," will open at Chapel Galle~yh Bracebridge, April 3, 1997.
VOLUME 17, NUMBER 1 5 Priestesses and "Sacred Prostitutes"
Prostitutes could have been available for hire near temples in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean area, but the evidence on priestesses does not support the argumen t that Cet artarhckquestionne 'existence et hs liens mtre &spr~tresses, among them were "temple prostitutes." Further, the pres- &S nrltes smueh et h *prostitution sacrh a% lhncienne entation of "cult prostitutionn in the Hebrew Bible (Old MCdterrande orimtalc. Testament) seems to be partly responsible for the concept of "sacred prostitution."
Priestesses in ancient Mesopotamia Sumerian kings appropriated a ritual that originalky installed a high priestess, in order to Rivkah Harris and other scholars have identified many Semitic and some Sumerian names for classes of priestess: asociate themselves with a Goddess'fertility, Her entu, naditu, ishtaritu, and qadishtu. These terms and power, and, to some extent, Her divinity. other information about Mesopotamian priestesses come from various places and periods, so that any generaliza- tions I make must be somewhat speculative. A deep concern for the fertility of land and people was The enta priestess, the Sumerian Nin-Dingir, meaning central to ritual activity in ancient Eastern Mediterranean "Lady Deity" or "Lady Who Is Goddess," was probably cultures, and, in some, cultic sexual intercourse consti- the "high priestess." She had elevated social status, but, in tuted the mythic and ritual expression of that concern. law, was subject to a strict code of ethics. If the "Sacred The peoples of the area worshipped many deities, among Marriage Rite" involved human participants, she would them powerful "fertilityn goddesses. Further, their deities have incarnated the Goddess Inanna, later Ishtar, who had were usually members of female-male pairs; this female- ritual intercoursewithHer consort Dumuzi, later Tammuz. male complementarity normally extended to temple func- Unfortunately, we cannot be sure what happened in the tionaries. In interpreting this concern with fertility and its temple's ritual bed chamber. However, in his persuasive sexual expression, scholars often state that these religions article on the "Sacred Marriage," Douglas Frayne argues promoted sexual promiscuity and counted among their that, at least in earlier times, the king, incarnating Dumuzi, temple personnel "sacred prostitutes." I will review what and the Nin-Dingirleniu, the Goddess on Earth, had scholars know about priestesses and about cultic sex in the sexual intercourse. ancient Eastern Mediterranean and try to determine The "Sacred Marriage Rite" was undoubtedly crucial to whether "sacred prostitution" was widespread. early Mesopotamian kingship. However, Douglas Frayne In Mesopotamia and, perhaps, other ancient Eastern argues convincinglythat the ritual was normally part of the Mediterranean cultures, the sexual ritual that scholars call installation of a new high priestess, but he refrains from "the Sacred Marriage" occurred in some form or other. If speculating on the significance of this connection. Now, it involved human participants, they would have incar- since evidence points to a later king's having replaced an nated deities. Neither would have been a prostitute! earlier high priest as the male in the ritual, I suggest that According to the Concise Oxford Dictionaty, "prostitu- Sumerian kings appropriated a ritual that originally in- tion" means: "The offering of the body for indiscriminate stalled a high priestess, in order to associate themselves lewdness for hire.. .; whoredom, harlotry." By this defini- with a Goddess' fertility, Her power, and, to some extent, tion, a prostitute is sexually promiscuous and, signifi- Her divinity. cantly, gets paid for sexual acts. Edwin Yamauchi's defini- By historical times, the "Sacred Marriage Rite" served to tion of "sacred prostitution," expanding on the dictionary underpin kingship in Mesopotamia. In cities other than one, is typical ofscholarly pronouncements on the subject: Inanna's Uruk, the Goddess participating in the ritual was "Cultic prostitution is a practice involving the female and usually the protector Goddess of the city or the consort of at times the male devotees of fertility deities, who presum- the city's protector God. Normally the ritual identified ably dedicated their earnings to their deityn (213). He sees Her with InannaIIshtar in order to validate the city's ruler the "Sacred Marriage Rite" as one of the reasons for the through his relationship with the powerfLl Goddess. For practice, especially in Mesopotamia, where the king and "a a long time after the "Sacred Marriage Rite" and the ofice temple prostitute" took the central roles. Obviously of high priestess had lost real significance, kings continued Yamauchi, as other scholars, is confusing ritual sex and to call themselves "beloved of Inanna or Ishtar." paid sexual acts, whether sacred or not. So important was the office ofhigh priestess in Mesopo-
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean
tamia that the conqueror of a city usually appointed a that they were all potential high priestesses, on whom also family member to that ofice (or as high priest of that city's there was a prohibition against child bearing, except, protector deity). In this way, Enheduanna, perhaps the maybe, as a result of the "Sacred Marriage Rite." most famous Mesopotamian priestess, became high priest- A naditu priestess's primary duty seems to have been to ess of Moon God Nanna-Sin of the city of Ur. Flourishing address daily prayers and offerings to her temple's divine around 2300 BCE (Before Common Era, same as BC), couple. At Sippar she made offerings twice daily and a Enheduanna was special monthly daughter of Sar- offering. In addi- gon, the earliest tion, she took part empire-building in yearly initiations Semitic king. Au- of new naditu thor of many priestesses and at- hymns to Inanna / tended at least six Ishtar, Enheduan- other festivals. It is na is the very first not clear exactly poet in history what she did at whose name we these festivals and know. rituals, but none of From the resi- the available evi- dence of the clois- dence suggests that tered priestesses in- her duties were in side the temple- any way sexual. complex of the Such priestesses in Moon God Nan- some localities or na-Sin at Ur, ar- periods may have chaeologists un- practised ritual sex, earthed a damaged but there is no evi- disc. One side of dence that they did. the disc depicted a The many refer- ritual; theother car- ences to another ried an inscription. class of priestess, In the depiction, the ishtaritu, mean- the tallest, thus ing "devotee of Linda Macfarlane, "Athena," 'graphite on paper, 7" X 7", 1996 most important, Ishtar," sadly,- give- figure is a woman in a flounced dress like those that us little information. She appears to have been a dedicated Goddesses wore; in addition, she wears a headdress re- woman, who was, probably, also prohibited from bearing served for priestesses. As another sign of rank, she super- children, even though she could marry. vises a naked male priest, who ritually waters a sacred tree. The same seems to have been true of the qadishtu, The inscription identifies "Enheduanna" as consort of meaning "holy or tabooed or set-apart woman"; however, Nanna-Sin and Sargon's daughter. Together, inscription according to legal documents, qadirhtu priestesses could and image suggest that the central figure is Enheduanna, bear children. As cult functionaries, they chanted at high priestess of Ur (see Winter). rituals, held up the deity's statue, and joined in various Significantly, the disc came from the cloister area; the religious ceremonies. No evidence suggests that they high priestess may have been the senior naditu priestess, a performed sexual acts. kind of abbess. At the city of Sippar, between about 1880 Mesopotamian society, then, expected its female cult and 1550 BCE,according to Rivkah Harris, naditu priest- functionaries to be chaste, and none of them had a sexual esses included royal and noble women. Harris argues that function in ritual, with the likely exception of high naditu derives from a root meaning "fdlow, unculti- priestesses. However, because they were female, they may vated." In some places, these priestesses could marry, but have been essential at most rituals, for female-male they could not bear children to their husband (see Jeyes). complementarity in oGciants, as in deities, seems to have Perhaps this prohibition stemmed from the possibility been the norm.
VOLUME 17, NUMBER 1 Priestesses in ancient Syro-Palestine and the Hebrew However, the Ugaritic tablets do contain titles of some Bible religious hnctionaries, but, as de Tarragon says, none is grammatically in the feminine gender. This fact may mean Until recently, the scholarly consensus about Canaanite only that the masculine gender form, at Ugarit as else- religion was that it was orgiastic and encouraged sexual where, was understood to include both male and female. promiscuity. The responsibility for this view lies primarily The qdrhm, "holy men," seem to have been an impor- with the Hebrew Bible and, to some extent, with later tant group of priests, for lists place them second only to the sources, like Greek historian Heroditus (about 480 to khnm, "priests." The group may have included women. about 425 BCE),Greek travel writer Strabo (about 64 BCE The high-status qdshm could marry and establish families, to 19 CE), and certain Christian writers. and they could hold other offices. There is, in addition, no Heroditus and Strabo, as well as the Christian writers, suggestion in the Ugaritic material that the q&m had any described Mesopotamian customs, not Canaanite ones. sexual role in ritual, nor is there any evidence that they However, earlier scholars found their remarks useful, were "sacred prostitutes." because they discussed ritual sex. In addition, the name of As early as 1941, Beatrice Brooks questioned the usual one class of Mesopotamian priestess, the qadishtu, seemed translation of qedrrhah as "sacred prostitute," but only helpful in the interpretation of the controversial term recently have scholars begun to rethink the term. Phyllis qedcshab in the Hebrew Bible; the term is usually trans- Bird argues that most previous discussion accepted that lated as "sacred prostitute." "sacred or cultic prostitution" had actually occurred in the The later writers describe customs that the contempo- context of fertility cults. This assumption, she maintains, rary Babylonians supposedly practised--customs that re- resulted from the Hebrew Bible's "deliberate" association quired a woman, once in her life, to have sexual intercourse of qcdeshah, "holy woman," with zonah, "prostitute" (76). at a temple with the first stranger who offered her pay- It seems likely, then, that an influential group ofpriest- ment; afterwards, she dedicated the payment to the tem- esses (the qehshah) existed in Canaan. Otherwise, why ple's Goddess. Of this "custom," Tikva Frymer-Kensky would the writers of the Hebrew Bible take such trouble asserts: "No cuneiform text supports the idea that the to discredit them? Their function in Canaanite religion is women of Assyria or Babylon did thisn (200). Signifi- unknown, but they were almost certainly priestesses, as cantly, as Yamauchi points out, these late commentaries were their Mesopotamian counterparts. are the "most explicit texts describing sacred prostitution in Mesopotamia" (216). Even if they were accurate-and Conclusion scholars doubt that they were-what they describe does not fit the usual definition of "prostitution." Nonetheless, Whether or not the Biblical qcdeshah had a sexual they had their influence on interpretations of the Hebrew function in ritual, it is highly likely that, in early ancient Bible's references to the qedcshah. Mesopotamia, at least one category of female religious Greek satirical writer Lucian (about 115 to about 200 functionary, the entu priestess, did engage in sexual inter- CE),alsovery influential, describedsimilar customs that he course as the central act of a crucial fertility rite. This located in Syro-Palestine: during mourning rites for Adonis, priestess almost certainly incarnated a Goddess on earth. women who refused to shave their heads had, for one day, Around her clustered groups of priestesses whose func- to sell themselves in a "foreigners-only market." The tions probably varied widely and large numbers ofwhom women offered their fees to the goddess Astarte. Ofcourse, were sworn to chastity. They were priestesses in a religious this evidence is also very late, and Lucian was a satirist! system with complementarity of female and male; the Q&, the root of the Mesopotamian Semitic word "Sacred Marriage Rite" was a case in point. qadishtu, means "holy, sacred"; the same root occurs in the Canaanite religion also was, as far as we know, one in Hebrew Bible's qcdeshah. Thus, both words should mean which Goddesses and Gods were complementary and not "sacred prostitute," but "holy or sacred woman." their complementarity necessary to the right ordering of Fortunately, we can get help from other Syro-Palestin- the world. One example of the playing out of this ian material than the Hebrew Bible. Since 1929, archae- complementarity on the human level comes from Ugarit. ologists excavating Ugarit, an ancient city in Syria, have There, both the king and the queen had important roles in been recovering thousands of clay tablets, dating from ritual, usually separate ones, but both necessary. It would 1550-1200 BCE,that contain mythic poems, god and be surprising to me if the same complementarity did not offering lists, and lists of religious functionaries. This apply to the Canaanite religion that the Hebrew Bible material suggests that Ugaritic religion was essentially describes. For instance, the Hebrew Bible understands the similar to Canaanite religion and that cult practice at Canaanite Rain and Storm God Baal to be closely associ- Ugarit was not orgiastic. Indeed, Ugarit's fertility cult ated with the Goddess Ashtoreth (Astarte). appears not to have been primarily sexual, nor is there In Mesopotamia, according to Gruber (l42), the qadishtu unambiguous evidence for a "Sacred Marriage Rite" at priestesses had special connections to the worship ofAdad Ugarit. Further, the tablets provide no suggestion of "cult (Bad Hadad). Is it possible that the "sacred women" ofthe prostitution." Hebrew Bible were likewise associated with the cult of
CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME Baal? Since Baal was unquestionably the chief rival of the Israelite god, would it not make sense that the writers of the Hebrew Bible would want His special priestesses to WOMEN AND TORAH share in His shame and degradation? Wife Of ThL paper war presented at the Centre for Feminist Re- search 3 *Confirmccon Female Spirituality: A Celebration of Worshippers, Goddesses, Priestesses, and Femah Saints, ""held Noah's wife can be seen as a metaphor at York University in March 19%. Fundingarristancefiom tbeSocial SciencesandHumanitiesResearch Council (WC) for the thousands of women fir thepresentation andpublicationof thispaper isgratefilly acknowkdged who are nameless
Johanna H. Stuckty, Profissor Emerita, Women i Studies receive no wordly recognition and Religious Sdics, York University,still teaches courses on ancient Goddess worship and is writing a book on the topic. whose stories need to be told.
References As they entered the ark, Noah looked unto his wife Bird, Phyllis. "'To Play the Harlot': An Inquiry into an and they knew that life could continue. Old Testament Metaphor." Gendrr and Dzference in AncientIsrael, Ed. Peggy L. Day. Minneapolis: Fortress, She trusted 1989.75-94. Brooks, Beatrice A. "Fertility Cult Functionaries in the she believed OldTestament." Jout~I0~3iblicalLitcrature60(194 1): 227-253. she toiled. Frayne, Douglas. "Notes on the Sacred Marriage Rite." Bibliothcra Ohntalis 42 (1985): 5-22. She endured. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. In the Wake of the Goddrses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Her labour created the haven that kept the breath Pagan Myth. New York: Free Press, 1992. of life. Harris, Rivkah. AncientSippar:A Demographic Study ofan Old-Babylonian City (1894-1595 BC). Istanbul: For forty days and nights the waters Historisch-Archeologisch Institut, 1975. swelled Jeyes, Ulla. "The Naditu Women of Sippar." Images of The floodgates subsided. Women in Antiquity. Eds. A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1983. 260-272. Forth they came out of the ark. de Tarragon, Jean-Michel. Le Culte b Ugarit dirprh ks de tcxtcs kz pratique en cunt!z~rmesalphabetiques. Paris: Generations remember the man who built Gabalda, 1980. the ark Winter, Irene. "Women in Public: the DiskofEnheduanna, the Beginning of the Ofice of EN-Priestess, and the And she who maintained life is Weight of Visual Evidence." La fmme &m & Proche- faceless. Orient antique: Compte rendu dr h XYXIIIC Rencontre Assyriologiquelntmationak (Paris, 7-20 Juillet, 1986). Let us render homage to this woman Ed. J. M. Durand. Paris: Editions recherche sur les and celebrate her strength. civilisations, 1987. 189-20 1. Yamauchi, Edwin M. "Cultic Prostitution: A Case Study in Cultural Difision." Otticnt and Occident: Essays Presented to Cyrus H. Gordon. Ed. H. Hoffner. Neukirchen-Vluyn: Kevelaer, 1973.213-222. Women and Torah is an independently operating subgroup of Tapestry, a Jewish feminist group in Calgary, which meets monthly to gain an understnnding of women in the Torah ,to Linda Macfarlane is a free-lance illustrator and artist. A native discuss their roles, highlight their contribution to Judaism, and of B. C. 'S west coast, she has travelled extensively seeking the traces of our human history with particular emphasis on art, enhance their own spirituality through an understanding of magic, andmysticism. Linda is also involvedin on-going research their legacy. Members of the group include Carla Atkinson, into the circumstances of women's lives and the influence of ElaineBucknum, Loretta Butot, Shirley Dunn,]enny Glickman- women through the ages. Rynd, and Maggie Serpa.
VOLUME 17, NUMBER 1