The hidden truth about the ancient sacred sexual priestesses of babylon

Many of us dedicated to the goddesses of love are fascinated by the tales and accounts of the ancient sexual priestesses of the near east and the Mediterranean.

We don’t know much about them, but their scandalous history has been passed down from the ancient world – stories of the thousands of temple prostitutes at the Temple of Aphrodite in Corinth, shameful sexual practices of the priestesses and women of ancient cities like Babylon, dedicated to the exotic goddesses like Astarte and Ishtar doing sexy things.

I have been to temples in Italy dedicated to the ancient goddesses of love where they have labeled small rooms as the sacred brothel-houses.

I’ve studied modern pagan Aphrodite worshipping traditions where an emphasis is put on the Aphrodite Devotee’s role as Hetaira/Courtesan, and the spirit of her free sexuality is wildly encouraged. 

A lot of our re-imaginings use the stories of the Sexual Priestesses and Temple Prostitutes of the Ancient World as inspiration and proof that we are carrying on an ancient lineage tradition.

But WERE there actually temple priestesses who practiced the art of sacred sexuality in the ancient world… or is it just myth?

Today I am tracing the truth of the ancient Sacred Sexual Priestess of the near-eastern and Mediterranean world, and exploring the role of the Temple Prostitute. 

The Burney Relief, 1800BC, depicting the goddess Inana/Ishtar/Ashtoreth

So friends, let us start our sexy adventure in ancient Babylon, prosperous city state of the Levantine empire.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, talks about “The Most Shameful Custom”, the practice of prostitution in service of the Temple of Ishtar in ancient Babylon.

This is where we get the saucy account of temple prostitution being a requirement of every woman in the city of Babylon:

“There is one custom amongst these people which is wholly shameful: every woman who is native of the country must once in her life go and sit in the temple of Aphrodite and there give herself to a strange man. …once a woman has taken her seat she is not allowed to go home until a man has thrown her a silver coin into her lap and taken her outside to lie with her. As he throws the coin, the man has to say, ‘In the name of the goddess Mylitta’ – that being the Assyrian name for Aphrodite… when she has lain with him, her duty to the goddess is discharged and she may go home.”

This is one of the pieces of “proof” that there were sacred temple prostitutes in ancient Babylon – however we do not have a single piece of proof from Babylon of this ever occurring.⠀

We know the real practices and roles and rites of the priestesses of Babylonia because they meticulously recorded them – we know which priestesses were allowed to own property, get married, who inherited from their fathers etc.

The only mention of sacred sex in Babylonia from Babylonia was a possibly yearly sacred marriage ritual between the High Priestess, representing the Goddess, and the King, where it is likely that the King and the High Priestess had sex.

So considering there is no Babylonian mention of this, it seems highly unlikely that EVERYONE in the city was required to be a prostitute as an offering to Goddess.

In the same passage Herodotus talks about how Babylon runs a Bride Market for parents to sell their daughters, so men could pick the most beautiful brides, and a separate auction where they could palm off the ugly ones…

…which seems highly unlikely as the surviving firsthand cuniform marriage contracts we have from Babylonia at this time detail a lot of careful negotiation and collaboration from the families on both sides.

One thing to remember was that at the time Herodotus was writing this account Greece had been at war with Persia for the past forty years at least, and at this time Babylon was a part of the Persian empire.

It is not a leap of faith to consider that maybe some of what Herodotus said may have been more of a cultural slander, a “look at those barbaric horny Babylonians, we are soooo much better than them” kind of thing.

He might have had a political agenda. We don’t know.

But we do know that classicists throughout history have been VERY excited about the idea of ancient sacred prostitutes… maaayyyybeee so excited by it that they preferred to fudge the facts and indulge their fantasies a little bit?


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