cathy

FYI A new book is being published soon by Cambridge University Press:

The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity by Stephanie Lynn Budin.

She demonstrates that sacred prostitution did not exist in the ancient world. She considers ancient Near East, Greco-Roman, and early Christian sources. And she says "the myth of sacred prostitution has nothing to do with....the construction of a decadent, Oriental 'Other.' Instead the myth has come into being as a result of more than 2000 years of misinterpretations, false assumptions, and faulty methodology."

Needless to say it will be on my reading list!

Cathy

Suheir

Oooh, sounds interesting! I remember reading a book about Indian folk and sacred dances from my local library - it was written and published in India. It very clearly stated that there were *no* temple prostitutes until the British arrived in India and made the temple dancers debase themselves.

Aziyade

OOH!!! I heard her speak once, before or right after her first book came out. Too COOOL! I can't wait for this one!!

Gilana

Hmmm..as curious as to why this would need a whole book? I am currently reading a book by Lesley Hazleton called "Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible's Harlot".

She addresses the issue of "sacred prostitution" on two pages, debunking it by saying, to paraphrase, that it was a story made up by Herodotus(sp?) I believe, don't have book in front of me, and that he most certainly made it up as he could never have been there and that later "academics" picked up on this theme as it fit into their Orientalist fantasies.

She says that it could have been debunked long ago by asking why societies that placed such high regard on paternity for inheritance issues, would condone or even require, that virgins prostitute themselves in the temples....makes sense to me.

cathy

The book is about 350 pages. There are chapters as follows:

The Ancient Near Eastern Data
The So-Called "Evidence"
Herodotos
In the Footsteps of Herodotos: Lucian and Jeremiah
Pindar Fragments
Strabo, Confused and Misunderstood
Klearkhos, Justinus, and Valerius Maximus
Archaeolgoical "Evidence" from Italy
The Early Christian Rhetoric
Last Myths
Bibliography + two indexes

Most likely lots of quotations and a painstaking, thorough, very scholarly high-level academic treatment with lots of footnotes.

Cathy

Gilana

Ah, sounds like the old "publish or perish"...think I'll finish my current book and then move on to a more fun read, like a good old-fashioned bodice ripper

Andrea Deagon

I'm looking forward to seeing this book. It is really about time. A lot of scholars have argued this in many different ways over the past 15 years or so, and I think what this book will offer is the interface between this academic material and the world at large. Also, a lot of scholars realize that the information in thier own discipline is skewed, but accept the existence of sacred prostitution in other areas/times/places. (For example, an Egyptologist saying, "Though it did exist in MEsopotamia, it didn't in Egypt.") This book should fix that problem.

There are actually two threads in the "myth" -- the author may have a more complex interpretation, of course. One of them is the story in Herodotus that all the virgins of a city have to prostitute themselves, waiting to be hired for whatever a man chooses to give her, at his pleasure. There's a lovely note about how some virgins have to sit around for ages because they're ugly and undesirable. This was reported by Herodotus third-hand and as a custom of the past, so it's clearly an urban legend by folklore standards. It is also a story designed to present women in a humiliating way that underscores their lack of control over their own sexuality and defines them as open to humiliation because of it. Women's sexuality is literally owned by men, and maybe it's only worth a dime. Most of the Western Christian denouncements of sacred prostitution come from this story.

The other, I think, arises from the late 19th/early 20th century mythmaking in which a number of scholars created the idea of primitive matriarchy, which of course existed to give way to the glories of modern patriarchal society. In this intellectual climate a lot of Middle Eastern texts were deciphered for the first time, and since the only way to determine the meaning of them was by context, if you misunderstood the context, you misunderstood the term. For example, an Egyptian term (khener) formerly thought to mean "harem" is now known to mean "troupe of musicians and dancers." Ooops. And in the heady turn of the century matriarchal myth-making, the idea of sacred prostitutes influenced the readings of the newly discovered texts from Sumerian and Babylonian temples, so that a lot of terms were taken to mean prostitute that really meant something far different. I recently read an article about Sumerian temple personnel, in which the old-school author defined nearly every female sacred office as "prostitute," even those whose duties were listed as wet-nursing infants (for example).

It always amazed me that in the early days of New Age / Woman centered spirituality, the idea of the sacred prostitute was thought of as a good thing (as it supposedly reunited sex and religion, split apart in the Judeo-Christian tradition). Yeah, but you're glorifying *prostitution.* Why should *paying* for sex in unequal patriarchal relationships be glorified? Well, we'll hopefully soon be shed of a myth we can do without.

I only hope this book means that I can now tell people "go read it" instead of having to argue it out myself, as I am obviously experienced at doing ... :-) I am interested to see how she works with (and without) ideas of orientalism, too. Should be a good read.

Joy in dance,

Andrea

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Tarik Sultan

If prostitution secred or otherwise was such a great thing the men would have excluded the women from it and kept it all to themselves, just like they did with damn near everything else! That's why and when I realized it was bull.... If it was so liberating for women, where was the temple with all the hot young guys waiting for the OLDER experienced women to show them how to be a man! Funny how it never seemed to work the other way isn't it!

Dipali

I don’t think its all bullshit, I have not done any personal research or know anybody personally who did any research on this subject, but in India various books in different language are available about sacred prostitution . Devadasi Pratha which probably still exists in some areas in India is supposedly going on from ancient times, but its existence found mostly in script written in Mughal periods which is not so ancient in Indian history. I have seen some movies made on Devadasis, and read a few books in English and in Bengali, but I cannot remember any of the writer names of the books. The Devadasis not always used to be such as prostitute but rather an entertainer who lived in the temple premises and lived on whatever was offered by the king or local jamindar or the main priest. They usually enjoyed a higher status in society , as many used to view them human wife of God. In the present day India, a Devadasi will be almost impossible to find, but time to time their story still pops up, mainly because of their exploitation as a sex subject .

Kind regards

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Aisha Azar

Just adding this up here because my message is "too short".