Module+11

__**Divinities of Fertility**__ For the divinities of fertility, the feminine aspect of sexuality is based upon seduction, sensual enjoyment, sex appeal, and the breaking of social norms. The interpretations of the role of the goddess Inanna/ Ishtar is the most referenced evidence of this and it is known that she embodied all these qualities. In the Akkadian version of Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, her death is the reason why all sexual activity ends at one point in history. Knowing that there will be serious consequences if procreation is forever stopped, it is the god Ea who travels to the underworld to revive her and bring her back to life. Inanna was the official goddess of love and war. Female deities like Inanna usually participated in sexual adventures for sexual pleasure, oppose to male deities who mainly did it to secure offspring. Conjugal sex of divine couples was celebrated in the temples during special festivals and adulterous affairs could be ritually re-enacted according to some texts found about the Babylonian god Marduk. Inscriptions of the third and early second millenium demonstrate what the king's royal titles were, and that he referenced himself as the 'spouse' or the 'beloved' of Inanna. This is evidence of how the king used mythology and religion to show his subjects that he was of equal status among the gods and that they should treat him as a divinity. (Leick 2008)

__**The Sex Life of Gods and Goddesses**__ There are several Sumerian texts that deal with the sexual encounters of the gods Enki, Enlil, and Inanna/ Ishtar. The stories of sexual adventures of male deities are most frequently described with the goal of securing their offspring, the female lovers stress sexual pleasure. Festivals would celebrate the sexual union of divine couples. Evidence of this was found by a Mesopotamian ruler called Lagash from the third millenium, who described the rites ceremony of the two gods Ningirsu and his wife Baba. There exist erotic texts form the Sumerian culture and is found most prominently about the goddess Innana. The following text showed how some references of her refer to how her body has changed into a woman, "See now (my) breasts stand out; see now, hair has grown on our (my) genitals, signifying (?) my progress to the embrace of a man. Let us be very glad! Dance, dance! O Bau, let us be very glad about my genitals! Dance, dance! Later on it will delight him, it will delight him!" (Leick 2008). Other references show her to be a more experienced woman, "When my sweet precious, my heart, had lain down too, each of them in turn kissing with the tongue, each in turn, then my brother of the beautiful eyes did it fifty times to her, exhaustedly waiting for her, as she trembled underneath him, dumbly silent for him. My dear precious passed the time with my brother laying his hands on her hips''. According to Leick, Inanna is very popular in Mesopotamian culture because she epitomizes a whole range of sexuality from affectionate, to nurturing, to seductive, and to an aggressive predator. There are passages that acknowledged Inanna clearly as a prostitute, "They cannot compete with you Inana. As a prostitute you go down to the tavern and, like a ghost who slips in through the window, you enter there." Passages like this (among several others about prostitution and Inanna) are very common and promote the idea that a goddess behaved like a prostitute because all depictions of sexuality were seen as fundamental part of life given to humans by the gods. With the story of Inanna she was both prostitute and bride and these were both conflicting roles even for ancient Mesopotamian times. In the case of Inanna, the contradictions within her character were believed to be a result of a fusion between originally different goddesses like the Semitic warrior deity or the Sumerian love goddess. Mesopotamian society referenced her to be like the actual planet Venus, since they both shared many binary qualities that were merged together and were demonstrated in the tales of her manifestation.

There was much controversy on this topic and what type of prostitutes and transvestites were a part of the Inanna cults. Many historical documents like the Epics of Gilgamesh, the Laws of Hammurabi, Sumerian and Akkadian passages, and even greek foreigners like Herodotus wrote references about the Inanna cults. Most troubling however, is the Western biased interpretations of these customs and subsequent issues that have arose from what they documented as being the sacred prostitutes of Mesopotamia. Many words that were believed to translate into several words for prostitute have been challenged for their categorization that this was a profession done for mere commercial and profit gain. (Leick 2008) With the years many anthropologists like Leick, Gerda Lerner, and Ann Kessler Guinan to name a few have refuted this theory. We have a different bias on what prostitution meant culturally and this was portrayed in the anthropologists of twentieth and twenty-first century. This can be seen clearly, in Friedrich Engels' analysis of the economic function of prostitution in Mesopotamia which was inspired by Lewis Henry Morgan. In his writing Engels failed to put his Victorian bias aside and even spoke of these woman from more than 2000 years ago in expecting women to be eager to "exercise the right to chastity" (Lerner 1986). Leick argued that the translation alone of the word prostitute by modern definition was very different from what it meant culturally to Mesopotamian citizens because of the rules that exist in our society today. When it comes to the subject of having sex in public it is something rarely permitted in many parts of the world today. Some sexual acts were private but others had much to do with the moral standards of a particular time and had variation among different social classes. More importantly, these acts were seen as having a divine purpose and sacred to the worship of Inanna.
 * __Sacred Prostitution:__**[[image:Sacred_Deity.jpg width="249" height="438" align="right" caption="Inanna/ Ishtar of Sumeria"]]

Several documents known as divinations were found and explain explicitly what were the norms society abided by in having sexual relations in ancient Mesopotamia. These omens described a wide range of erotic scenarios, selection of partners, positions and places. A few of the omens mention sexual acts as a form of reproduction, but for the most part they are about non-procreative sexual behavior like ejaculation without intromission, masturbation, or anal sex. The sex omens were found on two tablets from the first-millenium BCE. According to Ann Kessler Guinan, the sex omens showed proof of the ideals masculine hegemony had created throughout Mesopotamian society. Most importantly, the omens demonstrated the way the people thought and the symbolic meaning attached to being a male with erotic desires in this time in history. Kessler argued that there was a "binary ideology of social hierarchy" or a double standard that prohibited women the right to feel, speak, or watch men equally during sex. The mutual benefit of sharing roles during sex were seen as a method of demasculinizing men, when instead it was satisfying to god for males to dominate and subjugate women to this type of lifestyle. Kessler explained that masculine agency and social identity were significant to the structure of this society and this led to the subordination of women. During sex, women should be seen as what men are not, which was exposed, submissive, and weak.
 * __Sex Omens of Mesopotamia__**

//Below are 17 omens from Kessler's article that described the dynamic of sex between men and women://
 * 1) If a man, a woman mounts him, that woman will take his vigor; for one month he will not have a personal god.
 * 2) If a man causes a woman to repeatedly take hold of his penis, he is not pure; the god will not accept his prayer.
 * If, when a man is facing his woman, she handles her vagina, that man is not pure; for the rest of (his) days his hand will tremble.
 * 1) If a man repeatedly stares at his woman's vagina, his health will be good; he will lay his hands on whatever is not his.
 * 2) If a man is with a woman (and) while facing him she repeatedly stares at his penis, whatever he finds will not be secure in his house.
 * 3) If a man is with a woman has sexual relations and then, in the same night, he ejaculates, that man will experience heavy expenses.
 * 4) If a man ejaculates in his dream and is spattered with his semen, that man will find riches; he will have financial gain.
 * 5) If a man has sexual relations with a woman and then ejaculates and is spattered with his semen, it is good; that man will have financial gain.
 * 6) If a man persistently, [has sexual relations] with a woman and always ejaculates repeatedly, he will die in his prime.
 * 7) If a man seizes a woman in the crossroad and has sexual relations [with her], that man will not prosper; either the hand of the god or the hand of the king will catch him.
 * 8) If a man excites himself to 'manhood' in captivity but, when erect, the rise of the emission (?) of 'manhood' is denied him, that man will experience one-time misfortune.
 * 9) If a man talks with a woman on a bed and then he rises from the bed and makes manhood [i.e. masturbates], that man will have happiness and jubilation bestowed upon him; wherever he goes all will be agreeable; he will always achieve his goal.
 * 10) If a man has sexual relations with an assinnu, hardships will be unleashed from him.
 * 11) If a man has sexual relations with a girsequ, for an entire year the deprivations which beset him will be kept away.
 * 12) If a man has sexual relations with a male house (-born) slave, hardship will seize him.
 * 13) If a man has sex per anum with his social peer, that man will become foremost among his brothers and colleagues.
 * 14) If a man is with his wife in a tavern and he urinates, he will not prosper. So that this [i.e. the evil] does not approach: he should sprinkle his urine to the right and the left of the door jamb of the tavern and then he will prosper.

It is easy to note that in reading Kessler's article, she saw Mesopotamian society differently from Leick and Lerner who I referenced before. Kessler, as described before, wrote that women were oppressed by the masculine culture of Mesopotamia and had very little rights in the sexual realm of society. Leick's stance on prostitution in Mesopotamia, was that there is a significant debate on whether sacred prostitution was used for commercial or religious purposes including its relation to the culture and time. However, she clearly stated that she felt there was not sufficient archaeological research at the time to conclude a final answer on the origin of prostitution. On the other hand, Lerner stated that commercial and religious prostitution both could have formed differently even though they might have evolved at the same time. To show this she referenced a story in the legends of Gilgamesh. She used a legend of a curse made in which a sacred prostitute who was with Enkidu was said to have lived an easier and better life than the prostitute who has her stand at the town wall and was abused by her drunken customers (Lerner 1986). The foundation of the Sacred Marriage was the idea that the fertility of the land and its inhabitants depended on the celebration of the sexual force of the fertility goddess. Public displays of sexual relations could of been possible considering how these beliefs were crucial to the well-being of the community. Many cult followers respected the king and the priestess enough to honor them by performing these sacred acts. In certain instances, Lerner wrote that sacred prostitutes had many rights and privileges in comparison to the rest of women in Mesopotamian society. Based on the current information available on this debate, its very hard to say if the two were distinguished differently or not with the lack of archaeological evidence in proving otherwise. However, the passage in the legend of Gilgamesh was crucial because it shows it was very likely that commercial prostitutes were deemed lower upon than the religious ones.
 * __Different Anthropological Views on the History of Prostitution and Women in Mesopotamia__**



http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.lib.ucf.edu/doi/10.1111/1468-0424.00071/pdf Gender & History ISSN 0953-5233 Ann Kessler Guinan, 'Auguries of Hegemony: The Sex Omens of Mesopotamia' Gender & History, Vol. 9 No. 3 November 1997, pp. 462-479
 * __New Article Referenced:__**

[] Sexuality and Religion in Mesopotamia in Religion Compass Gwendolyn Leick. **Year:** 2008 **Volume:** 2 **Issue:** 2 **Page:** 119 -133. ISSN: 1749-8171
 * __Former Article Citations:__**