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This article is relevant to my wiki topic because it defined women's role as a sexual cult follower or a prostitute in Mesopotamian society and refers to central themes we have discussed already in class. Lerner discussed the flaws she found among early anthropologists and their observations of the archaeological documentation of Ancient Mesopotamian prostitutes. Since these anthropologists were of Victorian times, their cultural biases were of another era and one can easily see how it has heavily influenced their writings as well. Lerner quoted Frederich Engels and demonstrated his idea that women desired a right to exercise chastity, but she also credits his work for its contribution to anthropology as shown below when she said,

''Even as we dismiss Engels's patent Victorian bias in expecting women to be desirous of exercising their "right to chastity," we must note his insight that the origin of prostitution derives both from changing attitudes toward sexuality and from certain religious beliefs, and that changes in economic and social conditions at the time of the institutionalization of private property and of slavery affected sexual relations. No matter how many flaws and errors in scientific evidence one can show in Engels's work, he was the first to alert us to these connections and to see the essential nexus of social and sexual relations.'' (P. 237)

From an anthropological perspective, Lerner argued that those who participated in sex cults or "Cultic sexual service" were not prostitutes. She stated that historians coined the term "sacred prostitution'' to describe cultic sexual service and describes this as a misconception, because many have the false idea that this practice eventually led to commercial prostitution within Mesopotamia which is not the case. Fortunately there exists linguistic, literary, pictorial, and legal evidence that depict the worship of female goddesses and the lives and activities of priestesses in Ancient Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylonian period. Due to these significant archaeological records we can reconstruct the lives of these people. For the Ancient Babylonians, they believed that gods and goddesses were actually dwelling throughout the temple and had ranked staff whose priority was to care and feed the gods daily. For those who regarded fertility as sacred and vital to their own survival, caring for the gods included offering them sexual services. A separate class of temple prostitutes developed and sexual activity for/in behalf of the god or goddesses was considered beneficial and sacred to the people. Practices varied depending on the god, place, and period of time. Later on in Babylon, commercial prostitution arose near or within the temple. Lerner stated that it is here that modern scholars have been wrong in calling all the activity entailed as prostitution. They have used the term "hierodule" for all cultic and commercial sexual activity, without a real consideration for distinguishing the various types of women who practiced either or both.

__The Origin of Prostitution in Ancient Mesopotamia__ Gerda Lerner Signs Vol. 11, No. 2 (Winter, 1986), pp. 236-254 Published by: [|The University of Chicago Press] Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174047