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"Statue representing the God Baal, bronze and gold. - Syria, Ugarit." - Getty Images
I call this photo:
"Baal"
There is also the possibility that that is not Ba'al but a phallic goddess Sekhmet-Min or Mut. The erect phallus was the domain of Amazons only in Babylon. Men remained in the penis cage all their life - or were castrated.
The worship of the Semitic goddess Anat continued even after the Exodus. Ramesses II was devoted to her and even named his daughter Anat who he married. That indicates where real power in the 19th dynasty was - Amazons! El was sumbissive to his daughter Anat. ...
" ... Anat and Ba’al (Ugarit)
Anat, the maiden, was daughter to the father-god El. Goddess of war, the hunt, and savagery, she slew Yam-Nahar, the seven-headed serpent, with her deadly arrows. One day, her brother Ba’al invited her to his home, and, laying out many delicacies for her, confided how he longed for a great palace. Thus he hoped to establish his supremacy over the earth, using his powers of wind and rain to grow the fields. Anat felt her warrior blood surge at the thought of challenging their father. Her eyes went red and she could feel the brush of every sharp fingernail against her palms. She faced her brother, and told him she would visit El.
I shall trample him like a lamb to the ground,
I shall bring down his hoary head with blood to the grave,
The grey hair of his old age with his gore.
Anat stamped her foot and rose into the sky, into the domain of El, Father of the Years. As she slammed open the gates, the bases of the pavilions quaked. She came before El, armed like a warrior, not a supplicant, and he hid himself in seven chambers inside eight enclosures. She pounded on the door so that the entire building trembled. “El, I bring a request,” she cried. “And you must grant it.”
[Or] I shall seize thy curls with my right hand, thy locks with the great power of my hand,
I shall pluck out the hair of thy pate.
I shall bring down thy hoary head with blood to the grave, the grey hair of thine old age with thy gore.
From within seven chambers inside eight enclosures, El answered her:
“I know thee, my daughter, that thou art invincible That it is impossible to withstand the goddesses.”
Thus he hastily gave Ba’al and Anat all they desired. ... "
WorldHistory
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" ... Anat is sporadically attested in Egypt since the 18th century BCE, and is found in the name of Anat-her, a fragmentarily attested figure (possibly a Hyksos ruler) of the 12th, 15th or 16th dynasty whose name means "Anat is content" and is taken to indicate Canaanite descent. As a warrior-goddess, Anat was one of several Syrian / northwest Semitic deities who was prominently worshipped by the warrior-pharaohs of the 16th Dynasty. She was often paired with the goddess Ashtart. In the Contest Between Horus and Set, these two goddesses appear as daughters of Re and are given as allies to the god Set, who had been identified with the Semitic god Hadad.
During the Hyksos period Anat had temples in the Hyksos capital of Avaris and in Beth-Shan (Israel) as well as being worshipped in Memphis. On inscriptions from Memphis of 15th to 12th centuries BCE, Anat is called "Bin-Ptah", Daughter of Ptah. She is associated with Reshpu (Canaanite: Resheph) in some texts and sometimes identified with the native Egyptian goddess Neith. She is sometimes called "Queen of Heaven". Her iconography varies. She is usually shown carrying one or more weapons.
During the 19th Dynasty (in the New Kingdom period), Seti I's favourite chariot team was named "Anat is content". Ramesses II made Anat his personal guardian in battle and enlarged her temple in Pi-Ramesses, and also named his daughter (whom he later married) Bint-Anat, "Daughter of Anat". Ramesses II furthermore named his sword "Anat is victorious" and his dog "Anat protects" (the dog appears in a carving in a Beit el Wali temple), and named one of his horses "Anat is content". ... " Wikipedia
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Garden of Priapus - 189
Boss lady , whip and penis cage -
Reminds me of Anat! Anat has been scrubbed away from the history books ...
Anat can only be a dragon - a dragon that moved from mother to daughter only.
The question is where did El's daughter go? Yahweh used to be ruled by women!
My one guess is Islam - the dark core of early Islam seems to have had an Anat style femdom goddess
Garden of Priapus - 190
Vulva, penis cage, mentule - you do not see this often! And rough female bull sex ...
But the vulva was central to the Inanna cult ...
- That's a Cuban/American - Cubans have a freaky hidden side - probably through Yemonja/Yemaya - who has a female phallus
Garden of Priapus - 191
Vulva, penis cage, mentule
And rough female bull sex ...
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Ba'al was sexually submissive to Anat -
" ... Now returning to a discussion of religious incest in Canaanite religion, the Baal Epic describes the relationship of Anat and Baal to be siblings:
As with the heart of a cow toward her calf,
As with the heart of an ewe toward her lamb,
So is the heart of Anath toward Baal.
She seizes Mavet, in ripping His garment.
She closes in on Him, in tearing His clothes.
“Come, Mavet, yield My brother!” ... " behindthabr
Garden of Priapus - 192
Penis cage, mentule and horse reins ...
Anat had 2 sides: war and sex but we only hear about her war side.
Ba'al was yielding sexually Anat - and that makes no sense without knowledge of the penis cage or fibula. Sex was anal for men in the penis cage - men yielded sexually to women - except when women wanted to get pregnant
The tomb of Ramesses II has a famous scene when his daughter - named Anat whom he married - is sexually restraining a bull - That was a common scene also in Minoan Crete.
That's how power flowed in Egypt - though female bulls - Mother dragon to daughter dragon - Same as in ancient Israel and Babylon - the husband of the female bull became the king ...
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" ... ANAT . The maiden Anat is a West Semitic or Canaanite warrior-goddess known for her violent temperament and volatile emotions. Although her name and cult are attested from the late third millennium bce to the fourth century bce, Anat plays a prominent role only in the Late Bronze Age mythological texts from the Syrian city of Ugarit (modern-day Ras Shamra). These poetic narratives, written in an alphabetic cuneiform script, depict Anat as a fierce and impetuous goddess who delights in bloodshed. As a hunter and protector of wild animals, Anat also functions as a "Mistress of Animals" in Canaanite tradition. Anat's primary epithet in Ugaritic sources is btlt (maiden), which identifies her as an adolescent female, a girl of marriageable age. Iconographic representations from Egypt and Syria-Palestine depict the goddess as young and nubile, with small breasts and a thin body. Called "the loveliest of the sisters of Baal," Anat is also a player of the lyre and singer of love songs in Ugaritic narrative. Although female, the adolescent goddess engages in the traditionally masculine pursuits of warfare, hunting, and political intrigue.
Earlier studies often assume that Anat is Baal's consort. More recent studies by Peggy Day and Neal Walls, however, argue that the extant Ugaritic texts never depict her as sexually active. While some scholars have erroneously identified Anat with the cow that mates with and bears an heir for Baal, the Ugaritic narratives clearly distinguish between Anat and Baal's cow. As his devoted sister, Anat actively supports Baal's quest for kingship among the gods. She serves as a diplomatic intermediary in securing the support of El, her elderly father, for the establishment of his royal palace. The warrior Anat boasts of having vanquished many of Baal's foes, including Yamm (the Canaanite primordial sea), the Twisting Serpent, and the Seven-Headed Dragon. Whether or not Anat is the consort of Baal, the maiden goddess maintains her autonomy and independence from male control. She lives in her own palace on her sacred mountain Inbb rather than in the household of her father, brother, or consort. Ugaritic poetry venerates Anat as the "Mistress of Kingship, Mistress of Dominion, and Mistress of the High Heavens." The meaning of her epithet ybmt limm remains uncertain, but it most likely refers to her position within the pantheon's kinship structure.
Anat displays her malevolent aggression in two encounters with El, in which she threatens to drag him from his throne "to the ground like a lamb" for slaughter. She promises to smash his skull and to make his "gray hair run with blood and his gray beard with gore" unless he agrees to her demands. El's response to his belligerent daughter seems more indulgent than fearful, "I know, my daughter, that you are incorrigible, and that among the goddesses there is no rancor like yours." While El apparently denies her request in one text, in the other he yields to her rash demands, "Depart, my daughter; haughty is your heart. Take what is in your mind, carry out [what] is in your breast. Whoever hinders you will be destroyed." El's words are perhaps reflected in an eighth-century Akkadian text that praises Anat, "whose heroism among the goddesses has no equal."
Another famous scene from Ugaritic myth depicts Anat's bloodthirsty nature as she gleefully slaughters armies of human warriors. Delighting in the carnage of battle, Anat "wades in their blood up to her thighs." She adorns herself by placing her enemies' severed heads on a garland around her neck and their severed hands on a belt around her waist before she exultantly wades into the gore of battle a second time. Possibly a description of ritual cannibalism, this grisly scene clearly portrays the murderous quality of Anat's martial enthusiasm.
In contrast with her warlike attributes, Anat is also portrayed in Ugaritic myth as a compassionate goddess who pathetically grieves the death of her brother: "Like the heart of a cow for its calf, like the heart of a ewe for its lamb, such is the heart of Anat for Baal." On hearing of his death, Anat scours the earth in search of her slain brother's corpse, which she then buries with elaborate funerary sacrifices and mourning rites. Anat "gashes her cheeks and her chin" in a heartfelt display of ritual bloodletting. She then humbly entreats Mot, the Ugaritic god of death, to return her brother to her. After her diplomatic efforts have failed, however, Anat reverts to her more characteristic mode and viciously attacks Mot: "She seizes divine Mot; with a blade she splits him, with a sieve she winnows him, with fire she burns him, and with millstones she grinds him." Anat scatters his pulverized remains in a field for the birds to consume. This scene of utter annihilation demonstrates Anat's impulsive ferocity, but it also leads to Baal's restoration as ruler of the earth. Although the text is broken at this point, it is clear that Baal returns to power, bringing his fertilizing rains to the thirsty fields in a renewal of natural fecundity. The maiden Anat's hostile actions are thus crucial to the balance of cosmic power and the continuation of life on the earth in Ugaritic myth.
Anat's passionate disposition takes on a more sinister quality in the Ugaritic epic of Aqhat. In a scene that is perhaps related to Hellenistic accounts of Artemis and the Babylonian account of Ishtar's failed seduction of Gilgamesh, Anat attempts to wrest a divinely crafted bow from the young hero Aqhat. He disdains her offer of gold, silver, and immortality in exchange for the composite bow and insolently informs her that females are not meant to be warriors. Seeking revenge for the insult, Anat eventually has her henchman murder Aqhat. The bow, however, is lost, and Anat tearfully regrets her impulsive actions in killing the young man, an injustice that causes drought and famine in the land. The conclusion to this epic has yet to be recovered.
Anat was introduced into Egypt during the Hyksos period (c. 1650–1550 bce) and became a patron goddess of the Ramesside era (c. 1295–1069 bce) as the "Mistress of the Heavens," a martial goddess who gives victory in battle. Aramaic texts from the fifth-century bce Jewish community in Elephantine, Egypt, refer to Anat-Bethel (ntbytl) and Anat-Yahu (ntyhw ), which some scholars interpret as references to the goddess Anat as the consort of the gods Bethel ("House of God") and Yahweh, respectively. Other scholars translate the word nt as "providence" or "sign" and understand it as the cultic hypostasis of the male deity rather than the appearance of Anat in the syncretistic Jewish literature. Anat-Bethel also appears in the list of divine witnesses to the seventh-century Assyrian treaty between King Baal of Tyre and Esarhaddon. Hellenistic sources sometimes equate Anat with the virgin warrior Athena, as in a fourth-century bce bilingual inscription in Phoenician and Greek from Lapethos on Cyprus. Later traditions often identify Anat with other Canaanite goddesses, such as Astarte and Atargatis-Derketo. ... " encyclopedia
Garden of Priapus - 193
The cuban topless and topping! In an Amazon orgy ...
This new research that Anat was not sexual is wrong on its face - the most important day on the calender for Innana and her derivative goddesses was the annual spring Hieros Gamos - When Innana through her high priestess asked the shepard Dumuzi through the King "who will plow my vulva?"
And it was more than plowing her vulva - Men were sodomized by women in the garden of Priapus - The Priapea lays it all out in vivid detail ...
All those women with a penis on page 150 of this site are telling a story that was constant in the Roman world ... The phallic Amazon and the catamite Roman male ...
The divine Me was stolen by Innana from her father and passed on to the King though Innana's phallus or mentule:
“... When the kingship was lowered from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu” so says the Sumerian King List. This is the root of divine rule. Mesopotamian kings displayed their divine inheritance through symbols, the most telling being the branch from the Tree of Life. It all begins with Inanna. There is no doubt of Inanna's connection to the Tree of Life. This may be the origin of the scepter. In the Sumerian tale of Inanna and Enki Inanna travels to Eridu and visits with Enki. During her stay they drink beer together and during this time Enki gives her the mes which in this case includes the throne of kingship and kingship itself. It became tradition that the king be ritually married to Inanna and earn his divine right to rule. Thus we have the trapping of power derived from Inanna in the symbolism of the Tree of Life. In her warrior aspect, Inana/Ishtar is shown dressed in a flounced robe with weapons coming out of her shoulder, often with at least one other weapon in her hand and sometimes with a beard, to emphasize her masculine side... " traveltoeat
Garden of Priapus - 194
Vulva, mentule, penis cage, cigarette and Cuban ...
Another rough female bull performance
She may or may not know about the sacred kingdom of the waters of Yemanjá - but as a Cuban Yemanjá knows about her!
Garden of Priapus - 195
Vulva, penis cage, cane and topless Cuban
- A woman with a whip - maybe as Anat, was part of the Bacchic mysteries in Rome:
" ... A famous fresco from Pompeii shows a naked woman dancing and a woman with big black wings and a long whip, the symbol of Dike (“justice”). ... " Erik Langkjer, The Origin of our belief in God
" ... Baal coming to Rome: Dionysiac anti-religion
The nature of the hunter comes out very clearly in a late secret Dionysiac cult discovered in Rome where the courtesan Hispalla revealed the following details to consul Postumius:
“it was known that for two years now no one had been initiated who had passed the age of twenty years. As each was introduced, he became a sort of victim for the priests. They, she continued, would lead him to a place which would ring with howls and the song of a choir and the beating of cymbals and drums, that the voice of the sufferer when his virtue was violently attacked, might not be heard ... the mingling of males with females, youth with age had destroyed every sentiment of modesty, all varieties of corruption first began to be practiced, since each one had at hand the pleasure answering to that to which his nature was more inclined. There was not one form of vice alone, the promiscuous matings of free men and women, but perjured witnesses, forged seals and wills and evidence, all issued from this same workshop: likewise poisonings and murders of kindred, so that at times not even the bodies were found for burial. Much was ventured by craft, more by violence. This violence was concealed because amid the howlings and the crash of drums and cymbals no cry of the sufferers could be heard as the debauchery and murders proceeded”.
A famous fresco from Pompeii shows a naked woman dancing and a woman with big black wings and a long whip, the symbol of Dike (“justice”). Nilsson has dealt with this motif (“The Winged Woman Fleeing”):
The winged demoniac woman is one of the apparitions and terrifying figures that were introduced in the Bacchic mysteries, reminiscent of the evil fate awaiting the unjust in the afterlife. But salvation is at hand. To the left of the winged woman the girl reveals the liknon with its contents, promising life and luck. The Campana relief: a young man is seen to the left, then the kneeling girl revealing the liknon, to the right a winged woman running away hurriedly. The girl takes hold of a corner of her long robe to hold her back, but she makes an averting gesture. The cameos are similar. Instead of the youth there is a Silenus holding up a basket of fruit, and the object revealed is a bearded bald head, probably that of a Silenus.
Bad conscience and the fear of retaliation by Dike are driven away by the holy symbol of Dionysos (often the lingam of the god) hidden in the liknon (basket). Another fresco shows the burdened soul standing between two options: the woman clad in black with the staff as the instrument of punishment, and the dancing naked maenad.
The cult described by Livius is, acc to R.Reitzenstein, the cult of an Oriental god identified with Dionysos.
The next picture (from the same villa in Pompeii) shows a woman (the soul) flying towards an idyllic scenery: a Satyr playing the Pan-flute, and a female Satyr offering her breast to a kid. In the Hellenistic novels the heroine is often taken away to a bucolic sphere, a symbol of her being taken away to unity with the highgod. The picture shows the cloak of the woman blown out by the wind to become a picture of the heavenly vault: she is taken away to the stars. (Europa in the care of Asterios, Jo in the care of the thousand eyed Argos.) Europa riding on the back of the bull is often pictured with her cloak blown out to become a vault over her head.
The last picture shows a young man tricked into seeing himself as a demon. Perhaps a symbol of the initiate discovering/accepting a demonic side of himself. ... " Erik Langkjer, The Origin of our belief in God
Garden of Priapus - 196
Vulva, cane and supplicant and topless Cuban
- In this scene Ba'al and his sister Anat complete their conquest of their father El
" ... Baal in Ugarit as a hunter
An Ugarit text is named Els marzeah, RS 24.258: El invites to a feast in his temple. The guests are behaving like dogs, like dogs they tear the meat. The "guardian of the gate", El´s son, is very annoyed at this and reproaches his father because he does not want to sit beside his wife, but takes his seat next to another woman. El gets so drunk that he has to be carried home by “Ridge and Range (of hills)”probably the same as the guardian of the gate (and his brother?). We have seen how the first splitting up of the primeval mountain results in the two world-pillars often personified as the two sons of the highgod, the two bull-men who support the sky (carry the heavenly bull) and are the guardians of “the gate of the sun”, identical with the temple gate. This gate is the symbol of fixed order: space for the sun to shine and the rain to fall. The guardian of this gate is very much against the chaos developing inside the temple and tries to warn his father, but the “hidden one, Baal with horn and tale” (changed to animal or demon) hunts him down. Out of pure fear El lets go of his fæces and drops down as dead “becoming like one of those who go down to the realm of death”. After that “´Anat and ´Athtarte go hunting (sd)”.
What are we looking at here? Certainly not an innocent prayer to the Highest. The tablet with this text was found in a house that seems to belong to a priest, and it is the secret myth about a murder of God the Kindly, the Highest, in Ugarit always called El, the “Bull”, a murder described in a very humiliating way and celebrated during an orgiastic feast, where men are changed into dogs and beasts of pray and give themselves to free sexuality (prostitutes?). They celebrate the death of god, the death of divine order and hail the great hunt. Perhaps the words msd sd in the first two lines of the text have to be translated by "hunts game (in his temple)". The god who prepares and serves the meal is Yarich, the moon, in Near Eastern myth the spender of ambrosia and nectar, but not to all: some are "scolded" and receive minor punishments on their legs with a stick. This strange scenario is the picture of a freemason-like lodge meeting and eating in the presence of gods and disciplined by some "grand wizard".
“The hunting of Baal” is the name given by John Gray to a very demolished text found in Ugarit (Virolleaud calls it “Les Chasses de Baal”). It talks about Baal hunting some creatures called “the devourers”/”voracious ones” (Gray´s transl.), “rippers” (de Moor).
They have horns and humps like bulls. Baal catches them in a net, gives them wine to drink and shoots them down with his bow But in the next moment, Baal, the great hunter, will become the victim. He falls into a swamp and is devoured by a fire that also has a withering effect on vegetation, turning it “brown”. Although Baal is clearly the hunter, he is also the victim and pictured as the suffering and “fallen bull” “prostrate lay the god Hadad as a steer in the midst of the mire”(Gray´s trans). Here Baal is both hunter and bull. He dies in the swamp as a representative of the wet element and as a victim of the fire raging in his limbs. The result is water (end of the text).
But the rendering asunder (the sparagmos in Greek) which Jamm (“Sea”), the beloved son of El, suffers at the hands of Baal (“scatter (him), o mightiest Baal”, 2, IV, 28) shows that Baal is the “Great Hunter”, and so do the two throwing-clubs with which he brings poor Jamm down. This is the archaic weapon of the great hunter.
Baal is accompanied by his “seven pages, eight boars” (5, V, 9). Tammuz is killed by 7 demons from the underworld. Resheph, “the burning one”, kills Adonis in the shape of a boar. The hunter is often followed by 7 helpers seen as boars. A text from Ugarit refers to the demons as “flies” so the title “Lord of the Flies”(Baal Zebub) is “Lord of the swarm of flying demons”.
But in Ugarit it is first and foremost ´Anat who is pictured as the divine hunter with cruel features. She is the “destroying” ´Anat. Without the faintest feeling of mercy she goes berserk and makes a massacre of the totally innocent people coming to dine in her temple, “a grim and bloodthirsty goddess”. The fact that Baal is the male hunter and she the female hunter and his sister makes them a couple very similar to Apollo and Artemis. Originally the great hunter was “androgynous”: Sandan-Heracles serves Omphale dressed in women´s clothes. But this androgynity can be split into male and female hunter. In the scene of ´Anat´s massacre she is put back into balance by her love for Baal: the union of female and male god stands for harmony and is also seen as a union of heaven with earth and underworld (´Anat's dwelling is somewhere under the surface of the earth) SHE IS IN ALL ASPECTS IDENTICAL WITH THE INDIAN GODDESS KALI riding the tiger with the scimitar in her hand, a weapon also given to ´Anat. ... "Erik Langkjer, The Origin of our belief in God
Garden of Priapus - 197
More Vulva, canes, penis caged supplicant, topless Cuban and other Amazons
- That's a pure scene from the garden of Priapus
- After the conquest of El or Yahweh , the new ruler of the world was the phallic Anat, not her brother Ba'al - or Beezelbulb or the devil as he is otherwise known. Ba'al was himself a supplicant of the youthful Anat - in the ancient Sumerian way
The vulva of Anat and her Amazons was the new ruler of Rome !
Garden of Priapus - 198
More Vulva, canes, penis caged supplicant, topless Cuban and other Amazons ...
Penis caged and hooded supplicant as a pet dog of the Amazons - I am certain all upper class Romans had to go through a similar ritual before removal of their penis cage at 25.
That's probably an ancient rite of passage for Etruscans, Greeks, Egyptians and Sumerians and ancient Israel too ... Rule of the Amazons
Garden of Priapus - 199
Roman sex: Topsy turvy - Rough anal sex under the topless Cuban after a good whipping.
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Below is a South African's snapshot of Ba'al worship and why it was so popular with the children of Israel: Although I am not sure of the child sacrifice - as I said before that probably meant the very early installation of the penis cage - as early as 7 from Giton in the Satyricon. That was the sacrifice of the child to the sun. From the passage above, initiation into the mysteries was for the young - it did not extend past 20 years ... Men at this age were still in the penis cage and restricted to anal sex from the Amazons ...
" ... 26 Apr 2013 So often when one reads about the fact that the children of Israel chose to worship Baal, in ancient times it’s a bit difficult to picture. Let’s take some time to show that the worship of Baal has in fact never left us!
First of all: who is Baal? Did you see I said ‘is’ ? The term means ‘owner’ or ‘lord’. Other names for Baal are Moloch/Molech or Malcham/Milcom. Is this what the owl shrine represents there at ‘Cremation of Care’ ceremony at Bohemian Grove, California? Interestingly Baal’s wife is Ashtoreth, which we will return to a little bit later. The verb ba'al, means to have dominion over. The word can be used of men to signify ownership, e.g. of a house, land or cattle. The verb also means to take a wife and thus Baal also means husband.
The children of Israel left Egypt and on their journey were involved in battles with other nations. Balak, king of the Moabites obviously heard of the Israelites and their conquests and we as part of his military strategic planning did the following as recorded in Num 22: 5-6: ‘Then he sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor at Pethor which is near the River of the land of the sons of his people, to call him saying: Look, a people has come from Egypt. See they cover the face of the earth, and are settling next to me! Therefore please come at once, curse this people for me, for they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land, for I know he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.’ Then the next day Balak took Balaam to the high places of Baal to see the extent of children of Israel; thus from the beginning worship of Baal is associated with the destruction of God’s people.
What was the real appeal of Baal worship? It must have very powerful as it proved to be an enduring problem for the children of Israel. Baal worship is a syncretistic polytheistic religion, in simple terms: they had many different gods and you could sum up their orientation as ‘anything goes’! Syncretism is not just restricted to Baal worship; syncretism is also the process of blending paganism with Bible truths as we see in some quarters of Christianity.
M. H. Pope writes: ‘The Israelites absorbed the Canaanite ways and learned to identify their god with Baal, whose rains brought fertility to the land. A characteristic feature of the fertility cult was sacral sexual intercourse by priests and priestesses and other specially consecrated persons, sacred prostitutes of both sexes, intended to emulate and stimulate deities who bestowed fertility. The agricultural cult stressed the sacrifice or common meal in which the gods, priests and people partook. Wine was consumed in great quantity in thanksgiving to Baal for the fertility of the vineyards. The wine also helped to induce ecstatic frenzy, and was climaxed by self-laceration, and sometimes by self emasculation. Child-sacrifice was also a feature of the rites’
Thus we see that the powerful attraction to the worship of Baal was sexual promiscuity or licentiousness. Promiscuity is ‘characterised by or involving indiscriminate mingling or association, especially having sexual relations with a number of partners on a casual basis.’ And what is licentiousness? It is the ‘dissolute indulgence in sensual pleasure’ or ‘lacking legal or moral restraints, especially: disregarding sexual restraints.’
Let’s return now to Ashtoreth as promised. Halley (1922) describes Baal worship, the religion of the Canaanites as follows: ‘Temples of Baal and Ashtoreth were usually together. Priestesses were temple prostitutes. Sodomites were male temple prostitutes. The worship of Baal, Ashtoreth and other Canaanite gods consisted in the most extravagant orgies; their temples were centres of vice.’ Let’s look at that word ‘Ashtoreth’ for a moment. It sounds Easter-ish hey?
Asherah or Ashtoreth was the goddess of war and fertility, called Ishtar by Assyrians and Babylonians, called Astarte by Greeks and Romans and called Tanith by North Africans. Asherah or Ashtoreth or Ishtar is pronounced the same way we say ‘Easter’. ... " news24 (South Africa)
Garden of Priapus - 200
Vulva, Mentule, penis cage, Cuban and restrained balding OG or old guy - The Roman OG was Silenius - the helper of Dionysus.
- The youthful Anat or Inanna was probably the model for the Vestal Virgins who had 30 year tenures but retired young - mid 30's. The Sumerian Me required a young female vessel to pass through
- Rome was being secretly ruled by young girls! The Vestals had veto power over the old men of the Roman Senate ...
- There's a cameo and several plates on page 150 that have a scene of a young woman with a penis being roused to action by darkly tanned older Silenius - That was probably an Anat figure
- Reminds me of the Haitian Poto Mitan which is associated with a female shaman - The basic model is the same - Or the Brazilian "Rainha de Bateria" from Samba and Carnaval.
Garden of Priapus - 201
More Vulva, Mentule, penis cage, Cuban and restrained balding OG
The Sumerian King had to submit to this every year. And Egyptian too - Older pharoahs ended up being sodomized by girls their daughters age ...
Ramesses II ended up being restrained by his daughter - named Anat. He also called his hunting dog and sword Anat - so I suppose the penis was female in ancient Egypt. The penis was attached to men but was controlled by women under the penis cage system ... The Sumerian "slaver of the dog"
Garden of Priapus - 202
More Vulva, Mentule, penis cage, Cuban, friends and restrained young guy
Most men being sodomized in Rome were young though - under 25 and still in the penis cage. The Priapea is explicit about this. Once men entered their bearded stage they were no longer desirable for anal sex.
Older men graduated to oral sex, their wives - and the Roman brothels or "stews"... Probably descended from the Sumerian tavern where Sumerian women went to snatch men after dark ...Those were Amazon brothels - designed to serve the Amazon sex drive
The Priapea and the Satyricon are proof that Paedophilia was a Roman norm - boys as young as 7 were being sexually broken in by phallic Roman women
The sex drive does not start at puberty - Freud is right about that - boys have sexual thoughts much younger than that even without sex abuse. Far more concerning to me is the failure of the fire to light - which is at epidemic levels today ...
Garden of Priapus - 203
More Vulva, Mentule, penis cage/humbler , Cuban and restrained young guy
***
"Downloading" the Me from the gods: It flows from Harimtu into the Sumerian King. But at a more general level from phallic Amazon to catamite man:
Note there is no mention of female prostitutes in the excerpt below - just male - The Sumerian tavern was an Amazon brothel . The Harimtu or female postitutes were the "slavers of the dog" or penis cagers and snatchers of men at the rise of venus
A cir-namursaja to Ninsiana for Iddin-Dagan (Iddin-Dagan A)
1-16. I shall greet her who ascends above, her who ascends above, I shall greet the Mistress who ascends above, I shall greet the great lady of heaven, Inana! I shall greet the holy torch who fills the heavens, the light, Inana, her who shines like daylight, the great lady of heaven, Inana! I shall greet the Mistress, the most awesome lady among the Anuna gods; the respected one who fills heaven and earth with her huge brilliance; the eldest daughter of Suen, Inana! For the young lady I shall sing a song about her grandeur, about her greatness, about her exalted dignity; about her radiantly ascending at evening; about her filling the heaven like a holy torch; about her stance in the heavens, as noticeable by all lands, from the south to the highlands, as that of Nanna or of Utu; about the greatness of the mistress of heaven!
18. Her rising is that of a warrior.
20-33. When standing in the heavens she is the good wild cow of An, on earth she instils respect; she is the lady of all the lands. She received the divine powers in the abzu, in Eridug; her father Enki presented them to her. He placed the lordship and kingship in her hands. She takes her seat on the great dais with An; she determines the fates in her Land with Enlil. Monthly, at the new moon, the gods of the Land gather around her so that the divine powers are perfected. The great Anuna gods, having bowed before them, stand there with prayers and supplications and utter prayers on behalf of all the lands. My lady decrees judgments in due order for the Land. {(2 mss. add the line:) Inana decides verdicts for the Land together with Enlil.} Her black-headed people parade before her.
35-43. Making silver aljar instruments sound for her, they parade before her, holy Inana. I shall greet the great lady of heaven, Inana! Making holy ub and holy lilis drums sound for her, they parade before her, holy Inana. I shall greet the great lady of heaven, Inana! Beating (?) holy balaj and holy lilis drums for her, they parade before her, holy Inana. I shall greet {(1 ms. adds:) in (?) her grandeur, in (?) her greatness, in (?) her exalted dignity as she ascends radiantly at evening,} {the eldest daughter of Suen} {(some mss. have instead:) the great lady of heaven}, Inana!
45-58. Tightening their hairgrips for her, male prostitutes parade before her, holy Inana. Their locks of hair at the back are adorned for her with coloured rags (?); they parade before her, holy Inana. Clothed (?) in the leather (?) of divinity, they parade before her, holy Inana. The trustworthy {man} {(1 ms. has instead:) king} and the proud lady, the doyenne of the great wise women, parade before her, holy Inana. Those who are in charge (?) of beating (?) the soothing balaj drums parade before her, holy Inana. Each girded with a sword belt, the strength of battle, they parade before her, holy Inana. Grasping a spear, the strength of battle, in their hands, they parade before her, holy Inana.
60-68. Dressed with men's clothing on the right side, they parade before her, holy Inana. I shall greet the great lady of heaven, Inana! Adorned (?) with women's clothing on the left side, they parade before her, holy Inana. I shall greet the great lady of heaven, Inana! Competing with skipping ropes of (?) coloured cords for her, they parade before her, holy Inana. I shall greet {the eldest daughter of Suen} {(1 ms. has instead:) the great lady of heaven}, Inana!
70-81. Young men wearing neck-stocks sing to her and parade before her, holy Inana. Young women, cugia priestesses, coiffured, parade before her, holy Inana. ...... sword and dagger for her, they parade before her, holy Inana. With daggers in their hands, ...... kurjara priests parade before her, holy Inana. Those who cover their swords with gore spatter blood as they parade before her, holy Inana. Blood is poured on the dais standing in the guena hall, as tigi, cem and ala drums are made to sound loudly.
82-87. The Mistress stands alone in the pure heavens. From the midst of heaven my lady looks with joy at all the lands and the black headed people, who are as numerous as {sheep} {(1 ms. has instead:) ewes}. {(some mss. add the line:) They parade before her, holy Inana.} I praise the lady of the evening, Inana, the august one, the young lady, Inana. {The lady of the evening reaches the borders of heaven!} {(1 ms. has instead:) The lady exalted as high as the heaven, Inana, is august!}
89-105. When at evening, the radiant star, the Venus star, the great light which fills the holy heavens, the lady of the evening, ascends above like a warrior, the people in all the lands lift their gaze to her. The men purify themselves, the woman cleanse themselves. The oxen toss (?) their heads in their yoke. The sheep stir up dust in their pens. Because of my lady, the numerous beasts of Cakkan, the creatures of the plain, the four-legged animals {under the broad heavens} {(1 ms. has instead:) of the broad high (?) plain}, the orchards and gardens, the plots, the green reedbeds, the fish of the deep, the birds of heaven, all hasten to their sleeping places. All the living creatures and the numerous people bend the knee before her. When called for (?) by my lady, the matriarchs plentifully provide food and drink, and my lady refreshes herself in her Land. There is play in the Land, which is made festive. The young men take pleasure in their spouses.
106-110. From the midst of heaven my lady looks down with joy. They parade before her, holy Inana. The lady of the evening, Inana, is august; I praise the young lady, Inana. The lady of the evening, her grandeur reaches the borders of heaven!
112-121. At night the skilled and beautiful one (?), the joy of An, the ornament of broad heaven, appears like moonlight; in the heat of the noon she appears like sunlight. After the storehouses of the Land have been filled with fine food, and all the lands and the black-headed people have assembled, {(1 ms. adds:) and the storehouses of the Land have been made full (?),} those who sleep on the roofs and those who sleep by the walls step up before her with ...... and bring her their cases. Then she makes her orders known, and identifies the evil. She judges the evil as evil and destroys the wicked. She looks with favour on the just and determines a good fate for them.
122-126. From the midst of heaven my lady looks down with joy. They parade before her, holy Inana. The lady exalted as high as the heaven, Inana, is august! I praise the young woman, Inana. The lady exalted as high as the heaven, her grandeur reaches the borders of heaven.
128-131. The beautiful lady, the joy of An, has ascended above like a warrior. She carries there what befits the ...... of heaven. She takes counsel with An in his lofty place. Among {youths and heroes} {(some mss. have instead:) heroic youths}, may she be alone chosen!
133. She is mighty, she is respected, she exalted, she is august and great, she is surpassing in youthfulness.
135-141. As the lady, admired by the Land, the lone star, the Venus star, the lady elevated as high as the heaven, ascends above like a warrior, all the lands tremble before her ....... The faithful black-headed people bow to her. The young man travelling on the road directs himself by her. The oxen raise their heads in their yoke to her. {(2 mss. add:) The melody of the song of those tending the cattle resounds ...... on the plain. The farmer ...... the cattle ...... their yoke in the Land.} With her the storehouses of the Land prosper.
142-149. Everybody hastens to holy Inana. For my lady in the midst of heaven the best of everything is prepared (?). In the pure places of the plain, at its good places, on the roofs, on the rooftops, the rooftops of the dwellings (?), in the sanctuaries (?) of mankind, incense offerings like a forest of aromatic cedars are transmitted to her. They sacrifice alum sheep, long-haired sheep, and fattened sheep for her. They purify the earth for the Mistress, they {carry out purification rites for her} {(some mss. have instead:) celebrate her in songs}.
150-162. They fill the tables of the Land with ghee, dates, cheese, and seven sorts of fruits as first-fruit offerings for her. They pour dark beer for her, they pour light beer for her. Dark beer, emmer beer, and emmer beer for my lady bubble in the cagub jar and the lamsari vat for her. From pastes of honey mixed with ghee {(some mss. add the line:) From ...... mixed with ghee}, they bake date-syrup cakes for her. They pour out early-morning beer, flour, flour in honey, honey, and wine of sunrise for her. The personal gods of the people also attend upon her with food and drink. {They provide the Mistress with food in the holy place, the pure place.} {(some mss. have instead:) They purify the earth for the Mistress, they celebrate her in songs.}
163-167. From the midst of heaven my lady looks down with joy. They parade before her, holy Inana. Inana, the lady exalted as high as the heaven is august! I praise the young lady, Inana. The lady exalted as high as the heaven, her grandeur reaches the borders of heaven!
169-180. When the black-headed people have assembled in the palace, the house that advises the Land, the neck-stock of all the foreign countries, the house of the river of ordeal, a dais is set up for Ninegala. The divine king stays there with her. At the New Year, on the day of the rites, {in order for her to determine the fate of all the countries} {(1 ms. has instead:) in order for the life of all the countries to be attended to}, so that during the day (?) the faithful servants can be inspected, so that on the day of the disappearance of the moon the divine powers can be perfected, a bed is set up for my lady. Esparto grass is purified with cedar perfume and arranged on that bed for my lady, and a coverlet is smoothed out on the top (?) of it.
181-186. In order to find sweetness in the bed on the joyous coverlet, my lady bathes her holy thighs. She bathes them for the thighs of the king; {she bathes them for} {(some mss. have instead:) with head held high she goes to} the thighs of Iddin-Dagan. Holy Inana rubs herself with soap; she sprinkles oil and cedar essence on the ground.
187-194. The king goes to her holy thighs with head held high, {(some mss. add:) she goes to the thighs of Iddin-Dagan,} he goes to the thighs of Inana with head held high. Ama-ucumgal-ana lies down beside her and {caresses her holy thighs} {(some mss. have instead:) (says:) "O my holy thighs! O my holy Inana!"}. After the lady has made him rejoice with her holy thighs on the bed, after holy Inana has made him rejoice with her holy thighs on the bed, she relaxes (?) with him on her bed: "Iddin-Dagan, you are indeed my beloved!"
195-202. To pour libations, to carry out purification rites, to heap up incense offerings, to burn juniper, to set out food offerings, to set out offering-bowls, he goes into her Egal-mah. She embraces her beloved spouse, holy Inana embraces him. She shines like daylight on {the great throne dais} {(1 ms. has instead:) the throne at one side (?)} and makes the king position himself next (?) to her like the sun.
203-216. Abundance and celebration are prepared before her in plenty. He arranges a rich banquet for her. The black-headed people line up before her. With instruments loud enough to drown out the south wind-storm, with sweet sounding aljar instruments, the glory of the palace, and with harps, the source of joy for mankind, musicians perform songs which delight her heart. The king sees to what is eaten and drunk, Ama-ucumgal-ana sees to what is eaten and drunk. The palace is in festive mood, the king is joyous. The people spend the day amid plenteousness. Ama-ucumgal-ana stands in great joy. May his days be long on the splendid throne! He proudly (?) occupies the royal dais.
217-222. They praise my lady on my behalf (?) with the hymns of heaven and earth. "You are the Mistress born together with heaven and earth." In the holy place, the pure place, they celebrate the Mistress in songs: "Joy of the black-headed people, ornament of the assembly, Inana, eldest daughter of Suen, lady of the evening, your praise is good."
223-225. From the midst of heaven my lady looks down with joy. They parade before her, holy Inana. {Inana, the lady elevated as high as the heavens, is august!} {(some mss. have instead:) The lady of the evening, her grandeur reaches the borders of heaven!}
227-228. She is mighty, she is respected, she is exalted, she is august and great, she is surpassing in youthfulness!
230. A cir-namursaja of Ninsiana.
Garden of Priapus - 204
Topless Cuban, whip, penis cage and old guy in stocks.
This was basic for the parades of Inanna - " Young men wearing neck-stocks sing to her and parade before her, holy Inana."
- What Muslims call abd - Allah or slave of Allah - used to be abd-Innana ! Or something along those lines ...
- When Venus came out - it was Amazon hunting time - the time of the Inanna yoke
Garden of Priapus - 205
More topless Cuban, friend, whip, penis cage and old guy in stocks.
- That's the Roman bath - the imagery in the Roman bath was page 150 - the phallic Amazon - Roman baths were usually funded by the Augusta - That was another Amazon brothel for the "slavers of the dog" or penis cagers
The imagery is almost always homosexual - but when you read the actual texts - the Roman bath was where Roman matrons brought their well oiled young men for sex. Since the Roman penis was caged - that had to have been mentule sex - the aqua version of the garden of Priapus
Garden of Priapus - 206
Cuban vulva and mentule in a slaves mouth after anal sex - The roman "Irrumation"
Sovereign vulva and mentule - That was the Roman secret. Anat and not Ba'al or Beezelbulb or the devil was the ruler of the Roman world.
That's the world of "She" or the queen of Sheba that also ruled early Islam - until the fall of the Fatimid dynasty.
My guess is the "she" dragon was restricted to the Syrian Roman Augustas
***
" ... Fertility Cults of Canaan
Only recently have scholars begun to unravel the complex religious rituals of Israel's Canaanite neighbors. Much of our knowledge of the origins and character of these fertility cults remains tentative and widely debated. What we do know reveals dark, seductive practices that continued to entice the people God had chosen to be his witnesses.
The people of Israel developed their faith in the wilderness. Abraham lived in the Negev desert, where God made his covenant of blood with him and sealed it with circumcision. Moses met God in a burning bush in the desert, where he learned the greatness of God's name and received his commission to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt. God spoke to his people on Mount Sinai and reestablished his covenant with them in the Ten Commandments. Throughout the Israelites 40-year journey in the wilderness, their Lord accompanied them, protected them, fed them, and guided them to the Promised Land. There was no doubt that Yahweh was God of the wilderness.
When the Israelites entered Canaan, they found a land of farmers, not shepherds, as they had been in the wilderness. The land was fertile beyond anything the Hebrew nomads had ever seen. The Canaanites attributed this fertility to their god Baal,and that is where the Israelites problems began. Could the God who had led them out of Egypt and through the wilderness also provide fertile farms in the Promised Land? Or would the fertility god of Canaan have to be honored? Maybe, to be safe, they should worship both;Yahweh and Baal.
An intense battle began for the minds and hearts of God's people. The book of Judges records the ongoing struggle: the Israelites attraction to, and worship of, the Canaanite gods; God's disciplinary response; the people's repentance; and God's merciful forgiveness until the next time the Israelites reached for Baal instead of Yahweh.
Under the kings, this spiritual battle continued. By the time of Ahab and Jezebel, the fertility cults appeared to have the official sanction of Israel's leaders. Ahab, with his wife's encouragement, built a temple to Baal at his capital, Samaria. All the while, prophets like Elijah (which means Yahweh is God), Hosea, Isaiah, and Jeremiah thundered that Yahweh alone deserved the peoples allegiance. It took the Assyrian destruction of Israel and the Babylonian Captivity of Judah to convince the Israelites that there is only one omnipotent God.
This struggle to be totally committed to God is of vital importance to us today as well. We don't think of ourselves as idol worshipers, yet we struggle to serve God alone in every part of our lives. It is easy (and seductive) to honor possessions, fun, relationships, fame, money, and a host of other potential "gods."
We need to learn from Israel's experience and respond to Jesus' command for total allegiance. One way we can accomplish this is to study the gods that attracted Yahweh's people 3,000 years ago.
The earliest deity recognized by the peoples of the ancient Near East was the creator god El. His mistress, the fertility goddess Asherah, gave birth to many gods, including a powerful god named Baal ("Lord"). There appears to have been only one Baal, who was manifested in lesser Baals at different places and times. Over the years, Baal became the dominant deity, and the worship of El faded.
Baal won his dominance by defeating the other deities, including the god of the sea, the god of storms (also of rain, thunder, and lightning), and the god of death. Baal's victory over death was thought to be repeated each year when he returned from the land of death (underworld), bringing rain to renew the earth's fertility. Hebrew culture viewed the sea as evil and destructive, so Baals promise to prevent storms and control the sea, as well as his ability to produce abundant harvests, made him attractive to the Israelites. It's hard to know why Yahweh's people failed to see that he alone had power over these things. Possibly, their desert origins led them to question God's sovereignty over fertile land. Or maybe it was simply the sinful pagan practices that attracted them to Baal.
Baal is portrayed as a man with the head and horns of a bull, an image similar to that in biblical accounts. His right hand (sometimes both hands) is raised, and he holds a lightning bolt, signifying both destruction and fertility. Baal has also been portrayed seated on a throne, possibly as the king or lord of the gods.
Asherah was honored as the fertility goddess in various forms and with varying names (Judg. 3:7). The Bible does not actually describe the goddess, but archaeologists have discovered figurines believed to be representations of her. She is portrayed as a nude female, sometimes pregnant, with exaggerated breasts that she holds out, apparently as symbols of the fertility she promises her followers. The Bible indicates that she was worshiped near trees and poles, called Asherah poles (Deut. 7:5, 12:2-3; 2 Kings 16:4, 17:10; Jer. 3:6,13; Ezek. 6:13).
Baal's worshipers appeased him by offering sacrifices, usually animals such as sheep or bulls (1 Kings 18:23). Some scholars believe that the Canaanites also sacrificed pigs and that God prohibited his people from eating pork in part to prevent this horrible cult from being established among them. (See Isa. 65:1-5 for an example of Israel's participating in the pagan practices of the Canaanites.) At times of crisis, Baal's followers sacrificed their children, apparently the firstborn of the community, to gain personal prosperity. The Bible called this practice "detestable" (Deut. 12:31, 18:9-10). God specifically appointed the tribe of Levi as his special servants, in place of the firstborn of the Israelites, so they had no excuse for offering their children (Num. 3:11-13). The Bible's repeated condemnation of child sacrifice shows God's hated of it, especially among his people.
Asherah was worshiped in various ways, including through ritual sex. Although she was believed to be Baal's mother, she was also his mistress. Pagans practiced "sympathetic magic", that is, they believed they could influence the gods' actions by performing the behavior they wished the gods to demonstrate. Believing the sexual union of Baal and Asherah produced fertility, their worshipers engaged in immoral sex to cause the gods to join together, ensuring good harvests. This practice became the basis for religious prostitution (1 Kings 14:23-24). The priest or a male member of the community represented Baal. The priestess or a female members of the community represented Asherah. In this way, God's incredible gift of sexuality was perverted to the most obscene public prostitution. No wonder God's anger burned against his people and their leaders.
PAGAN RELIGIONS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
Many, if not all, of the Old Testament gods had disappeared, at least in name, by the time of Jesus. Beelzebub, based on the Philistine god Baalzebul, had become a synonym for the prince of demons, Satan. Many of the ancient pagan deities lived on, however, now identified with the gods of the Greeks and Romans, the nations who controlled the people of Israel before and during New Testament times. It is not appropriate here to discuss all the gods and goddesses of the Greco-Roman pantheon; however, a few of them were significant in the first century, and some are even mentioned by name in the Bible.
The leader of the gods, Zeus (Jupiter to the Romans), took on the role of Baal, the god of weather or storms. Artemis, the goddess of childbirth and fertility, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love, continued the Asherah cults under a new name (Acts 19:35), but with worship practices that were as immoral as ever. It is said that in Corinth alone, there were more than 1,000 prostitutes in Aphrodite's temple. Hades, the Greek god of the underworld, became the namesake for the place of the dead and even for hell itself. In Matthew 16:18, Jesus referred to the gates of Hades, or the underworld, believed by some to be the grotto at Caesarea Philippi, from which one of the sources of the Jordan River came. The grotto itself was part of a temple complex used in the worship of the Greek god Pan.
Pan was depicted as an ugly man with the horns, legs, and ears of a goat. Most stories about him refer to sexual affairs. The worship practices of his followers were no different. Pan was associated with Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and orgies, whose worshipers continued many of the sexual rites of the Old Testament gods of the Baal cult. Dionysus was worshiped in the pagan Decapolis across the Sea of Galilee from the center of Jesus' ministry. Clearly, though the names of the gods had changed, the peoples worship practices had not. Only the child sacrifice of the Baal cult came to an end with the Greeks and Romans. ... " thattheworldmayknow
Garden of Priapus - 207
More Cuban, vulva, mentule and anal sex in penis cage/humbler
The Romans may have seen Jupiter as Ba'al - but in keeping with the Etruscan model - Jupiter for all his power was in the penis cage - I have a few examples of the Etruscan Jupiter and his wife and he is clearly sexually submissive to her.
Makes no sense today , but that was the ancient reality - conservation of the "Me" required the penis cage.
Jupiter's phallus was passed on to his phallic daughters Apollo and Artemis and the 9 muses in the ancient Egyptian/Babylonian style
Garden of Priapus - 208
Cuban with Mentule about to sex a naked and penis caged slave
The Roman Tribade myth again:
" ... The tribade emerges in two Latin texts, one mythical, one legal: Seneca the Elder’s Controversiae and Phaedrus’ Fabulae, which both appear in the first decades of the 1st cent. CE.
Children of a Drunken God: Phaedrus
Phaedrus’ Fabulae are short stories in verse, reminiscent of Aesop, connected to one another by overarching themes. One theme is the creation of mankind by Prometheus, and more precisely where that creation went wrong: The other asked why he (Prometheus) had created the tribades and the soft men [molles mares].
“That same Prometheus, who created people from clay who were broken to pieces as soon as they met with ill fortune, having laboured all day separately creating the natural parts that shame hides under clothing, so that he could fit them to their bodies, was unexpectedly invited to dinner by Liber.
There he flooded his veins with much nectar and returned home late, unsteady on his feet. Then, his spirit half-asleep, drunken and clumsy, he put what belongs to girls [virginale] on the male sex [generi masculo] and the masculine members [masculina membra] on women [feminis]. Hence, nowadays, desire [libido] enjoys deformed [pravo] pleasure.” ... "
The Tribadic Tradition: The Reception of an Ancient Discourse on Female Homosexuality by Thorsteinn Vilhjalmsson (2015)
Garden of Priapus - 209
Cuban, vulva and cage and cane and penis caged slave. That's an electric penis cage that the Cuban remotely controls to ensure compliance
- Or dragon! The dragon ensured compliance - even over fathers like El who had to submit to his daughter Anat
- That's not just talk - earlier on the dinosaur page of this website I noted that the Vestal Virigins were credited with the power to compel slaves, so long as they were in the city of Rome - Roman husbands too probably! :
" ... The Vestals became a powerful and influential force in the Roman state. When Sulla included the young Julius Caesar in his proscriptions, the Vestals interceded on Caesar's behalf and gained him pardon. Augustus included the Vestals in all major dedications and ceremonies. They were held in awe, and attributed certain magical powers. Pliny the Elder, for example, in Book 28 of his "Natural History" discussing the efficacy of magic, chooses not to refute, but rather tacitly accept as truth:
" ... At the present day, too, it is a general belief, that our Vestal virgins have the power, by uttering a certain prayer, to arrest the flight of runaway slaves, and to rivet them to the spot, provided they have not gone beyond the precincts of the City. If then these opinions be once received as truth, and if it be admitted that the gods do listen to certain prayers, or are influenced by set forms of words, we are bound to conclude in the affirmative upon the whole question. ... " Pliny - Wikipedia
That's Ba'al and Anat - All focus is on Ba'al but power was really in Anat ...
The penis cage produced muscle women - Many of those phallic women on page 150 were clearly based on physically strong real life models
- In ancient Egypt women did not even bother with clothes - The images of BinAnath the daughter of Ramesses II are all close to naked, lean and virile and some with a whip ... The Egyptian vulva was free and open if we are to go by the example of Egyptian art and statuary.
Garden of Priapus - 210
Cuban bare ass with whip, about to whip a bare ass in the penis cage
- Tribade in action !
Garden of Priapus - 211
More Cuban bare ass with whip, about to whip a bare ass
- She has the Samba "bum bum" - That's African - Brazilian samba queens are proud of their "bum bum" That's where sexual power lives.
The penis and the vagina are inferior sex organs when compared to the ass chakra ... But that's a power few will ever experience - It does not give up its power easily - I think it chooses you - you do not choose it
Garden of Priapus - 212
Topless Cuban, vulva, whip -
- Wow!
Garden of Priapus - 213
Topless Cuban, Vulva, Nipple play, Penis cage
- Inner images are satisfied beehive around me - also giants in the penis cage. That's still a hard image to digest - but all of Rome in the ruling class was in the fibula ...
"Anat is content" as Ramesses II would say!
Anat was the name of Ramessess II's eldest daughter - that was the real King! Make no mistake - The dragon moved from mother to daughter in ancient Egypt.
Reminds me of the book "Dune" - there was a problem finding males who could incarnate the dragon energy - only females could do it
" ... Bintanath (or Bentanath) was the firstborn daughter and later Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II.
Bintanath was likely born during the reign of her grandfather Seti I. Her mother was Isetnofret, one of the two most prominent wives of Ramesses II. Her name is Semitic, meaning Daughter of Anath, referring to the Canaanite goddess Anath. She had at least three brothers, Ramesses, Khaemwaset and Merneptah and a sister who was named Isetnofret after their mother.
Bintanath had a daughter who appears on the paintings in her tomb in the Valley of the Queens. She is unnamed there but according to Joyce Tyldesley it is possible that her name was also Bintanath and she married the next pharaoh, Merneptah. According to Tyldesley, a statue of Merneptah in Luxor mentions "the Great Royal Wife Bintanath", who is, possibly, this daughter, since it is unlikely that the older Bintanath married Merneptah when both of them were well over sixty. However, it is entirely possible that Bintanath never married Merenptah and used the "Great Royal Wife" title only because she was entitled to it due to her first marriage.
Bintanath is depicted in a scene on a pylon in Luxor dated to year 3 of Ramesses II. She is said to be the King's daughter of his body, and is the first in a procession of princesses. She is followed by Meritamen in this procession. Bintanath appears twice as a princess in Abu Simbel. Together with Nebettawy she flanks the southernmost colossus on the facade of the great temple. On one of the pillars inside the temple she is shown offering flowers to the goddess Anuqet.
Bentanath became Great Royal Wife around the 25th year of her father's reign.During her time as queen she held many titles including hereditary princess, the great first one (iryt-p`t-tpit-wrt), Lady of The Two Lands (nbt-t3wy), Great King’s Wife (hmt-niswt-wrt), Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt (hnwt-Shm’w -mhw), King’s Daughter (s3t-niswt), and eventually King’s Sister (snt-niswt).
As (great) royal wife Bintanath appears on several statues of Pharaoh Ramesses II. She is depicted on a statue from the Sinai (BM 697), on two sandstone colossi found in Tanis, but probably originally from Pi-Ramesse, and on a statue from the south gate of the Ptah precinct in Memphis. A usurped Middle Kingdom statue from Heracleopolis depicts both Bintanath and her sister Meritamen, and a statue from Hermopolis depicts Bintanath and Henutmire (both as great royal wives). Bintanath is depicted on statues of her father at least three times in Karnak and Luxor, and she appears in statues in Wadi es-Sebua.
Two family stelae show Bintanath with her immediate family. The Aswan rock stela shows Ramesses II, Isetnofret and Khaemwaset before the god Khnum, while in another register Bintanath appears with her brothers Ramesses and Merneptah. Another stela from West Silsila depicts Bint-Anath standing behind her mother Isetnofret and her father Ramesses II as the king offers Maat to the gods Ptah and Nefertem. Prince Khaemwaset stands in front of the king, while her brothers Ramesses and Merneptah are shown in a lower register.
Despite her being Ramesses' first daughter, she was actually one of the few children who outlived their long-lived father. She was depicted on a statue usurped by Merenptah. She died during the reign of her brother Merneptah and was buried in the tomb QV71 in the Valley of the Queens. ... " Wikipedia
Garden of Priapus - 214
More topless Cuban, vulva, penis cage, nipple play
Sumerian taverns were Amazon brothels - Run by women where the vulva was compared to beer in its "sweetness":
"My god, the tavern keeper , her beer is sweet!
And her vulva is sweet like her beer - and her beer is sweet!
And her vulva is sweet like all her mouths - and her beer is sweet
Her kashbir -beer and her regular beer are sweet"
Court of Shu-Sin - Falkenstein (1947)
- When Alexander the great conquered the Persians he was said to have been drained of his energy by spending too much time in Babylon where married women and young girls would regularly attend dinner parties naked:
" ... In the first century CE, Curtius Rufus (5.1.36–38) discussed the unparalleled moral corruption (nihil urbis eius corruptius moribus) of the Babylonians, with specific references to their habit of prostituting their girls and women: liberos coniugesque cum hospitibus stupro coire, modo pretium flagitii detur, parentes maritique patiuntur. It is worth noting that Curtius omits the religious framework in which Herodotus made his comments and simply focuses on the corruptible nature of the people, now additionally presented as drunkards who have surrendered to their innate lasciviousness: Babylonii maxime in vinum et, quae ebrietatem sequuntur, effusi sunt. He states that this customary display of immorality, which included the appearance of naked married women (matronae) and even girls (virgines) at dinner parties, posed a major threat to the character of Alexander the Great and his men. Indeed, we are told that Alexander spent more time there than in any other of his conquests, and that military discipline was seriously undermined as a result of this extended stay. ... "
Herodotus on Sacred Marriage and Sacred Prostitution at Babylon (2018)
Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides and Michael B. Charles
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But in Babylon the genders were switched - so naked matrons and girls at dinner parties was just doing as Innana did:
Hymn to Inana as Ninegala
" .... Inana, you are the lady of all the divine powers, and no deity can compete with you. Here is your dwelling, Ninegala; let me tell of your grandeur!
When you act as a shepherd with the herdsman, when ...... with the cowherd you throw the halters on the cows, when you mix the butter, when you purify the milk, when you find joy in the embrace of your spouse Dumuzid, when you have pleasure in the embrace of your spouse Dumuzid, when you take your seat on the high dais in the great hall in your Kura-igijal where judgment is passed, then the people of the holy uzga stand there at your service.
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.
Inana, you are the lady of all the divine powers, and no deity can compete with you. Here is your dwelling, Ninegala; let me tell of your grandeur!
When the servants let the flocks loose, and when cattle and sheep are returned to cow-pen and sheepfold, then, my lady, like the nameless poor, you wear only a single garment. The pearls of a prostitute are placed around your neck, and you are likely to snatch a man from the tavern. As you hasten to the embrace of your spouse Dumuzid, Inana, then the seven paranymphs share the bedchamber with you.
Inana, you are the lady of all the divine powers, and no deity can compete with you. Here is your dwelling, Ninegala; let me tell of your grandeur! ... "
Garden of Priapus - 215
Topless Cuban, vulva, whipping session in the cage
Alexander's Babylonian conquest was probably like the encounter between the wild man Enkidu and the temple prostitute Shamash. - Shamash tamed Enkidu by more than 2 weeks of rough sex - Since that Greeks were in the penis cage that was probably female mentule in the male Greek anus sex.
That was probably when the religious cult of Innana began to penetrate the west
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Hymn to Inana as Ninegala
Great light, heavenly lioness, always speaking words of assent! Inana, great light, lioness of heaven, who always speaks words of assent! Ninegala! As you rise in the morning sky like a flame visible from afar, and at your bright appearance in the evening sky, the shepherd (i.e. the king) entrusts (?) the flocks of Sumer to you. Celestial sign, ...... glory of heaven! All the countries are building a house for you as for the risen sun; a shining (?) torch is assigned to you, the light of the Land.
Inana, you are the lady of all the divine powers, and no deity can compete with you. Here is your dwelling, Ninegala; let me tell of your grandeur!
When bright ...... had raised its head in the Land, and when you live ...... with ......, the young woman ...... the hero for you, she has grasped ...... for you. ...... has brought the numerous ...... to you. They raise ...... to your ......; kids ...... are ordered, and your Egal-edina, the place of calm, has been arranged for you. You are the good woman who spreads a sense of awe perceptibly throughout the Land.
Inana, you are the lady of all the divine powers, and no deity can compete with you. Here is your dwelling, Ninegala; let me tell of your grandeur!
After the first watch of the night has passed, as like a shepherd you get up from the grass, you seize your battle-mace like a warrior, you fasten the guma cloth on your arms, and you bind on your indefatigable strength. Thus you appear brilliantly, together with An, in the city (probably Unug) . On earth, Inana, you emit awe-inspiring splendour from the holy dais. Your feet are placed on seven dogs, your seat is set upon a lion and a leopard. Cattle and sheep are brought to you for inspection. Lulal stands by your feet, bearing in battle the pitiless (?) udug weapon. Beside them the cultic attendants stand at your service, lined up for you beside the dogs. They have taken over the temple Gu-ena-ida, to provide for you.
Inana, you are the lady of all the divine powers, and no deity can compete with you. Here is your dwelling, Ninegala; let me tell of your grandeur!
The ...... dog (?) has brought the sheep close to you; the powerful dog (?) has ...... a wild bull ...... in its paws,
the lion, the warrior .......
Inana, in heaven you are lightning, on earth you move swiftly ...... against the foreign land that you are angry with, ....... When in your precinct and shrine the Ibgal you regulate the divine ordinances like the divine powers of An, when you regulate the heavenly ordinances like the divine powers of Enki and cause awe of you to reach up to the heavens, then your seat is on the ...... dais on the terrace by your Gate of Four Faces. Inana, you go into the interior of heaven like your father Suen; Ninegala, you appear like moonlight in your shrine the Ibgal, placing your foot on your ordinances, and dividing them among the ...... dogs (?).
Inana, you are the lady of all the divine powers, and no deity can compete with you. Here is your dwelling, Ninegala; let me tell of your grandeur!
When you hasten to where brambles and foul great thorns grow, when you stride along all the mountains, when you drink from puddles with the dogs, when you share the stall with the horses, when with the storm you reduce everything to a mere shadow, Inana, when you cause the rain to fall all day long, then your seat is in your E-kug-nuna at Eridug, on the dais where destinies are determined.
At the New Year, at the festival of Dumuzid, your spouse Ama-ucumgal-ana, lord Dumuzid, steps forward to you. ...... of weeping are brought to you, Inana, as offerings. The tubes of the underworld are opened for you, and memorial libations are poured down them for you. The en priests, the lumah priests and the nindijir priestesses, and the dead luzid and amalu, eat meals for you, to keep away the ghosts, and drink water for you, to keep away the ghosts. Your holy dais is set up beside them.
Inana, you are the lady of all the divine powers, and no deity can compete with you. Here is your dwelling, Ninegala; let me tell of your grandeur!
Inana, when you give judgement with An and Enlil; Ninegala, when you decide destinies on earth with Enki, when you shimmer (?), when you ...... to a mere shadow, when you come forth from the corner, when you come forth from the side, when you are to be seen on the horizon, Inana, when in your destructiveness you make storm-floods wash over everything, then the great en priests ......, then the igi-dua priestesses wear the tonsure for you, then your seat is on your Dais of Silence.
The young men fastened in neck-stocks ...... before you, the mother of the sick lays her child in your arms, the mother of the uprooted (?) ...... in your great hall. You cut the ...... of the weak, you release (?) ...... the weak. ... "
Garden of Priapus - 216
Topless cuban as a warrior sodomizing a male soldier
The Sumerian tavern evolved into the garden of priapus - Priapus was the son of the phallic Aphrodite and the catamite Bacchus - which is directly parallel to the phallic Inanna and the catamite Dumuzi:
"The most popular of the [Sumerian] erotic typologies after the drinking scenes are the bed scenes. The bed, like the tavern, is a liminal territory and intimately related to the female body. Bed scenes, like tavern scenes, seem to draw on a general awareness of Inanna's legendary sexual affairs. Although the divine harimtu copulates with various, usually anonymous, partners at the tavern, Inanna as the bride-to-be has only one, the beloved Dumuzi. The miraculous attributes of this paradigmatic couple, which I maintain gave such agency to their plaque images, endured throughout Mesopotamia's history ... "
Sex, Magic and the Liminal Body in the Erotic Art and Text of the Old Babylonian Period" Julia Assante
On page 150 of this website are many images of women or girls either with a penis or standing next to Priapus in female clothes and an erection - That's what happened in the Roman bedroom - the Inanna or female phallus in the male rectum !
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There was also an ancient Egyptian branch of the sacred prostitutes - but research here is hard - Egypt has Roman, Greek and Canaanite and Babylonian layers covering up its ancient black African core:
" ... Strabo on Thebes (Luxor) Priestesses or “Sacred Prostitutes” of the West Bank? Mogg Morgan
The Greek author Strabo wrote his voluminous Geography during the reign of emperor Augustus when Pax Romana made it relatively safe to travel throughout the extensive Roman empire. He visited Thebes (Luxor) in Upper Egypt and records how the once great capital had, since Homer’s time, declined to a collection of villages on either side of the river. Although not mentioned by name one can assume that on the west bank of the Nile these are Qurna & Bayrat.
Strabo’s account is marred by what some say is a “remarkable example of the perverted meaning of a religious custom, by the ignorance of the Greeks and Roman writers”. These remarks are from early 19th century explorer and pioneer Egyptologist Gardner Wilkinson. His work, still remarkably current and readable, is perhaps one reason why Egyptologists, unlike other historians of ancient history, have never really accepted the existence of sacred prostitution in Egypt.
Strabo wrote that for “Zeus (Amon) whom is held in the highest honour, they dedicate a maiden of greatest beauty and most illustrious family (such maidens are called “pallades” (virgin-priestesses) or pallacide (harlots) by the Greeks); and she prostitutes herself, and cohabits with whatever men she wishes until the natural cleansing of her body takes place; (menstruation) and after her cleansing she is given in marriage to a man; but before she is married, after the time of her prostitution, a rite of mourning is celebrated for her.”
This and other passages are largely responsible for the myth of sacred prostitution in antiquity. Strabo visited Thebes (Luxor), travelling to its west bank, “The Libyan Suburb” (Contemporary land sales refer to it as such ) Strabo viewed the so-called Colossus of Memnon, actually colossal statues of Amenhotep III that fronted his enormous mortuary temple, now largely destroyed. He may also have visited the remains of Medinet Habu before passing on to the Theban necropolis.
The sacred precinct at Medinet Habu is a large complex of sacred buildings less than a mile from the Colossus of Memnon. Uvo Hölscher’s 1954 archaeological survey confirms that the small 18th dynasty temple of Amun was still functioning in Roman times. There was in fact a small Roman village built around it whose inhabitants buried their dead in a cemetery just south-west of the great girdle wall or temenos. The temple of Amun continued to function until the rise of the Coptic religion when it was remodelled for Christian use. The temple enclosure was eventually submerged beneath the streets of the Coptic town of Jeme whose citizens reused the standing temple walls for a church, monastic cells and secular dwelling houses. This town of Jeme was eventually abandoned by the 8th or 9th century, which is some time after the Arab conquest of Egypt circa 640AD.
One question arises here is whether Strabo recorded any authentic Egyptian religious practice or was it, as Wilkinson wisely understood, merely “typical Greek and Roman perversity”, obsessed with the construction of an oriental “other”? Stephanie Budin, in her recent study of the topic opines that previous scholars have misunderstood Strabo, who is really only recording the existence of local virgin priestesses, female temple functionaries, perhaps prophetesses. There is apparently nothing in his language to imply they were also “sacred prostitutes”. Stephanie Budin’s more neutral retranslation of the passage reads:
“But for Zeus, whom they [the Thebans] honour most, a beautiful girl maiden of most illustrious family serves as priestess, [girls] whom the Greek called pallades; she serves as a functionary (prophetess) and accompanies whomever/attends whatever [rites] she wishes until the natural cleansing of her body; after her cleansing she is given to a man/husband but before she is given, a rite of morning is celebrated for her after the time of her religious service.” (Budin 2008: 199)
The idea of sacred prostitution, she says, whether in Egypt or elsewhere is a complete myth with absolutely no evidence other than biased Greek accounts, often repeated by subsequent authors up to the present day.
Strabo says these priestesses “must receive some sort of rite of mourning before resuming normal & married life”. I suspect this is a garbled account of the existence of the Tombs of the Divine Votaresses that can still be visited within the walls of the sacred precinct of Medinet Habu. The entrances to these tomb-chapels are conspicuous and face the Small Temple of Amun, the god whom these women all served. In my opinion, what one reads in Strabo is a memory of the existence of these high-ranking priestesses in Egyptian religion. Their cult was obviously still a living memory when Strabo visited and one can speculate that their tombs-chapels continued to receive cult offerings of some sort. Did their spirits continued to inspire those who served the god Amun in an Egypt under Roman rule? Priestesses of one kind or another had an active role in temple life although as with their male counterparts the end was nigh. Perhaps in difficult times they felt an affinity with their ancient forebears?
Before Strabo, in the 1st century BCE, Diodorus Siculus also described tombs of the [supposed] “concubines of Zeus” (ta pallakidas tou Dios) saying they were 10 stades (approximately one mile) from the monument of the king known as Osymandyas. (1.47.1). This King Osymandyas is actually Ramses II. His colossal statue lies in great fragments in the forecourt of his mortuary temple, these days widely known as the Ramesseum. There has been some confusion over the distances mentioned in Diodorus Siculus’ account; 10 Stades (one mile) seems to underestimate the distance between the Ramesseum and the valley of the Queens or Kings. But it does fit with the distance to the far closer Tombs of the Divine Adoratrices or Votaresses.
A votary is an uncommon word in English meaning someone who is devoted to the service of the deity, usually a monk or a nun. In ancient Egyptian the term used is “Duat Neter”- meaning divine adoratrice. Approximately thirty such tombs have been discovered in the temple precinct. None of them is intact. They cluster in three groups – the most significant are a dozen or so buried in crypts associated with the tomb-chapels of the divine votaresses. A second group of less elegant tombs are near the enclosure wall of the small temple of Amun and the third group lie beneath the floors of rooms in the main temple. Where names are known they are all women.
There are three Egyptian terms used to designate these special priestesses. The earliest,“divine consort” (Hemet Neter) is first encountered and is perhaps an innovation of 18th dynasty. The word hemet means womb (see N40 in standard sign list). To us the most famous bearer of this title is Queen Hatshepsut (circa 1479-1458BCE), who was married to Amun and at the same time was favourite wife of king Thutmose II. She also bore the title “hand of the god” (djedet neter) and “divine votaress” (duat-neter). She was not celibate or if so perhaps only so on sacerdotal days. Her role was something to do with the fertility of the god Amun-Min. Was this, as some speculate, some sort of gross sexual stimulation of the ithyphallic god? Gay Robins doubts the necessity of manual stimulation for a god almost permanently aroused. . . but there again? She prefers to focus on the other possible connotations of “hand of god” as someone who hold executive power on behalf of the king.
Over time the lifestyle of the divine adoratrice evolved and changed. By the time of what Egyptologists designate Egypt’s Third Intermediate period (1000-700BCE) no single dynasty ruled the whole of the land. What we call dynasties overlapped. In 25th and 26th dynasties the institution of Divine Adoratrice was revived at Thebes (Luxor). Amun’s divine consort were now a royal princess who never married. Their husband was Amun. They were treated like queens and had royal titulary. The succession passed from adoptive “mother” to “daughter” – coronation followed the mother’s death.
She exercised some executive power as representative of the king in the Theban state. She also had great priestly power on a par with the high priest at Karnak, until that post was itself abolished around the time of Soror Niticris.
Names of the first group of Votaresses are
Shepnupet I (daughter of “Libyan” Osorkon III – last of the Bubastite line c 718BC)
Amerirdis – (daughter of Ethiopian king Shabaka adopted by Shepnupet )
Shepnupet II – (daughter of Ethiopian king Piankh, cousin of Taharka (adopted by Amenirdis)
*Amenirdis II – (daughter of Ethiopian king Taharka – although she never served )
Nitocris – (daughter of Saitic King Psamtik I and Mehenusekhet (c655BC) Nitocris died in 584BC – 70years after her adoption)
Ankhenes-Neferibre’ – (Saitic grand niece of Nitocris, daughter of Psamtik II -The last divine consort before the Persian invasion of 525BC)
The tomb chapels for these women are orientated with their northern facade facing the small temple of Amun at Medinet Habu. This temple was far less grand than the adjacent mortuary temple of Ramses III. Even so it was the most important centre on the west bank, the djeset-shet, of the god Amun. The tombs of the high priests of Amun are also nearby, as is that of 22nd dynasty Theban priest-king Horsiese. All are buried in association with the small temple of Amun.
Above ground the stone structures of the chapels of the Votaresses have interconnecting doorways. This suggests some interaction between the different priestesses both during and after life. One can imagine the newly adopted priestess served firstly as understudy to the older woman during the latter’s final years of life. The new priestess was responsible for continuing the cult of her predecessor in the corresponding tomb chapel and this no doubt included consulting the ka of the deceased. Her function was complex, serving the cult of Amun but also that of her departed predecessor, making daily food offerings and channelling the messages of her ghostly ka spirit, perhaps also making prophesy. Each priestess had her own chapel-tomb, some of the oldest were of mud brick, although these were swept away in the 19th century clearance (déblaiement). The easternmost of these would have been the most ancient. Unfortunately no record was made of the appearance of the mud brick structures before their demolition.
From the above arrangement, we gain insight into how a group of priestesses interacted and one can deduce quite a lot concerning the mechanics of ancient religious practice. One thing that seems obvious is the need for the living priestess to interact with her dead ancestor, presumably for on-going inspiration. This mirrors the way every Egyptian interacted with their own ancestors and how most tombs was designed to facilitate such a dialogue.
Uvo Hölscher says of the tomb-chapels at Medinet Habu that they are unique in design; nothing similar has yet been found. To him their uniqueness is coincidental; other examples may well exist awaiting discovery. A ceremonial gateway leads to a courtyard, open to the sky. Here stood a standard offering table. A short stairway leads to a windowless room; the architectural term is a “cellar” meaning storage room. A corridor, presumably to facilitate circumambulation, runs around the windowless inner sanctuary. The tomb spaces are in crypts below this windowless room. There is something in this arrangement that to me suggests the pre-dynastic tent shrines whose remains were discovered at Hieronkonpolis.
In both instances the living offer food and other supplies to the dead. Every important Egyptian temple was linked to a priestly scriptorium or “house of life” – perhaps this too enabled interaction between living and dead priests, a relationship they may have been initiated between living mentor and student? It’s a “technique” that one can envisage would still work in a contemporary religious setting such as one finds in neo-paganism.
A careful reading of Strabo’s much abused account of life on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes does yield some useful information. His account of a special class of ancient priestesses is borne out by archaeology evidence from Medinet Habu. The fortunes of the village that grew around the sacred precinct has ebbed and flowed over the centuries, sometime seemingly completely abandoned then repopulated by others. Even today the sanctity of the site continues as evidenced by local “folk practices” many of which appear to be survivals or archaeological memories of these ancient times. ... " Strabo on Thebes (Luxor) Priestesses or “Sacred Prostitutes” of the West Bank? Mogg Morgan - mandoxegypt
Garden of Priapus - 217
Icon of ancient Egyptian sexuality: the Djed Pillar and the eight pointed star of Venus. I just noticed the star of venus which is all over Sumerian artefacts
Shot blocked. Used workaround.
Research in ancient Egyptian sacred prostitutes may be hard - but the phenomenon was probably universal - due to the penis cage which was put on in the company of women at a very young age and stayed on until the Sed festival 30 years later.
During this time the primary male sexual organ was the anus and the primary female sex organ was the mentule or female phallus or venus phallus or Innana phallus - In ancient Egypt gender roles were reversed like in Sumeria and Ethiopia.
And the female sex drive was high enough caused by the universal penis cage to require the services of Amazon brothels and the annual "festival of drunkeness" which was an Amazon orgy designed to placate or cool off fierce phallic Egyptian goddesses like the lioness Sekhmet-Min.
18th dynasty and 19th dynasty were the era of the Minoan "bull-jumpers" - Amazons with large phalli subduing bulls - The female phallus started young - as young as 7 years old in the Satyricon -
On page 150 of this website is a Roman sculpture of a mother daughter hermaphrodite pair ...The Amazon sexuality of ancient Egypt and Rome was thick and intense ....
Garden of Priapus - 218
Boss lady and a friend sodomizing a penis caged man.
The garden of Priapus almost certainly derives from the gardens of Babylon - the world of the phallic Inanna and the catamite Dumuzi
"The king [Alexander] first went to the temple of Bel-Marduk and ordered the damage Xerxes had done to the sacred precinct repaired. Then, carefully following the instructions of the priests, he sacrificed to the god, surrounded by cheering natives." erenow
- The central rite of Bel-Marduk involved a bed and a high priestess and a King. Alexander who was gay was probably sodomized in the ancient way by a Harimtu
More data on Alexanders conquest of Babylon - my intuition is there was a counter-conquest of the west by the Amazon brothel culture of the Babylonian tavern:
" ... Alexander, on the other hand, was determined to show respect for the religious traditions of Babylon, though he was also cautious. He gave strict orders to his men that there was to be no looting and that no Macedonian soldier would enter a Babylonian house uninvited. He hoped to take Babylon peacefully and maintain good relations with the natives, but he was ready for trouble if it occurred. Thus beneath the city walls crowded with thousands of men, women, and children throwing flowers to the soldiers below, Alexander entered the city that bright autumn day through the Ishtar Gate at the head of his troops in full battle formation. There was no hostility from the inhabitants, who, like the Egyptians, were pleased to see the Persians removed from power even though they did not yet know what sort of rule the Macedonians would impose. Instead of spears and arrows there were garlands and perfumes, followed by gifts of precious frankincense and cages filled with lions and leopards. The native priests sang hymns in ancient tongues to welcome the new king while music filled the air. The throngs of citizens joined in the procession behind the soldiers as if the entry of the army were a great holiday. Alexander had never seen anything to compare with Babylon. To his men from the poor villages of Macedonia, it was as if they had entered another world.
The king first went to the temple of Bel-Marduk and ordered the damage Xerxes had done to the sacred precinct repaired. Then, carefully following the instructions of the priests, he sacrificed to the god, surrounded by cheering natives. Then he and his officers retired to the palace at the northern end of the city near the Ishtar Gate and settled into a life of splendid luxury for the next month. He marveled at a pillar in the palace listing the dining requirements of Darius’ royal entourage, including dozens of cakes of honey, hundreds of bushels of flour, barrels of sesame oil and vinegar, and baskets of finely chopped cardamom. Alexander ordered the inscription destroyed to show a break with the wasteful Persian ways of the past and told his officers that those who indulged in such extravagant ways were quickly defeated in battle.
With his copy of Herodotus in hand the next day, Alexander toured the strange and wonderful city. As he passed through the streets, he noticed that family members and friends would carry sick people into public squares and leave them there to talk with those walking by. The Babylonians did not trust physicians, but instead relied on the advice of strangers, who would approach the sick and offer a remedy. Many had suffered from the same illness themselves and had learned firsthand an effective treatment, while others had heard of a cure elsewhere. Given the international nature of the city, with visitors from almost every land, there was no shortage of medical wisdom and quackery available to the sick.
One of the first places visited by Alexander’s men, if not by the king himself, must have been the temple of the goddess Ishtar, known to the Greeks as Aphrodite, who ruled over the sexual aspects of life. It was an unbreakable rule in Babylon that every woman of the city must sometime in her life offer herself to a man at the temple as an act of worship. Rich and poor women alike would come to the sacred precinct and sit with wreaths of cords on their heads to mark their availability. Visiting men would walk up and down the pathways among the women looking for an appealing devotee. When they found the right lady, they would toss silver into her lap and call her to come in the name of the goddess. A waiting priest would collect the money for the temple treasury and escort the couple to a nearby room in the temple. No woman could refuse any man, so that a poor shepherd in from the countryside could enjoy the favors of a noble lady of the court, at least on that single occasion. Beautiful women never had to wait long, but those lacking in appeal might sit in the temple courtyard for years before being chosen. Prudish Greek writers reported that the whole enterprise was nothing but prostitution on a grand scale, but to the citizens of Babylon it was as much an act of genuine devotion as the most solemn sacrifice to Athena or Zeus.
Alexander would least of all have missed the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, ranked along with the Great Pyramid at Giza as one of the wonders of the world. Centuries earlier, an Assyrian king ruling in Babylon had built the gardens for his foreign wife, who longed for the woods and groves of her native land. There in the middle of a desert city, the king built a series of raised platforms above the streets supported by massive columns. Tons of soil were carried to the terraces by an army of slaves and water was continuously piped in from the river and drawn up by huge screws to circulate through the gardens. Fruit trees, palms, and conifers were planted throughout, growing into a living forest rising high above the city. In the most intense heat of summer, visitors could walk through the cool groves and picnic in the shade on the lush grass.
As always, Alexander seems to have taken an interest in religious matters that went beyond the mere politics of ingratiating himself with the locals. There was in Babylon a special quarter of the city given over to the Chaldeans, the ancient priest-philosophers of Mesopotamia famed especially for their precise study of the stars. Their records of astronomical events reportedly went back thousands of years, but as they were written in a cuneiform script unknown to the Greek world, the king had to take the priests’ word on the matter. Unlike most numerical systems, mathematics as taught by the Chaldeans was based on the number sixty rather than ten—a way of measuring time and space passed on to later civilizations as the sixty-minute hour, the sixty-second minute, and the 360-degree circle (six times sixty). Long before Alexander, the Babylonians had discovered how to use complex fractions, quadratic equations, and what would come to be known as the Pythagorean theorem. Many of the advances in later Greek mathematics in fact derived from the encounter that began in Babylon that autumn with the arrival of the Macedonians. As the Chaldeans were also experts in divination, Alexander took several of them along with him for the rest of his campaign to read the signs of events to come. He must have also talked with them about their views of the gods and the origin of the world. If so, he would have learned of a remarkable similarity between Babylonian creation myths, with their stories of successive generations of gods battling one another for control of the universe, and the tales he had read in the Greek poet Hesiod of Cronos castrating his father, only to be violently displaced in time by his own son Zeus.
But Alexander could not spend all his time in Babylon seeing the sights and visiting with native scholars. There were also appointments to be made and military affairs to be arranged. Almost fifteen thousand new recruits had just arrived in the city following a long march from Macedonia. These included cavalry and infantry sent by Antipater and led by Amyntas, the veteran commander dispatched to Macedonia by Alexander many months before to bring back additional troops. The king was sorely disappointed that Amyntas had not arrived with the much-needed soldiers before the battle at Gaugamela, but he knew there would be plenty of opportunities for fighting yet to come. The commander also brought with him fifty sons of leading Macedonian nobles to serve as royal pages under the king. These lads were to wait on the royal table, attend the king in hunting and battle, and stand guard outside his chambers at night. It was an honored position for ambitious young men that served as an important training ground for future Macedonian leaders.
Before leaving the city, Alexander appointed Agathon from the coastal Macedonian town of Pydna as commander of the citadel at Babylon with a thousand troops under him. Overall command of military affairs in Babylonia was assigned to another Macedonian, Apollodorus from Amphipolis, along with two thousand soldiers and money to hire more. Asclepiodorus, probably a Greek, was put in charge of collecting taxes from the province, while the former Persian satrap Mazaeus was reconfirmed in his previous office. To keep the army happy—and perhaps to lure them away from the pleasures of the city—he gave each of his Macedonian cavalry the equivalent of a year’s pay as a bonus. Foreign horsemen received almost as much and Macedonian infantry each pocketed more than they would earn in six months. Alexander wanted to give his men no cause to grumble as they continued the march into Persia. They knew there would be more to come from their generous king on the road ahead.
Once the last of his soldiers was rounded up from the brothels of Babylon, Alexander set out with his enlarged army to the winter capital of the Persian Empire at Susa. Darius was still at large in the snow-covered mountains of Media, but the most pressing matter for Alexander was to secure the treasuries at Susa and Persepolis as soon as possible. Susa was the closer of the two capitals, more than a hundred miles down the royal road that ran all the way back to Sardis in Lydia. The town was so notoriously hot in summer that lizards trying to cross its roads baked before they reached the other side, but in the cooler months it was a most pleasant city. The journey there took the Macedonians to the north of the endless marshes where the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates met the Persian Gulf, a land known in antiquity as Sumer. From here, the biblical patriarch Abraham was said to have set out on his journey to the land of Canaan. The Sumerians, who had built cities three thousand years before Alexander, were one of the oldest civilizations on earth. The king must have heard stories from his new Chaldean traveling companions about the glories of ancient Sumer. From the city of Uruk on the Euphrates, a great king named Gilgamesh once ruled. The story may have been lost by Alexander’s day, but if it had survived once again he would have been surprised by similarities with the earliest Greek literature. Gilgamesh, like Homer’s Achilles, was part god and part man, a great hero seeking glory who fought monsters and gods alongside his beloved friend Enkidu. Like Achilles’ companion Patroclus, Enkidu died suddenly, plunging his friend into deep despair. But unlike Achilles, who took out his frustration on the Trojan warrior Hector, Gilgamesh instead set out in search of eternal life. His quest at last took him to the island of Utnapishtim, a man who had once survived the great flood sent by the gods to destroy humanity and been rewarded with immortality. Gilgamesh failed the test that would grant him eternal life, but the lessons he learned were a comfort to readers for millennia.
The city of Susa was the old capital of the kingdom of Elam, a land of southern Mesopotamia stretching into the Zagros Mountains of Persia to the east. It was once a large territory encompassing parts of Persia before the ancestors of Cyrus the Great took over the highlands. Elam served as the main conduit of trade between the east and Mesopotamia for goods such as timber and minerals. The people of Elam, like the Sumerians, wrote on clay tablets in cuneiform script thousands of years before Alexander. Once the Persians brought the Elamites of the Mesopotamian plain into their empire in the sixth century, they made their tongue one of the official languages of state. The language of Elam was unrelated to any other in the area, though it may have shared a common origin with those spoken in ancient times in parts of India. In any case, it was an important means of communication in Alexander’s new empire and required that the king employ scribes who were fluent in the language.... " erenow
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Boss lady sodomizing and her friend irrumating a penis caged slave
"The king [Alexander] first went to the temple of Bel-Marduk and ordered the damage Xerxes had done to the sacred precinct repaired. Then, carefully following the instructions of the priests, he sacrificed to the god, surrounded by cheering natives." erenow
Bel-Marduk was a form of Dumuzi
"... During the first millennium BC, the Babylonians worshipped a deity under the title "Bel", meaning "lord", who was a syncretization of Marduk, Enlil, and the dying god Dumuzid. Bel held all the cultic titles of Enlil and his status in the Babylonian religion was largely the same. Eventually, Bel came to be seen as the god of order and destiny. The cult of Bel is a major component of the Jewish story of "Bel and the Dragon" from the apocryphal additions to Daniel. In the account, the Babylonians offer "twelve bushels of fine flour, twenty sheep, and fifty gallons of wine" every day to an idol of Bel and the food miraculously disappears overnight. The Persian king Cyrus the Great tells the Jewish wise man Daniel that the idol is clearly alive, because it eats the food that is offered to it, but Daniel objects that it "is only clay on the inside, and bronze on the outside, and has never tasted a thing." Daniel proves this by secretly covering the floor of the temple with ash. Daniel and Cyrus leave the temple and, when they return, Daniel shows the king the human footprints that have been left on the floor, proving that the food is really being eaten by the seventy priests of Bel. Bel is also mentioned in the writings of several Greek historians. ... " Wikipedia
In the vein of Anat forcing her father El to submit to Ba'al - Marduk was also elevated over his own father Ea. Ea was probably forced to concede by his own daughter the goddess Sarpanit in the ancient Sumerian way
" ... Marduk's original character is obscure but he was later associated with water, vegetation, judgment, and magic. His consort was the goddess Sarpanit. He was also regarded as the son of Ea (Sumerian Enki) and Damkina, and the heir of Anu, but whatever special traits Marduk may have had were overshadowed by political developments in the Euphrates valley which led to people of the time imbuing him with traits belonging to gods who in an earlier period were recognized as the heads of the pantheon. There are particularly two gods—Ea and Enlil—whose powers and attributes pass over to Marduk.
In the case of Ea, the transfer proceeded peacefully and without effacing the older god. Marduk took over the identity of Asarluhi, the son of Ea and god of magic, and was thus integrated into the pantheon of Eridu, where both Ea and Asarluhi originated. Ea, Marduk's father, voluntarily recognized the superiority of the son and handed over to him the control of humanity. This association of Marduk and Ea, while indicating primarily the passing to Babylon of the religious and political supremacy once enjoyed by Eridu, may also reflect an early dependence of Babylon upon Eridu, not necessarily of a political character but, in view of the spread of culture in the Euphrates valley from the south to the north, the recognition of Eridu as the older centre on the part of the younger one. ... " Wikipedia
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Boss lady sodomizing her husband.
Going by the example of the Warka vase, a naked Alexander bearing a fruit basket was led into a sacred bedroom in the Ziggurat of Etemenanki and sodomized by the high priestess or Naditu in public - Alexander as the shepard Dumuzi, the priestess as the goddess Inanna
He first served her vulva orally - but reading the Roman Priapea - female on male sodomy with a mentule was required to "download" the sacred Me
And this service was not limited to the King. All Babylonian women were required to have sacred temple sex with a paying stranger at least once in their lives - She was Inanna and the paying supplicant was Dumuzi
- This service continued in Rome. The state supported a community of sacred prostitutes in the temple of Aphrodite - Aphrodite had a phallus - she is associated with the phallus of her father Uranus - It was not a secret that at midnight in her sacred rites the sexes exchanged clothing and sexual roles as well - the Me flowed from goddess into male supplicant. -
In Babylon however, the Amazons were more voracious and sex was not restricted to the temple - It was done in public after the rising of Venus with Harimtu servicing many young men at one time. In Babylon the whole male population was sexually caged unlike Rome where that was limited to the ruling class
" ... The story of the Tower of Babel, found in the Biblical book of Genesis, is one of the most famous and beloved legends of mankind.
The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Šin'âr, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, "Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built. And the Lord said, "Behold, the people are one and they have all one language, and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be withheld from them which they have imagined to do. Come, let Us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off building the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Bâbel (that is "Confusion") because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.note
Let's start our discussion of the Etemenanki with some remarks about this Biblical story. The Hebrew word Bâbel, Confusion, is often used for Babylon (Akkadian Bab-ili), but this is not sufficient to prove the identification of the tower with a monument in this big city. (Imagine a legend about the unity of mankind, which is situated by scholars in Union, Connecticut.) Fortunately, the story contains a second geographical clue: the tower was erected on "a plain in the land of Šin'âr". This country is known from other books of the Bible (Isaiah 11.11 and Zechariah 5.11) and is translated as "Babylonia" in the Septuagint. So there is nothing that keeps us from identifying the Biblical building with a monument in ancient Babylon. This must be the building known as E-temen-an-ki, the 'House of the foundation of heaven on earth', a giant mountain of bricks and tiles with, on top, a temple for the god Marduk. He had a second temple in the neighborhood, the Esagila.
The ancient Babylonians called these brick mountains a ziqqurratu or ziggurat, which can be translated as "rising building" (Akkadian zaqâru, "to rise high"). This type of temple tower is the oriental equivalent of the Egyptian pyramid and just as old, although there are two differences: the ziggurat was not a tomb, and ziggurats were built well into the Seleucid age, whereas the building of pyramids came to an end after c.1640 BCE. Ziggurats played a role in the cults of many cities in ancient Mesopotamia. Archaeologists have discovered nineteen of these buildings in sixteen cities; the existence of another ten is known from literary sources.
The Etemenanki was among the largest of these, and the most important. (The largest was the shrine of Anu at Uruk, built in the third or second century BCE.) According to the Babylonian creation epic Enûma êliš the god Marduk defended the other gods against the diabolical monster Tiamat. After he had killed it, he brought order to the cosmos, built the Esagila, which was the center of the new world, and created mankind. The Etemenanki was next to the Esagila, and this means that the temple tower was erected at the center of the world, as the axis of the universe. Here, a straight line connected earth and heaven. This aspect of Babylonian cosmology is echoed in the Biblical story, where the builders say "let us build a tower whose top may reach unto heaven".
The best description of the monumental tower can be found in a cuneiform tablet from Uruk, written in 229 BCE. It is a copy of an older text and is now in the Louvre in Paris. It states that the tower was made up of seven terraces and it gives the height of the seven stocks - 91 meters all in all. The ground floor measured 91 x 91 meters, and this is confirmed by archaeological excavations conducted by Robert Koldewey after 1913 (91,48 x 91,66 m). Large stairs were discovered at the south side of the building, where a triple gate connected the Etemenanki with the Esagila. A larger gate in the east connected the Etemenanki with the sacred procession road. Seen from the triple gate, the Etemenanki must have resembled a true "stairway to heaven", because the gates on the higher terraces seemed to be standing on top of each other.
Using the archaeological data and the tablet at the Louvre, several reconstructions have been proposed. However, there is one caveat: it is possible that the Louvre tablet describes not the real temple tower, but an idealized sanctuary - a blueprint for a Etemenanki that still has to be build, comparable to the description of the temple of Jerusalem in the Biblical book of Ezekhiel.
On the highest terrace was a temple, dedicated to the Babylonian supreme god Marduk. The Louvre tablet again offers information. There were several cult rooms: Marduk shared his room with his wife Sarpanitum, a second room offered accommodation to the scribe-god Nabû and his wife Tashmetu, and there were rooms for the water god Ea, the god of light Nusku, the god of heaven Anu, and finally Enlil, Marduk's predecessor as chief of the Mesopotamian pantheon. A seventh room was called "house of the bed" and contained a bed and a throne. A second bed was on the inner court of the temple on the highest platform of the Etemenanki. Finally, there must have been stairs to the roof. It is possible that the famous Babylonian astronomers, the Chaldaeans, did their observations at the topmost level of the building.
This is the point where another text becomes useful: the Histories by the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fifth century BCE). Although he probably never visited Babylon, his description of the Etemenanki tells us something about the temple ritual. (Herodotus correctly calls the supreme god of Babylon Bêl ("lord"), because his real name was not pronounced.)
The temple of Bêl, the Babylonian Zeus [...] was still in existence in my time. It has a solid central tower, one stadium square, with a second erected on top of it and then a third, and so on up to eight. All eight towers can be climbed by a spiral way running round the outside, and about half way up there are seats for those who make the ascent to rest on. On the summit of the topmost tower stands a great temple with a fine large couch in it, richly covered, and a golden table beside it. The shrine contains no image, and no one spends the night there except (if we may believe that Chaldaeans who are the priests of Bêl) one Babylonian woman, all alone, whoever it may be that the god has chosen. The Chaldaeans also say -though I do not believe them- that the god enters the temple in person and takes his rest upon the bed.note
This account contains minor errors (the dimensions of the tower, the number of levels, the shape of the stairs) and belongs to a description of Babylon that contains grave errors. It needs to be stressed, because there are still scholars maintaining that Herodotus visited Babylon, that the Greek researcher does not claim that he has seen the Etemenanki: he merely writes that it "was still in existence" in his time. Yet, this is the only text we have that describes the ritual performed in the temple: a holy marriage, in which the god sleeps with a woman. Unfortunately, there is not a single scrap of Babylonian evidence that can be used to corroborate Herodotus' story.
Probably, we must simply ignore it. He goes on to make a comparison with a similar Egyptian ritual, and this betrays him: on several occasions, Herodotus offers comparisons between Babylonia and Egypt, and in those cases, he is always wrong and may be repeating a story told by Egyptian priests. The story about the woman and the god belongs to this category.
The Etemenanki is mentioned for the first time in the Annals of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, who claims that he destroyed the temple tower of his Babylonian enemies in 689 BCE. Although he certainly sacked Babylon, it is impossible that his looting soldiers destroyed the Etemenanki. The wholesale destruction of large-scale structures is the prerogative of the modern age; ancient armies were incapable of destroying a large building.
The fact that Sennacherib could send an army against the Etemenanki, proves that it was older, and it would be remarkable if it was not so by at least 1000 years. During the reign of king Hammurabi (1792-1750), Babylonia was the leading power of Mesopotamia. In his age, there were ziggurats in lesser towns like Qatara, Aššur, Sippar, Kish, Borsippa, Nippur, Uruk, Larsa, Ur, and Eridu. It would be very strange if the capital of the world would be the only city without a ziggurat. It may be noted that the creation epic Enûma êliš with its reference to the building of the Esagila (and the implication of the existence of the Etemenanki), had already been written.
After Sennacherib, Esarhaddon was king of Assyria (r.680-669). He allowed the Babylonians to rebuilt their city. Another construction phase may have been after the war between the Assyrian king Aššurbanipal and his brother Šamaš-šum-ukin, the viceroy of Babylon (r.667-648). When Babylonia became independent under Nabopolassar (625-605), there was renewed building activity, and finally, king Nebuchadnezzar (605-562) is recorded as one of the builders. He finished the temple at the top, which was covered with a roof made of cedars from the Lebanon. The two last king have boasted that the tower "reached unto heaven" (cf. the Weidner Chronicle).
The building history suggests that the Babylonians were occupied with the construction of the tower for over a century. It is possible that the ambitious design of a tower of 92 x 92 x 92 meters was too grandiose, so that they needed as much time for their project as the medieval builders of the European cathedrals. For a long time, the tower must have looked unfinished, and this may explain how the Biblical story came into being. It is certainly possible that the sanctuary was never finished at all.
The Persian king Xerxes (r.486-465) has often been blamed for the destruction of the Etemenanki. During his reign, there were indeed two revolts (led by Bêl-šimânni and Šamaš-eriba, both in 484), and Herodotus states that Xerxes took away a large statue of a man from the Esagila. Some six centuries later, the historian Arrian of Nicomedia, the author of an important book on Alexander the Great, expanded this last piece of information to a remark about the destruction of the Etemenanki. After all, Arrian had to explain why Alexander started to rebuild the monument that was by then known as the "tomb of Belus". But his story cannot be true. The continuous cult at the Esagila and Etemenanki is mentioned in cuneiform sources form the fifth and fourth centuries, and is confirmed by Herodotus (whatever his merits), who states that "the temple of Bêl [...] was still in existence in my time
The truth must be that by the time of Alexander, the ziggurat had fallen into disrepair. Buildings made of brick easily fall apart and need permanent care in the hot climate of the Near East. There is one badly damaged source, quoted here, that suggests that the Persian king Artaxerxes IV Arses (338-336) had already decided to restore the Esagila and the Etemenanki. Behaving like a Babylonian king was supposed to do, Alexander ordered 10,000 soldiers to remove the remains of the old building. Over a period of two months (April and May 323), tiles and bricks were brought to the eastern part of the city. This time, the tower was not destroyed by an army looking for loot: it was a systematic attempt to clear the building ground.
Although the site was now cleared, the tower was never rebuilt. On 11 June, Alexander died. Civil war broke out between his generals, the Diadochi. During the next years, Babylon saw several armies, and it lasted until 309 until peace conditions were restored by Seleucus Nicator. However, he founded another capital for the new Seleucid empire, Seleucia. Babylon was never restored to its old status, and that meant the end of the attempts to rebuilt the Etemenanki - although one scribe in Uruk was still hoping for its reconstruction and wrote the Louvre tablet. The Esagila remained intact well into the first century BCE and probably even later. .... " livius
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Herm of Aphroditus at the Nationalmuseum of Stockholm.
Phallic Inanna and catamite Dumuzi were compared to phallic Aphrodite and catamite Adonis by greek visitors of Babylon
" ... The worship of Aphroditus comes from Cyprus, a cult of a masculine or hermaphrodite form of Aphrodite. The divinity was introduced into Greece and celebrated in Athens in a cross-dressing ritual.
It is thought that Hesiod's myth, explaining the birth of Aphrodite, born when Cronus cut off the genitals of Uranus and threw it into the sea, originated from the cult of Aphroditus. A terracotta plaque from the 7th century BC found at Perachora in Greece, representing Aphroditus emerging from severed male genitals, suggests this, as there are two different myths of the creation of Aphrodite.
According to Macrobius, Aphroditus was represented in Cyprus with a beard and phallus, wearing female clothing and holding a scepter. At sacrifices to the god, worshipers cross-dressed, men wearing women's clothing and women dressed in men's clothing. The cult spread from Cyprus into southern Asia Minor, eventually reaching mainland Greece around the late 5th century BC. In Athens, the iconography of the god took on the anasyromenos pose, a female figure lifting her dress to reveal an erect phallus, a gesture that had apotropaic qualities, much like the god Priapus. By the Hellenistic period, the cult and votives had spread throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy.
Gradually over time the cult lost popularity, Aphroditus was also being called Hermaphroditus, which originally meant Aphroditus in the form of a herm or "a herm of Aphroditus". These were marble or bronze sculptures with a head or torso above a plain rectangular pillar, a symbol of fertility. In later Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus came to be known as the son of Hermes and Aphrodite. ... " Wikipedia
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Boss lady sodomizing her husband with a friend.
Sexual superwomen - Abraham was a Sumerian - when he migrated to Canaan he was probably running away from these -the voracious female phalli.
The king during Abraham's day was Nimrod - a fire worshipper - Nimrod is traditionally depicted as black. Sumeria was probably an African colony!
Yahweh or El was married to one of these sexual superwomen - Asherah - mother of 70 gods ...
The dream psyche says the Asherah layers of human history were technological - When you glimpse the mathematical culture of Mesopotamia - it is not hard to credit ancient tech!
Garden of Priapus - 223
More boss lady sodomizing her husband with a friend.
The Magi that visited the infant Christ may have been from Mesopotamia. One of them has traditionally black.
Alexander was advised to perform the Bel Marduk ritual by the Magi when he entered Babylon - That ritual was almost certainly sexual - an Inanna/Dumuzi encounter with a Harimtu or sacred prostitute in the bedchamber of the Bel Marduk Ziggurat.
After his campaigns in India Alexander tried to retire to the pleasures of Babylon - but the Magi advised him not to - he ignored their advice and died not long after that:
" .... January 4, 2010 Alexander the Great and the Magi
What have they in common, you’ll ask. Well much more than you would expect, provided you allow yourself to think about Magi in general and not about The Magi from the Bible who followed their star to Bethlehem.
Magi were known as Wise Men from Mesopotamia, particularly famous around Babylon by their local name of Chaldeans, were reputed among others for their knowledge in astrology. In those days there was no distinction between astronomy and astrology, both forms of star observation went hand in hand. By studying and analyzing the celestial heavens, these Wise Men could, for instance, predict major events to important people. This knowledge was already mentioned by Herodotus in the 5th century B.C. who defined the Magi as a priestly caste from upper Mesopotamia.
The Magi we are familiar with, are the Three Wise Men who visited the Lord Jesus, but this fact is based on a simple and non-explicit quotation by the evangelist Matthew, who stated that they came from the east, which is evident geographically speaking, and brought expensive gifts of myrrh, frankincense and gold with them. Nowadays there is a discussion going on whether there were three Magi or more for Matthew only mentions three gifts, which has been interpreted as each Magi carrying one gift, while evidently there could have been ten or thirty of them offering these three gifts.
Now we all know that Alexander the Great always looked for his omens. So, when he was in Babylon in 331 B.C, he came into contact with these Magi, the Chaldeans as Arrian called them, i.e. the priests of Marduk or Bel, for “in all matters of religious ceremonial he [Alexander] took their advice, offering sacrifice to Bel in particular, according to their instructions”. Alexander even gave them the money and instructions to rebuild the famous Temple of Bel.
After his campaigns to the East, through what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, Alexander returned to Babylon in 323 B.C. and was met by the Chaldeans outside the city walls. They advised him not to enter Babylon, as it was considered a bad omen. Arrian tells us this story “… Alexander, after crossing the Tigris, was met by some Wise Men of the Chaldeans, who drew him aside and begged him to go no further, because their god Bel had foretold that if he entered the city at that time it would prove fatal to him”. Plutarch relates a similar story in which Alexander got the news through his naval commander, Nearchus: “As he [Alexander] was upon his way to Babylon, Nearchus … came to tell him he had met with some Chaldean diviners, who had warned him against Alexander’s going thither”. Alexander complied but as time went by he lost his patience and decided to enter Babylon after all - his destiny was already sealed. It was written in the stars and Alexander died shortly afterwards in Babylon. The diviners must have known this but it remains a guess whether or not Alexander was fully aware that he would die if he ignored the warning.
By ancient writers, we usually refer to our western historians, but what about the literature in the East. There are, for instance, the Enuma Anu Enli records of celestial omens, which archaeologists have recovered from the Assyrian Library in Nineveh. The authors were Chaldeans, who left us tablets detailing the movements of the planets and how they disclosed the fate of mankind. These astronomers had the duty to warn authorities when they discovered that some major event was going to happen. They had done so before, for instance, at the approach of the decisive Battle at Gaugamela, that engaged Alexander the Great against King Darius III of Persia "The son of the king will become purified for the throne but will not take the throne. An intruder will come with the princes of the west; for eight years he will exercise kingship; he will conquer the enemy army; there will be abundance and riches on his path; he will continually pursue his enemies; and his luck will not run out."
Now among these tablets of Enuma Anu Enlil there is also one predicting Alexander’s death: "When in the month Ajaru, during the evening watch, the moon eclipses, the king will die. The sons of the king will vie for the throne of their father, but will not sit on it." ... " makedonia-alexandros.blogspot
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Cuban, Vulva, cane, cage and supplicant in an electronic penis cage
With the slaver of the dog, thirst, hunger
With the slap of the face, with the rolling of the eye
I have hit you in the head, I have deranged your reason
Set your decision to my decision
I hold you fast as Ishtar held Dumuzi
As beer binds her drinker
I have bound you with my hairy mouth
With my vagina full of wetness
With my mouth full of saliva
With my vagina full of wetness
No female rival shall go near you ... "
“Sex, Magic and the Liminal Body in the Erotic Art and Texts of the Old Babylonian Period,” Julia A Assante
"With the slaver of the dog" - that's the penis cage - the amazon/harimtu/wife/daughter controlled access to that
***
Between Marduk and his consort Sarpanit we only hear about Marduk. But in keeping with Babylonian practice Sarpanit was the more important deity - Her worship continued in Syria until late in the Roman Empire - She was probably embodied by the Roman Syrian Augustas:
" .... In Babylonian mythology, Sarpanit (alternately Sarpanitu, Zarpanit, Zarpandit, Zerpanitum, Zerbanitu, or Zirbanit) is a mother goddess and the consort of the chief god, Marduk. Her name means "the shining one", and she is sometimes associated with the planet Venus. By a play on words her name was interpreted as zer-banitu, or "creatress of seed", and is thereby associated with the goddess Aruru, who, according to Babylonian myth, created mankind.
Her marriage with Marduk was celebrated annually at New Year in Babylon. She was worshipped via the rising moon, and was often depicted as being pregnant. She is also known as Erua. She may be the same as Gamsu, Ishtar, and/or Beltis. ... "religion.wikia
" ... Marduk, in Mesopotamian religion, the chief god of the city of Babylon and the national god of Babylonia; as such, he was eventually called simply Bel, or Lord.
Originally, he seems to have been a god of thunderstorms. A poem, known as Enuma elish and dating from the reign of Nebuchadrezzar I (1119–1098 BCE), relates Marduk’s rise to such preeminence that he was the god of 50 names, each one that of a deity or of a divine attribute. After conquering the monster of primeval chaos, Tiamat, he became Lord of the Gods of Heaven and Earth. All nature, including humanity, owed its existence to him; the destiny of kingdoms and subjects was in his hands.
Marduk’s chief temples at Babylon were the Esagila and the Etemenanki, a ziggurat with a shrine of Marduk on the top. In the Esagila the poem Enuma elish was recited every year at the New Year festival. The goddess named most often as the consort of Marduk was Zarpanitu.
Marduk’s star was Jupiter, and his sacred animals were horses, dogs, and especially the so-called dragon with forked tongue, representations of which adorn his city’s walls. On the oldest monuments Marduk is represented holding a triangular spade or hoe, interpreted as an emblem of fertility and vegetation. He is also pictured walking or in his war chariot. Typically, his tunic is adorned with stars; in his hand is a sceptre, and he carries a bow, spear, net, or thunderbolt. Kings of Assyria and Persia also honoured Marduk and Zarpanitu in inscriptions and rebuilt many of their temples.
Marduk was later known as Bel, a name derived from the Semitic word baal, or “lord.” Bel had all the attributes of Marduk, and his status and cult were much the same. Bel, however, gradually came to be thought of as the god of order and destiny. In Greek writings references to Bel indicate this Babylonian deity and not the Syrian god of Palmyra of the same name. ... " Matt Stefon, Britannica
***
" ... Data from the Esagila tablet, which was copied from older texts in 229 BC and describes Esagila in lines 1–15 before passing on to the ziggurat of Etemenanki, have aided in the temple's reconstruction. The tablet, described by George Smith in 1872, disappeared for some time into private hands before it resurfaced and began to be interpreted.
The Esagila tablet hold Babylonian calculating methods considered to be sacred as they read in the back "let the initiate show the initiate, the non-initiate must not see this". On the front, the tablet explains the history and engineering of the 7-floor high Etemenanki temple (the equivalent of the Tower of Babel in the Bible). ... " Wikipedia
Garden of Priapus - 225
"Kudurru recording the bequest of land by Marduk-zakir-sumi to Ibni-Ishtar on behalf of the Eanna temple in Uruk" - Wikipedia
"Marduk-zakir-sumi ... was a king of Babylon from 855 to 819 BC during the mixed dynastic period referred to in antiquity as the dynasty of E. He was a contemporary of the Assyrian kings, Salmanu-asaredu III (commonly known as Shalmaneser III) (859–824 BC) and Samsi-Adad V (824–811 BC) with whom he was allied.
There are few contemporary inscriptions bearing witness to his reign. A kudurru granting Ibni-Ishtar, a kalu-priest of the temple of Eanna in Uruk, land by Marduk-zakir-sumi, is dated to his second year. ... "
The consensus seems to be that Marduk grew to be more important than Innana in the later days of Babylon. Maybe, but I doubt it.
My theory is Marduk is important in that he represents the rare line of men who could incarnate the dragon energy. In the novel "Dune" only women were able to subdue the dragon energy - all male attempts ended in death. Marduk is the equivalent of the Osiris energy represented by the Djed pillar in ancient Egypt. - : only after an average of 30 years in the penis cage or Roman bronze Fibula
(June 26, 2021) The inner images related to this is a massive sun rising from below - Up from the earth - viewed through massive stone floor blocks - as if from the interior of an ancient temple.
Awesome image, but scary too - that energy can do as much harm as it can do good ...
***
by Joshua J. Mark, 09 December 2016
" ... Marduk was the patron god of Babylon, the Babylonian king of the gods, who presided over justice, compassion, healing, regeneration, magic, and fairness, although he is also sometimes referenced as a storm god and agricultural deity. His temple, the famous ziggurat described by Herodotus, is considered the model for the biblical Tower of Babel. The Greeks associated him with Zeus and the Romans with Jupiter. He is depicted as a human in royal robes, carrying a snake-dragon and a spade. Marduk seems to have originated from a local deity known as Asarluhi, a farmer's god symbolized by the spade, known as a marru, which continued as part of his iconography. Marduk's name, however, though linked to the marru, translates as 'bull-calf,' although he was commonly referred to simply as Bel (Lord). Far from the local deity he sprang from, Marduk would become the most prestigious god of the Mesopotamian pantheon.
He was the son of the god of wisdom Enki (also known as Ea, considered a creator god in some myths) who was also associated with fresh, life-giving water. Marduk's association with Enki is no doubt linked to the earlier regional deity Asarluhi who had the same relationship and shared many of Marduk's characteristics. Marduk's wife was the fertility goddess Sarpanitu (though in some myths his wife is Nanaya), and their son was Nabu, the patron god of scribes, literacy, and wisdom.
From a regional agricultural deity, Marduk took on increasing significance for the city of Babylon (and later the Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian Empire) becoming finally the most important and powerful god of the Babylonian and wider Mesopotamian pantheon and attaining a level of worship bordering on monotheism. He was regarded as the creator of the heavens and earth, co-creator with Enki of human beings, and originator of divine order following his victory over the forces of chaos led by the goddess Tiamat. Once he legitimized his rule, he conferred upon the other gods their various duties and responsibilities and organized both the world and the netherworld.
Marduk in the Enuma Elish
The Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elish, tells the story of Marduk's rise to power. In the beginning of time, the universe was undifferentiated swirling chaos which separated into sweet fresh water, known as Apsu (the male principle) and salty bitter water known as Tiamat (the female principle). These two deities then gave birth to the other gods.
Tiamat loved her children, but Apsu complained because they were too noisy and kept him up at night while distracting him from his work during the day. Eventually, he decided to kill them and Tiamat, horrified, told her eldest son Enki about the plan. Enki then considered the best possible course of action, put his father into a deep sleep, and killed him. From Apsu's remains he created his home, the earth, in the marshy region of Eridu. Tiamat never expected her son to kill his father and so declared war on her children, raising up an army of chaos to assist her. At the head of her forces she placed the god Quingu, her new consort, who is victorious over the younger gods in every battle.
Enki and his siblings begin to despair when the young god Marduk steps forward and says he will lead them to victory if they will first proclaim him their king. Once this is accomplished, Marduk defeats Quingu in single combat and then kills Tiamat by shooting her with an arrow which splits her in two; from her eyes flow the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and, from her corpse, Marduk forms the heavens and completes the creation begun by Enki of the earth (in some myths Enki is not mentioned and Marduk is the sole creator of the world). In consultation with Enki, Marduk then created human beings from the remains of the defeated gods who had encouraged Tiamat to wage war on her children. The defeated Quingu is executed, and his remains used to create the first man, Lullu.
Marduk then regulates the workings of the world which includes humanity as co-workers with the gods against the forces of chaos. Henceforth, Marduk decrees, humans will do the work which the gods have no time for, freeing the divine to concentrate on higher purposes and care for human needs. As the gods will care for humans and supply all their needs, humans will respect and heed the will of the gods, and Marduk will reign over all in benevolence.
Marduk's Reign in Babylon
This reign was centered, not in the heavens, but in the temple - the Esagila - in Babylon. Deities in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and elsewhere were thought to literally reside in the temple built for them, and this was as true for Marduk as any other deity. Marduk came to prominence in Babylon during the reign of Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE). Prior to the elevation of Marduk, Inanna - goddess of sexuality and warfare - was the principal deity worshiped in Babylon and elsewhere throughout Mesopotamia; afterwards, although Inanna continued to be widely venerated, Marduk was the supreme deity of the city and his worship spread as Babylon conquered other regions. Scholar Jeremy Black writes:
The rise of the cult of Marduk is closely connected with the political rise of Babylon from city-state to the capital of an empire. From the Kassite Period, Marduk became more and more important until it was possible for the author of the Babylonian Epic of Creation to maintain that not only was Marduk king of all the gods but that many of the latter were no more than aspects of his persona. (128)
The golden statue of Marduk, housed in the inner sanctum of his temple, was considered a vital aspect of the coronation of kings. A new king needed to 'take the hands of Marduk' to legitimize his rule, a practice which seems to have been initiated during the Kassite Period (1595-1155 BCE) when the Kassites made Babylon their capital after driving out the Hittites. Some scholars maintain that the new king had to literally take the hands of the statue - and this seems to be corroborated by ancient texts on the subject - while others claim 'taking the hands of Marduk' was a symbolic statement referring to submitting to the guidance of the god. It seems likely, however, based on the ancient written evidence, that the statue needed to be present at the succession of a new ruler and that the king needed to actually touch the statue's hands.
The importance of the statue is attested by the ancient work known as The Akitu Chronicle which relates a time of civil war in which the Akitu Festival (New Year's celebration) could not be observed because the statue of Marduk had left the city. On New Year's day, it was customary for the people to carry the statue of Marduk through the city and out to a little house beyond the walls where he could relax and enjoy some different scenery. During those times when the statue was carried off by hostile nations, the Akitu festival could not be observed because the patron god of the city was not present. Further, disaster was thought imminent when the god was not in the city as there was no one to stand between the people and the forces of chaos. This situation is depicted clearly in the document known as The Marduk Prophecy (c. 713-612 BCE, though the story is probably older) which relates Marduk's 'travels' when his statue is stolen from the city during various eras. Scholar Marc van de Mieroop comments:
The absence of the patron deity from his or her city caused great disruption in the cult [of that deity and city in general]. The absence of the divinity was not always metaphorical but often the result of the theft of the cult statue by raiding enemies. Divine statues were commonly carried off in wars by the victors in order to weaken the power of the defeated cities. The consequences were so dire that the loss of the statue merited recording in the historiographic texts. When Marduk's statue was not present in Babylon, the New Year's festival, crucial to the entire cultic year, could not be celebrated.
The Marduk Prophecy relates how the Hittites, Assyrians, and Elamites all captured Marduk's statue at one time or another and how it was finally returned to the city when King Nebuchadnezzar I (1125-1104 BCE) defeated the Elamites. The document is written as though Marduk himself chose to visit those foreign lands - except for Elam - and how it was prophesied that a great Babylonian king would rise and bring the god back from the Elamites. The Marduk Prophecy was most likely written as a propaganda piece during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, although the only extant copy is a much later Assyrian copy. This work, as well as the Akitu Chronicle and others, make clear how vital Marduk's presence in the city was to the people. Without their divine protector the people felt helpless, knowing that they and their city were left vulnerable to widespread and also personal attacks.
Although Marduk is referenced in a number of works throughout Mesopotamian literature, two of them make especially clear how dangerous life was for a person or city once one's god was absent. The Ludlul-Bel-Nimeqi (c. 1700 BCE) and The Wrath of Erra (c. 800 BCE) treat of the individual's problem and a city's suffering respectively, both making clear the necessity of a protector deity.
The Ludlul-Bel-Nemeqi is a treatise on suffering, on why a good person should seemingly be punished for no reason, framed as a long complaint by Tabu-utu-bel, an official of the city of Nippur, another city in which Marduk was worshiped. The speaker relates how he has called out for help from his goddess but has not heard back from her. Marduk, from afar, tries to send him help but nothing can alleviate the suffering. The speaker lists all of the good gifts Marduk tries to help him with, but none of them do any good and, possibly this is because Marduk is not close at hand. The Ludlul-Bel-Nemeqi has often been compared to the biblical Book of Job in examining the problem of suffering and the seeming absence of one's god. The work never explicitly claims that Marduk has left the person but certainly implies that Marduk is 'far off' and can only send what meager help is available.
The Wrath of Erra is a very different work in which the war god Erra (also known as Irra or Nergal) becomes bored and falls into a lethargy which he feels can only be cured by attacking Babylon. He is urged to abandon his plan by other gods but ignores them. He travels to Babylon where he distracts Marduk by telling him that his clothes have become shabby and he should really attend to his wardrobe. Marduk protests that he is too busy, but Erra assures him that all will be well and he, Erra, will watch over the city. Once Marduk leaves to have a new suit of clothes made, Erra destroys the city, killing the people indiscriminately until he is stopped by the other gods and called to account (in some versions he is stopped by Marduk's return). The piece ends with praise for Erra, god of war, who decided to spare a remnant of the city so it could be repopulated.
Marduk the protector was so important to Babylon's sense of security and personal identity that when the city revolted against Persian rule c. 485 BCE, the Persian king Xerxes had the statue destroyed when he sacked the city. After Alexander the Great defeated the Persians in 331 BCE, he made Babylon his capital and initiated efforts to restore the city to its former glory but died before this could be accomplished. By the time the Parthians ruled the region in 141 BCE, Babylon was a deserted ruin and Marduk had been forgotten. ... " worldhistory.
Garden of Priapus - 226
More Boss lady and a friend sodomizing her husband
"Ibni-Ishtar, a kalu-priest of the temple of Eanna in Uruk" was probably the passive sexual partner of a Harimtu or sacred prostitute.
My suspicion is all Sumerian men were passive sexual partners to Harimtu in Sumeria. Present day discourse does not have this category - the Roman mentule - there is a hard limit making it a form of homosexual eros.
But that's not always true - I was reading in Julie Assante's work that many times the function of Babylon erotica was magical - it was meant to affect reality - I think the mentule or female phallus needs to return to reality - at a more basic level male-female eros needs to return to reality.
"... The Gala (Sumerian: gala, Akkadian: kalu) were priests of the Sumerian goddess Inanna. They made up a significant number of the personnel of both temples and palaces, the central institutions of Mesopotamian city states. These were thought in modern times to have been individuals with neither male nor female gender identities.
Originally specialists in singing lamentations, gala appear in temple records dating back from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. According to an old Babylonian text, Enki created the gala specifically to sing "heart-soothing laments" for the goddess Inanna. Cuneiform references indicate the gendered character of the role. Lamentation and wailing may have originally been female professions, so that the men who entered the role adopted its forms. Their hymns were sung in a Sumerian dialect known as eme-sal, normally used to render the speech of female gods, and some gala took female names.
Homosexual proclivities are implied by the Sumerian proverb which reads, "When the gala wiped off his anus [he said], ‘I must not arouse that which belongs to my mistress [i.e., Inanna]’ ". In fact, the word gala was written using the sign sequence USH.KU, the first sign having also the reading ... ("penis"), and the second one dur2 ("anus"), meaning that might be a pun involved. Moreover, gala is homophonous with gal4-la "vulva".
In spite of all their references of their effeminate character (especially in the Sumerian proverbs), many administrative texts mention gala priests who had children, wives, and large families. In addition, some gala priests were cisgender women. ... " Wikipedia
A conquering Alexander would not have found the female phallus strange even if he was a heterosexual: according to Plato men were the sexual objects of women in ancient Greece - My theory is that was caused by the penis cage of Fibula:
" ...In a commentary on Plato's Symposium, Lacan commented that women in Greek society played their significant role in love .... When Plato differentiates between the erastes, the active lover, and eromenos, the passive beloved, he applies it to the relationship between a boy and his adult male lover. In a heterosexual context, the woman was the lover and the man the object of her love. This did not imply that women were free to choose husbands and indeed lovers. We know, on the contrary that the social restrictions imposed on women limited their ability to make such decisions. But we also have to recognize that in many traditional societies there is a difference between public life and public utterance, often dominated my men, and private discourse, dominated by women ... "
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian literature (1994)
and: " ...Dover discovered a line of Athenian Kritias quoted by a Roman writer, ‘In males, the most beautiful appearance is that which is female; but in females, the opposite. ... " Dover, Greek Homosexuality - Wikipedia
- That was Greece - in Rome and Egypt women did have the right to polyandry! They were the heads of households and expected to be sexually active outside the marriage ...
Garden of Priapus - 227
More Boss lady and a friend sodomizing her husband
Innana or Ishtar continued to be worshipped during late Babylon when Marduk came to the fore - Marduk was the sexual object of competition between Inanna and his wife Sarpanitu
- My guess is this set up was simply ported into Greek power - So it was the Greco-Chaldean empire followed by the Greco-Roman-Chaldean empire - I outlined this world on page 29 of this website
- Only there I saw it as an Aryan sun from above - It was more of a Chaldean sun from below - Chaldean or Chthonic - as I recently vividly experienced in a dragon temple dream.
Also in page 29 I had no idea that Roman women were Amazons who sexually dominating Roman men. The Roman Penis cage or Fibula is Chaldean ...
" ... In comparison to Ishtar, Marduk was a newcomer to the Babylonian official pantheon. Promoted as a national god by Hammurabi in the eighteenth century, he became increasingly popular in the whole of Mesopotamia and beyond. With the rise of the second dynasty of Isin he was declared ‘lord of the gods’ and took over from the ancient, but by then otiose, sky-god Anu and replaced Enlil as the executive god as well. The most splendid temples in Babylon were built for him and the important New Year festival included the recitation of a long text, the so-called Enuma eliš, a theological justification of Marduk’s cosmic pre-eminence. He was integrated into the pantheon as the son of Ea/Enki and Damkina. His wife was always S.arpa-nitu, his son Marduk. Ishtar is often called his sister, although this did not conform with the tradition of her being the daughter of the moon-god Nannar (Babylonian Sîn), or with the alternative version of Anu being her father (as in Gilgamesh). At any rate, Marduk’s relationship with Ishtar was not clearly defined. We have also seen that Anu too had ambiguous relations with the goddess. In some Old Babylonian hymns she appears as his official consort (Thureau-Dangin 1925), and in one Late Babylonian text he elevates her from a state of divine concubinage to his official wife (Hruška 1969).
We know from Ashurbanipal’s inscriptions that he had a wooden bed made for Marduk, ‘covered with gold and precious stones’,
For the delicious bed of my Lord and Lady, To perform the marital task, to make love
The same text specifies that this bed was to be installed in the temple of S.arpa-nitu, the KÁ. HI. LI. SÙ, or the ‘House of Passion’. So Marduk, like other Babylonian and Assyrian gods, enjoyed an active love-life with his consort. However, according to these ritual texts, he also carried on an affair with Ishtar. But unlike Anu, Marduk does not make Ishtar his official wife; she remains the concubine. The ritual seems to be built around a triangular affair, with S. arpa- nitu playing the role of the wronged wife who insults her rival, while Ishtar is the seductive woman flaunting her sexual attraction. Edzard (1987:50–70) has suggested that the texts may represent a dramatized ritual against a sexual rival. Ishtar represents, as often in the late texts, the marginal part, the socially inferior position of the legally underprivileged concubine. But at the same time she stands again for the irresistible power of sex-appeal (kuzbu), which no social sanctions can ultimately constrict. S. arpa- nîtu takes on the role Hera plays in the Homeric tales, that of the legal wife who resents incursions into her domain. Between the two women, or goddesses, Marduk’s role is limited, and his voice seems mainly addressed to Ištar, like an echo or refrain. But he is the object of their quarrel. ... "
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian literature (1994)
Garden of Priapus - 228
More Boss lady and a friend sodomizing her husband
One divergence with the text below: Harimtu or sacred prostitute is not a low class occupation - from distant ages the Harimtu were the noblemen of Ancient Babylon - female phallic noblemen ...
" .. Much of the text is taken up with references to the ritual, which involves assinnus and kurgarrûs, part of Ištar’s cult personnel, who apparently were to chant the dialogues, but who are also responsible for the ritual performance.
The ritual itself is called a ‘ritual of lament’ (riksu ša sipitti). Unlike the balag lamentations, which were recited in Sumerian, these are in Akkadian and there is no indication that the kurgarrûs were using Sumerian either. As Edzard points out, there is a refrain that poignantly contrasts the riksi ša S.arpa-nîtu, the ‘lament of S. arpa- nîtu’, with the mîlula-ti ša Marduk, the ‘pleasures of Marduk’.
‘[The ritual], the ritual of lament. She is totally dejected (so Edzard 1987:60). She was preferred to me, so I heard, to make love with’.
‘[I bemoaned] S.arpa-nîtu, does she sleep in (her) cella (while) Bel (Marduk) is on the roof?
“.....you are for me a little thing one can have for money. 8
...Together with the pleasant breeze. “You, whoever you are, You, whatever be your name, you kept going to my husband’s Place; So it is (none other than) [you] the ‘mother’, Ištar of
The pretty one, queen of the Babylonians,
So you are (then) the (good) mother, the palmtree, a carneol, The most beautiful among the most beautiful,
Whose appearance is just so alluring,
Who is quite used up—and is still supposed to be beautiful?”’
(IV, 18–22; Edzard 1987:62)
[. .] as in the month of D’uzu, the...th day.’
This is the beginning of a large ritual tablet. It may set out the position of the main characters in a ritual that takes place at night or the evening, with S.arpa-nîtu being asleep inside the temple and Marduk going to the roof, where he meets Ištar, while S.arpa-nîtu gives vent to her feelings of betrayal and hatred for her rival. There is a large gap in the text, then the second column takes up with many succinct and often incomprehensible instructions for the priests.
‘Give the concubine water [to drink . .’
Edzard suggested that, given we take S.arpa-nîtu again to be the main speaker, her demand for a drink for her rival may well contain a wish for her to be poisoned (Edzard 1987:63). At any rate the phrase occurs throughout the text. There seems to be a fair amount of movement from one temple to the other, e.g.
‘I will arise and take the road to Cutha. Babylon, seal...[ ] “You are the mother, Ištar of Babylon”, “To the garden of
“When S.arpa-nîtu, full of jealousy, climbs up to the ziggurat”. Past the dais of the Anunnaki, (along) to the street of
Eturkalamma up to the (...–) garden [ ]
The Lady (=S.arpa-nîtu) passes through the ‘Gate of My Lady’
S.arpa-nîtu goes down to the garden and keeps calling for the
“Gardener, gardener, . .[ ]
what is the plant you have for my (female) friend S.arpa-nîtu to the garden. .[ ]”
(obv.Bii, 2–16; Edzard 1987:64)
Maybe the gardener knows the right plant for the wronged wife; on the other hand, she may try to find an aphrodisiac for her own use. The text remains ambiguous. We have also seen that the garden is often no real garden, but a metaphor for the body, or sexual congress.
The ‘pleasant breeze’ comes up again and there is mention of ‘the wifehood of sinful and despicable women’ (Edzard 1987:65) and the rubric says
That this is (what takes place) on the 4th day at noon and in the evening in the street of Eturkalamma at the river.
After more instructions, interspersed with short quotations, or probably only the opening words of a song or speech to be performed, we come to the following section:
‘...Facing the Akîtu of Šarrat-Nippuri she will stand and .... from the Akîtu to the city gate of Uraš.
“Into your vulva, in which you set such great store, I shall
a (guard-)dog enter and will tie shut the door.”
“Into your vulva, in which you set such great store, instead precious stones before your face(?).”
“O vulva of my girl-friend, why do you keep doing that?” “O vulva of my girl-friend, the whole district of Babylon is seeking a rag.”9
“Two-finger genitals,10 why do you keep making trouble?”
and will depart from the city gate and facing Hursagkalamma the
recite prayers and utter his chants. He will arise and sing, ‘let me see great Kish, let me look on lofty Babylon’, (etc.)
To us it seems incredible that such words should be said in a public religious ceremony, but the specific instructions on the tablet leave no doubt that this was indeed the case. They appear to be spoken on behalf of the aggrieved wife, S.arpa-nîtu. As in the ‘love-song’ quoted above, S. arpa- nîtu addresses her rival, here sarcastically called ‘girlfriend’, to revile her as whore. I leave it to the reader’s imagination to ‘translate’ the passage into suitably offensive idioms:
‘O vulva of my girl-friend, the whole district of Babylon is seeking a rag
[To] wipe your vulva, to wipe your vagina.
[Now] let him/her say to the women of Babylon: “The
to wipe her vulva, to wipe her vagina.”
[Into] your vulva, in which you set such great store, instead of.... before your face,
Set you [ ] before you, sniff the smell of cattle.
Like something not mended by the tailor, like something not soaked by the laundrymen.
Into your vulva into which you set such great store, I will make a guard-dog enter and will tie shut the door.
I will make a dog enter and will tie shut the door, I will
hahhuru-bird enter it and it will nest. Whenever I leave or enter
I will give order to my (fem.) hahhuru-birds, “Please, my dear hahhuru-bird,
Ditto, the reek of armpits.’
This particular passage is followed by one addressing Ištar as the ‘beautiful one, the queen of Babylon, a palm of carnelian’.
Elsewhere in the text we hear that these are indeed the rituals of S. arpa- nîtu:
In the ritual of S.arpa-nîtu
By night there is not a good housewife,
By night there is not a good housewife,
By night a married woman creates no difficulty.11
I am a...for S.arpa-nîtu,
My hair is flowing and my hands...
In my hostility (?) to Ištar of Babylon
For shade or open air I have covered my side.
These women—so long as he does wrong
My hair is flowing and my hands...
These women—so long as he is despised-
For shade and open air you have covered my side.
She who is present...a doll,
You (masc.sg.) hold back in everything that is not sound. You are the good housewife—create a family;
You (fem.) are the fool—process wool.’
(Lambert 1975b:109, lines 3–20)
It is not clear who is speaking here, but both Marduk and S. arpa- nîtu are named at the beginning. Is the goddess here trying to assert her marital rights? The passage is generally obscure, although the line about the hostile attitude to Ištar is typical of S. arpa- nîtu . Does Ištar utter the last two lines, sarcastically telling the wife to be content within the confines of family life?
There is also a curious fragment that concerns a vulva, probably Ištar’s:
‘Together with the pleasant breeze... It is cut off...
In your vulva is hon[ey(?)]
Rub my seeder plough with oil. .
That which is not pleasant of [your] vulva... The sailor of [your] vulva . .
The cook of [your] vulva . .
The basket-maker of [your] vulva . .
The lizard of [your] vulva . .
The gecko of your vulva . .
The cat of your vulva . .
The mouse of your vulva . .
(Lambert 1975b:113, lines 1–13)
In another tablet a ‘boat of pleasure’ (gišmaqurri s. i-ha-at) is described in highly technical but possibly ambiguous language, after all the vulva of Inanna was also compared to a boat.
So far I have not attempted to piece together all these fragments into a sequence of events, and until other texts with more substantial information are found the rituals of S. arpa- nîtu will remain enigmatic.
However, it is clear that the rivalry between the official wife and the lover constitute a ritual theme. This is interesting in itself as it poses the question: what could have been the purpose of a ritual that addresses the sexual jealousy of the spouse? Did it appeal to the emuqti, the good housekeeper who sees her husband’s attention diverted to other women? Was S.arpa-nîtu a sort of patron deity of spurned wives? Does the ritual in fact succeed in banishing the extraordinary sexual attractiveness of Ištar? Or does it rather reflect on Marduk’s erotic prowess, who reduces the great Ištar to a mere ‘girlfriend’ and concubine? Another possibility is the exaltation of Ištar as the Concubine, intrinsically related to Ištar the Harlot. There is an interesting Late Babylonian legal document that records the hire of a ‘slave of Ištar’ for the purpose of becoming the concubine
of some man (Dandamaev 1984). It is possible that the huge growth of the city during the neo-Babylonian period, together with economic instability, produced a social climate which fostered the commercialization of sexual services. Ištar’s ‘image’ or sexual persona might serve as an indicator of socio-economic circumstances, an idea which I cannot substantiate with any data.
Another possible explanation for these rites might be to see them as travesties of the ‘straight’ haddašutu, the ritual of harmonious conjugal love that we know was celebrated for Nabû and Tašmetu, and also for Maduk and S. arpa- nîtu. A possible clue for this hypothesis is the prominent role of the assinnus and kurgarrûs, who represent deviance and liminality in sexual matters and social norms. Here they seem to have been given free rein to stage an elaborate charade, involving the great Bel himself, his august wife and of course their patron deity Ištar. One could imagine that such a wild spectacle had a certain cathartic social function, allowing an outlet for represssed frustration and rage. It seems a characteristic trait of Mesopotamian civilization to cater for deviance, even institutionalize it to some degree, as the role of the kurgarrûs etc. suggests. There is an interesting text from the very late, Arsacid period, an administrative temple document, which could possibly refer to the ‘jealousy’ rituals (Hibbert 1985). It mentions the ‘restless pacing to and fro before my lord’ and a ‘juniper garden’ around Eturkalama, Ištar’s temple in Babylon; the kurgarrûs and assinnus are equally involved here.
The misnamed ‘love-lyrics’ remain at present enigmatic, but they point to a polarization of interest between the claims of legitimate relationships and anarchic passion. They also show that chagrin d’amour now affects the gods as well. The love incantation has, at this stage, reached the realm of mythology. Now the great gods need them too.... "
Garden of Priapus - 229
The Greco-Roman phallus - Apollo Citharoedus.
As noted by Plato above the sexual active partner in the ancient world was the female. In Sumeria it was even more pronounced - the phallus was absent altogether with all focus on the vulva.
The modern tech world has gone even further - both phallus and vulva are missing ... That's the world of the sun dragon temple I saw in a recent dream.
CG Jung touches on this in his book "Flying Saucers" - the humans are unable to communicate with the solar intelligence and its energy recedes back into the depths of the unconscious psyche:
" ... ERECTING THE PHALLUS: ENKI AND CREATION
Instead of presenting the available cuneiform sources on sexuality and eroticism in Mesopotamian literature in chronological order, I have found it useful to divide the material according to its content, and furthermore into a group of those texts that deal with the male perspective and those that express primarily the feminine experience. The former is the subject of several fairly long and complex narratives, the latter is mainly found in the poetic repertoire.
Both perspectives are represented by a paradigmatic mythological figure: Enki and the goddess Inanna. Enki is the only Mesopotamian deity with explicit phallic characteristics, although one must remember that phallicism never flourished in this culture the way it did after the Aryan invasion of India, or even in Pharaonic Egypt or classical antiquity. The relative rarity of phallic symbolism is also evident in the archaeological remains, where nude male figures or phallic symbols are comparatively rarer than naked females and depictions of the vulva. Inanna, though as complex a mythic personality as Enki, retained her unequivocal association with eroticism in spite of periodical shifts of emphasis in the texts, while Enki’s phallic associations were decidedly more in evidence in Sumerian literature than in Akkadian texts, where his counterpart Ea was mainly revered for his wisdom and magic power. ... "
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian literature (1994)
Garden of Priapus - 230
Modern day Apollo Citharoesus - Maybe that was the Roman way to ignite the male ass chakra and the female ass chakra too - the female phallus and the male penis cage ...
I'm sure that's what was happening to every Sumerian king in the "passion room" of the roof of every major Ziggurat - an encounter with the phallus of a Harimtu
***
In this encounter between Dumuzi and Inanna - Inanna plays the male part and demands Dumuzi's fidelity. She also uses a female version of Dumuzi - Dumuzi-Abzu which has caused confusion.
My interpretation is from the garden of Priapus - Inanna is asking for the ripe "fruit" of the anus of Dumuzi-Abzu:
" ... There is also a highly erotic dialogue which Jacobsen (1987a:97) dubbed the ‘Tavern Sketch’. In deference to the notion of the Sacred Marriage, this was originally interpreted as a confrontation between Inanna and Dumuzi, where the latter is punished by death for the ensuing hubris (Falkenstein 1953:61–2; Kramer 1969; Alster 1985:159–60). Alster (1985:3), while denying the explicit connection with Inanna and Dumuzi, saw the threat and death-penalty applying to the ‘stranger’ from out of town who visits the inn, Jacobsen (1987b:50) called it a ‘crude low-life piece’ in which ‘a stranger, after an evening in the ale-house, makes a play for the tapstress, a plea full of beery sentimentality’. In order to win her confidence, however, he must swear that he is not an enemy. ‘The oath she proposes, the kind taken while touching the genitals of the person to whom one swears, is here clearly an erotic ploy’ (ibid., 50). Sefati (1990) accepted the idea that an oath-taking is involved, but saw it as an oath of chastity that the lover is made to swear to the ‘tapstress’ not to have sex with other women. Alster’s new translation (forthcoming) goes a step further in specifying that the lover’s oath pertains to the period the man had spent away from the woman, in another town. The following translation is based on Alster’s.
The first 11 lines are spoken by a man, who addresses his ‘beloved sister’; there are numerous amorous endearments, which are awkward to translate—it helps to imagine them whispered, as the tone is one of extreme intimacy:
‘O my lubi, my lubi, my lubi,
My labi, my la[bi, my labi], my honey of the mother who gave
My juicy grape, my honey sweet, my her-mother’s honey-
The glance of your eye delights me, come, my beloved sister, The words of your mouth delight me, come, my beloved
Kissing your lips delights me, come, my beloved sister! O my sister, the beer of your grain is delicious, my her-
The gumeze beer of your wort is delicious, come, my beloved
In your house, your passion..., [come] my beloved sister, Your house is...a storehouse, my her-mother’s honey-mouth.’
The next 20 lines contain the woman’s response, but as it is not written in the Emesal dialect, opinions are divided as to where his speech ends and hers begins.
‘You, prince, my [brother of fairest face(?)]
Swear to me, that when you dwelt, when you dwelt, Brother, swear to me that, when you dwelt in the out-lying
Swear to me that a stranger did not touch (you) by the hand,
Swear to me that a stranger did not approach (?) (you) by
My one who lifts the thin(?) gown off my vulva for me,
My beloved, man of my choice,
[for you(?)], let me prepare what belongs to the oath for you,
my brother of fairest face.
My brother of fairest face, let me prepare what belongs to the
May you put your right hand in my vulva,
With your left stretched towards my head,
When you have neared your mouth to my mouth,
When you have taken my lips into your mouth,
Thus you swear the oath to me,
So it is, dragon (?) of women, my brother of fairest face! My blossom-bearer, my blossom-bearer, your charms are sweet!
My blossom-bearing garden of apple-trees, your charms are sweet!
My fruit-bearing garden of mes-trees, your charms are sweet, Dumuzi-Abzu herself! Your charms are sweet,
My pure figurine, my pure figurine, your charms are sweet, Alabaster figurine, tied with lapis-lazuli ornament, your charms are sweet.’
I have mentioned the different current interpretations of the oath- taking above. I believe that Jacobsen’s view of it as an ‘erotic ploy’, as well as the desired confirmation of the temporarily absent lover’s faithfulness, are relevant here. Alster also noted that it ‘remains amazing that the oath is requested of the lover, and not of the girl’. I would suggest that within the context of the man’s departure, her anxiety about his conduct is perfectly natural, and that secondly, the theme of women competing for the sole attention of the man is common in Sumerian poetry—as we shall see later, we have evidence for the expression of female jealousy, but not of men doubting the fidelity of their mistresses or wives.
The fact that the man has been away provides us with a scenario for this dialogue: the intimate reunion of the couple, a form of poetic pillow-talk. By referring to the formal gestures of oath-taking she invites her beloved to touch and kiss her, to initiate their lovemaking, to prove by his ardour that he still appreciates her after his absence.
Lines 27–32 have so far been taken as the woman’s praise of his manly charm (‘my blossom-bearer’..., etc.). Jacobsen (1987b:62) took all the imagery here to refer to the male member. But I prefer to read these lines as if they were spoken by the man, in praise of her parts, a sort of eulogy of the vulva, and I would propose the following reading:
‘O my blossoming one, my blossoming one—your sex-appeal (or: voluptuousness) is sweet,
O my fruiting one in the orchard—your sex-appeal is sweet, O Dumuzi-abzu, herself—your sex-appeal is sweet,
(it is) my pure “pin” (Sumerian dìm), my holy “pin”—your
(it is) my shining ‘ornament’ set in lapis lazuli—your sex-
Dumuzi-abzu cannot be taken to be an epithet for Dumuzi, as she clearly was a female deity, part of the Lagaš pantheon. I would also see the dìm and the ‘fruiting of the orchard’ as a clitorial metaphor, and the dìm giš-nu11-gal suh za-gìn keš-da as an image for the vulva. Although the choice of metaphors is to our sensibility more suggestive of phallic connotations, something which most of the (male) translators have been quick to perceive, the fact that Sumerian love poetry is almost wholly gynocentric, and that the references to male anatomy or enjoyment are almost totally absent (with the exception of the bridal context, where the role of the man as deflorator is given some prominence), we should be careful of assigning such meanings. If we accept that this fictional reunion eavesdrops on the lovers, it would also make better poetic sense to have the lover greet his woman-friend and affirm his continuing delight in her company. Then we have her response and the highly effective oath-ceremony which must have elicited appreciative applause from its audience, and finally his praise of her physical charms and sex- appeal, which was already indicated in his previous speech. As for the setting of the ‘tavern’, I would see that entirely as a figure of speech, with, as Alster again affirms, clear references to her state of arousal. It is certainly ‘secular’ as opposed to ‘religious’ in Falkenstein’s or Kramer’s understanding; and its setting is vague. However, imagery and content place it among the other courtly love-songs of the late UrIII period, and the ‘low-life’ aspect is quite inappropriate to do justice to the highly wrought artifice of seduction. ... "
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian literature (1994) at 128
Garden of Priapus - 231
More Boss lady and a black ass
- Rare in erotica - that's the American "Me" - currently blocked up though
Who were the Sumerians? The present day consensus is a mix of Jewish and Arab - but more Hebrew. But my intuition is the base Sumerian culture is black African - I recognised some words in Sumerian the other day - connective Bantu words found in Swahili and Kikuyu. The association with the Jews is really from later Semitic or Akkadian layers
- Nimrod has traditionally been depicted as black - and Abraham was also probably black. My inner image of Abraham is not semitic - the image is black African! Like the Sabaeans of Yemen - there were once black African colonies stretching far into Asia and the Pacific - the whole of Pacific Melananesia is black.
" ... It is only some hundred and sixty years ago that the modern world rediscovered the tangible remains of Assyria and Babylon. Since then, archaeologists and epigraphists, historians and linguists have been evaluating the reality of Mesopotamian civilization.
Through a fortunate historical coincidence, the discovery of a trilingual rock-inscription on the Iranian hills, the key to the decipherment of Akkadian was achieved almost simultaneously (1851 by Rawlinson). Layard’s find of the remains of Ashurbanipal’s great library, with its useful lists of signs, words, synonyms, etc. considerably furthered the advancement of epigraphy. The understanding of Akkadian texts is to some extent helped by the fact that the language is part of the Semitic group, and shares grammatical structures and vocabulary with related languages such as Hebrew and Arabic. The situation is quite different in respect to Sumerian, which has no discernible relation to any known language. We still have to some degree to rely on the attempts by ancient Akkadian grammarians to make sense of the Sumerian texts, as they provided the indispensable bilingual texts and lexical lists. The study of Akkadian has therefore progressed further and more rapidly. At the present time, the dictionary project undertaken by the University of Chicago is nearing completion for the Assyrian dictionary, while work on the Sumerian dictionary will continue until well into the next century. There is also no absolute agreement yet over the grammatical description of Sumerian, and the interpretation of literary texts is by no means unanimous ... "
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian literature (1994) - at page 1.
Garden of Priapus - 232
More Boss lady and a black ass
- The vulva reigns supreme in Sumeria - but the female phallus seems to be invisible to modern Sumerian scholars.
- Sumerian daughters - as well as Egyptian, Greek and Roman daughters inherited their "Me" - the female phallus from their fathers. The father's penis was caged by the mother, but the alpha daughter or queen usually inherits it after the mother leaves the scene
***
In this scene, Inanna tricks her drunken father Enki into releasing his Me to her - The text is goods and services - but the real meaning is probably Enki's caged phallus ...
" ... In the erotic love poetry the state of arousal is signalled by references to the vulva’s ‘wetness’, as we have seen in the bridal text quoted above:
‘My vulva is wet, [my vulva is wet],
I, the queen of heaven, [my vulva is wet],
Let the man on top [put his hand] on my vulva, Let the potent man [put his] hand on my vulva.’
or, as in this balbal song to Nanaya, where she addresses her lover:
‘Do not dig a [canal], let me be your canal, Do not plough [a field], let me be your field, Farmer, do not search for a wet place,
My precious sweet, let me be your wet place!’
Alster proposed that ‘beer is used as a metaphor for the moisture of the woman’s genitals’ when it is said that ‘like beer her vulva is sweet’ (Alster 1993:19), although the references to sweetness may refer more specifically to taste, as in this passage:
‘Like her mouth, her vulva is sweet’ (Alster 1985:133) ...
which raises the question whether these lines should be understood as references to cunnilingus. There is no conclusive evidence that such a practice was taboo. It would appear that if female sexuality was taken seriously, as these texts certainly suggest, then oral sex could hardly have been excluded.
Inanna’s organ is often called úr-ku(g) (‘the holy lap’), ku(g) is an adjective that is also applied to Inanna herself, as well as to numerous other deities, temples, places and artefacts, and it is usually translated as ‘pure’, ‘holy’; the opposite of ku(g) is KUG-AN=azag (‘taboo’, ‘(ritually) unclean’; also ‘demonic’ and ‘dangerous’). It is well known from anthropological literature that genitals are associated with power and are subject to all kinds of regulations and prescriptions, and it is curious that there is very little material on this subject in Sumerian sources. The notion had much greater currency in the later second and first millennia, especially in connection with magic. The apotropaic use of genitals or genital symbols is well documented from many parts of the world: one need only think of the Sicilian fica or the Celtic Sheilag-na-gig.
Inanna’s vulva is a pars pro toto for the goddess herself as deity of sexuality. This is also borne out by the countless figurines and terracotta models of female nudes found all over the ancient Near East and the vulva-shaped votive offerings which were deposited in the temples of Ištar as the most appropriate ex-voto.
Finally, to conclude this chapter there is literary myth from the Isin—Larsa period, which has Inanna use her vulva, or rather the power associated with it, to further the prestige and divine status of her city Uruk (Farber-Flügge 1973). The very beginning is fragmentary, but it does state that ‘her vulva was admirable’ (gal4-la-ni u6-didam) and that ‘she spoke confidently to herself, pleased with her vulva’. Then she plans her actions: she will bestow all manner of graces upon the en (or Uruk?) and then she will set foot in Eridu and speak words of flattery to Enki. Enki, however, in his ‘wide understanding’, is aware of Inanna’s intentions. He instructs his minister Isimud to receive the Maid Inanna with customary welcome, offering her cakes, cool water and beer. Later he joins her himself, and they drink beer and wine together until Enki becomes quite intoxicated. Under the dual influence of drink and Inanna’s charm, he begins to hand over to her one by one the me he has in his possession. These include a variety of trades and professions, cult offices and ritual implements, as well as aspects of human behaviour (disputes, lying, slander, peacemaking, reverence, hard work, but also kissing, copulating, prostitution, etc.). The list is enumerated several times in the text. When Enki recovers from the effects of the beer, he discovers that the me are missing. Isimud tells him how Inanna had loaded them all on to the ‘boat of heaven’ and is on the way to Uruk. Enki sends him out with the command to stop the ‘boat of heaven’ with the help of various demonic forces, but Inanna is able to repel them all and get the boat with the me safely to Uruk. The final part of the text is fragmentary; there is a confrontation between Inanna and Enki and some other god who probably mediates between them. In his commentary on this composition (Alster 1975), Alster concentrated on the sexual aspect. Crucial to his argument is his interpretation of Enki’s relationship with Inanna. Since she persistently calls him ‘a-a’ (‘father’), and he addresses her as ‘dumu’ (‘child’), Alster concluded that Enki was ‘presumably her father’ and that ‘the pattern of the myth is a violation of the sexual taboo’, namely that of incestuous temptation: Inanna purposely set out to ‘enchant Enki’, being as she is ‘endowed with enormous sexual attraction’. He also restored some of the fragmentary lines towards the end of the composition with a curse of Enki, in which ‘the vulva of certain women shall be crushed’.
Inanna was, as we have seen, usually called the daughter of the moon-god Nannar. There are passages in other texts (notably Inanna’s Descent), where she also speaks to Enki as her father. This could be a term of respect towards an older person, as Farber-Flügge pointed out. While we cannot be absolutely certain as to what the poet intended by this use of the kinship terminology, it is worth considering whether the subject of incest is necessary to the understanding of the work. Inanna sets out to get something belonging to another deity and another city. She trusts in her feminine charm, epitomized by her ‘astonishing vulva’, and travels to Eridu in her má-an-na, the ‘boat of heaven’, which is also sometimes used as a metaphor for her genitals. The alcohol Enki serves in the course of the banquet does the rest. (Inanna also has affinities with beer and the premises where it was consumed, as we shall see later.) She also uses a very efficient spell, which is repeated seven times to repel the demonic hosts of Enki, although the exact meaning is still unclear:
‘Water did not touch your hand, water did not touch your foot.’
There may be a sort of magic contest going on between Enki and Inanna, between the power of the vulva and the power of the phallus, along the lines of the contest in the Enmerkar epics, but more subliminal. The final outcome is at present impossible to determine, although the stylistic closeness of the text to other compositions of the UrIII period (Farber-Flügge 1973:20–34) seem to speak in favour of a positive outcome for Inanna. ... "
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian literature (1994) at 93
Garden of Priapus - 233
Boss lady mounting her husband
"To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna"
***
Innana's theft of Enki's me meant that women were free to have sex outside marriage
- In Rome at the time of Augustus this was expected and tolerated by the state - the classic example being the sexually voracious Julia the daughter of the chaste emperor. The penis cage meant that the sex drive of Roman women was much stronger than Roman men.
In Greece the ‘hetaira’ continued this practice throughout Alexander's Greek empire - especially in Syria and Egypt.
The reign of Marduk seems not to have ended the practice of polyandrous Innana sex:
The missing key is the Fibula or penis cage: Greco-Roman marriage - like the Inanna marriage of Babylon was the transfer of the key to the husband's penis cage to the wife - It was symbolically and literally true that the man became the woman and the woman the phallic and sexually voracious man: The Roman man was "bonded and belted" by his wife who attained control of phallic activities in the marriage.
***
" ... It is not always possible to locate an erotic cuneiform text in a particular social or ritual situation. The persistent obsession of Assyriologists with the Sacred Marriage meant that practically every text with a sexual content was considered to refer to the goddess’ wedding. This overemphasis of a marital context needs to be redressed. I have tried to show that the key-texts concerning the Sumerian king’s relationship with Inanna do not constitute a marriage ceremony. In fact, the marital paradigm is only partially relevant for the sexual affinities described in Mesopotamian literature. ...
Terminology is a problem here, as modern languages lack a suitable vocabulary for such persons. ‘Prostitute’ evokes contemporary social conditions and morals; ‘harlot’ rings with biblical and ecclesiastical disapproval; ‘hetaira’ has a specific socio-historical context; and ‘courtesan’ has (etymologically, at least) an aristocratic association (and I have used it for such women in this study). The word ‘hierodule’ was often used by classically educated Assyriologists familiar with Herodotus, to render Sumerian words (nugig, nu-bar and lukur) which were translated in the bilingual lexical and other texts by Akkadian expressions for ‘common prostitute’ (kezertu, harimtu, šamhatu) as well as on occasion by titles for temple employees (naditu, kulmašitu, qadištu). This apparent contradiction between the secular aspect and the religious association was solved by the invention, with a nod to cross-cultural parallels in ancient Greece or India, of the term ‘sacred prostitute’. Like the ‘sacred marriage’, the ‘sacred prostitute’, who engages in sex as a magical rite in the context of some fertility cult or officiates in the rites of Inanna/Ištar, belongs to the ‘Golden Bough’ school of historical anthropology. In a recent survey of the evidence, Lambert noted that while ‘most of these titles have etymologically some implication of religious office...some [women bearing them] at least, and in some areas and period, served as common prostitutes’ (Lambert 1991:141).
Georges Bataille (1987:133) remarked that
prostitution seems to have been a complement to marriage in the first place. The prostitute was dedicated to a life of transgression. The sacred or forbidden aspect of sexual activity remained apparent in her, for her whole life was dedicated to violating the taboo. Religion, far from opposing prostitution, was able to control its modalities as it could with other sorts of transgression. The prostitutes in contact with sacred things, in surrounding themselves sacred, had a sacredness comparable with that of priests. ...
... It seems that in Mesopotamia, where all sexual behaviour was under the auspices of Inanna/Ištar, sexual acts outside marriage could be condoned and to some extent institutionalized. The goddess is linked with prostitution in several compositions. The long list of Inanna’s me, the divine prerogatives she obtained from Enki (Farber- Flügge 1973) includes the following which relate specifically to sexuality:
The standard, the quiver, the wielding of the penis, the kissing of the penis, the art of prostitution, the art of speeding
as well as the art of forthright speech, the art of slanderous speech, the art of ornamental speech,—?—, the cult prostitute, the holy tavern (I, v, 29–32)
The ‘standard’ and ‘quiver’ are obvious metaphors for penis and vagina; then follows the masculine sexual activity and possibly a reference to fellatio, nam-kar-kid is the standard term for prostitution. The second group has something to do with different kinds of utterances or discourse; ‘scandalous speech’ would fit better than ‘slanderous’; amalu, here rendered as ‘cult prostitute’, is a component sign consisting of ama+dInanna; its proximity to the next term (dam) suggested the translation. We shall come back to the éš-dam below
Some of the items of this list seem to belong to the more controversial aspects of sexuality, which will be discussed in a separate chapter.
Inanna is identified with libido:
You are Inanna (who) in the streets of Kullab make (people) copulate.
As a ki-sikil, Inanna lent her name to adolescent sentiments, and the bride was encouraged to identify with this particular aspect of the goddess’s ‘sexual persona’, as the inspiration for conjugal happiness. But the texts also demonstrate that, ultimately, though such an archetypal bride, Inanna was not a ‘proper’ wife:
When the cattle has been set loose on the hills,
When the cows and sheep are returned to the pen and fold, My queen, you disguise yourself, you put on your neck the
From the éš-dam you fetch men.
From the lap of Dumuzi, your husband, you sneak away, to
make love to your seven nimgir
You are the one who picks up a man in the éš-dam, from the lap of your spouse Dumuzi you sneak away
The prostitute (kar-kid), setting out for the éš-dam, who makes the bed delicious
When I sit by the gate of an inn (éš-dam), I am indeed a prostitute who makes love
Lambert suggested that the term kar-kid might be understood to mean ‘she who works the quay’ (Lambert 1991:138, 157), the ancient equivalent of roadsides, as the rivers and canals provided the main means of transport between cities. The word is already attested in Early Dynastic sources and has no religious connotations. This secular aspect of the profession is also born out by the Akkadian equivalents (šamhatu, harimtu, kezertu). kar-kid is not one of Inanna’s official titles, unlike the more ambiguous term nu-gig, which was used by royal wives in the Early Dynastic period and may originally have been the title of a high office.
When Inanna abandons the lap of her husband for sexual adventures she goes to the classic locale, the éš-dam, the ‘tavern’, where barley beer was offered. This is described as ‘a place of relaxation, (for) the joy of drinking’ which makes ‘the heart happy again’ (Civil 1976:89). Inanna is the one ‘who frequents the éš- dam’ to pick up customers. There was also an éš-dam-kù, ‘the holy éš-dam’, which seems to refer to one of Inanna’s sanctuaries in Girsu. Hallo and van Dijk (1968:74) surmised that the term originally referred to a temple of Inanna, but that it later came to signify a ‘brothel’.
In the absence of relevant earlier, third-millennium texts that substantiate whether or not the éš-dam had anything to do with sexual activity, such pronouncements remain speculative. All we can say is that at the period these texts were written, (during the Old Babylonian period), the éš-dam was associated with alcohol and sex. ... "
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian literature (1994) at 161
Garden of Priapus - 234
More Cuban, Mentule and whip and OG or old guy soldier.
Shot blocked. Used workaround
- Rome was under the spell of the adolescent Anat - the Vestals retired around 35 years old. Just Anat though - her brother and lover Ba'al was killed ...
- Anat is the final iteration of the Sumerian Inanna - and her most militaristic too ... As I said before the floggings the early christians were going through were probably a version of what Roman men could expect from the Roman wife.
- Thats probably a capsule summary of Cybele and her castrated Attis - Late Roman emperors were going all the way in their Cybele worship - The famous Cybele orgies can only have been Amazon on male anal sex - The Priapea lays it all out
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