Note 272.1 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

The second class of consecrated women served as temple-harlots in certain cult-centres of Asia Minor. We cannot say that the custom in all cases emanated from Babylon; for there is reason to think that it was a tradition attaching to the cult of the goddess among the polytheistic Semitic stocks. We have clear allusions in the Bible to temple-prostitution practised by both sexes in the Canaanite communities adjacent to the Israelites, who were themselves sometimes contaminated by the practice.272.1 We hear of “hierodouli” among the pagan Arabs,272.2 of women “of the congregation of the people of Astarte” at Carthage,272.3 of numbers of dedicated slave women in the cult of Aphrodite at Eryx,272.4 which was at least semi-Semitic; and it is likely that some of these at least were devoted to the impure religious practice. As regards non-Semitic worships, it is only clearly attested of two, namely, of the worship of Mā at Comana in Pontos,272.5 and of Aphrodite Ourania in Corinth.272.6 In these cases we have the right to assume Semitic influences at work; for we do not find traces of this practice in the ancient cult of Kybele; and Ma of Cappadocia and Pontus, who had affinities with her, was partly contaminated with Anahita, a Persian goddess, who had taken on Babylonian fashions. Nor can we doubt that the practice gained recognition at Corinth in post-Homeric times through its Oriental trade; for it was attached to the cult of Aphrodite Ourania, whose personality, partly at least, was identical with that of the Semitic goddess. The practice survived in Lydia in the later period of the Graeco-Roman culture. For a woman of Tralles, by name Aurelia Aemilia, erected a column with an inscription that has been published by Sir William Ramsay,273.1 in which she proclaims with pride that she had prostituted herself in the temple service “at the command of an oracle,” and that her female ancestors had done likewise. Finally, we may find the cult-practice reflected in certain legends; in the legend of Iconium, for instance, of the woman who enticed all strangers to her embraces and afterwards slew them, but was herself turned to stone by Perseus, and whose stone image gave the name to the State.273.2