Note 281.2 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

As regards the other institution, the maintenance of “hierodoulai” in temples as “consecrated” women, “kadeschim,” unmarried, who for a period of years indulged in sexual intercourse with visitors, the original intention and significance of it is hard to decide. We may be sure that it did not originate in mere profligacy, and the inscription of Tralles shows that even in the later Roman period it had not lost its religious prestige.281.2 Such a custom could naturally arise in a society that allowed freedom of sexual intercourse among young unmarried persons—and this is not uncommonly found at a primitive level of culture—and that was devoted to the worship of a goddess of sexual fertility. The rituals in the temples of Ishtar of Erech, Anaitis of Armenia, Mā of Comana, must have been instituted for some national and social purpose; therefore Mr. Hartland’s suggestion, that the original object of the Armenian rite was to give the maidens a chance of securing themselves a suitable husband by experience, seems insufficient. Dr. Frazer’s theory, that connects the institution with some of the mystic purposes of kingship,282.1 floats in the air; for there is not a particle of evidence showing any relation between these women and the monarch or the royal harem or the monarchical succession or the death of a royal victim. A simpler suggestion is that the “hierodoulai,” or temple-women, were the human vehicles for diffusing through the community the peculiar virtue or potency of the goddess, the much-coveted blessing of human fertility. Thus to consecrate slaves or even daughters to this service was a pious social act.