After a painting by Edwin Long.
]
From several of these engraved tablets it appears, that a woman received
the same pay for the same work when she took a man’s place.
To Herodotus, the so-called “Father of History,” we are indebted for
some highly interesting notes about the “marriage market of ancient
Babylon.” Its site, uncovered in 1913 by the German Oriental Society,
was in close neighborhood of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and
Belshazzar and occupied a rectangle of 100 by 150 feet. Open to the air
on all four sides, it was most probably shielded from the sun by rich
awnings devised to shelter the daughters of Babylon and bring out their
charms. The marble block upon which they stood while being bid for was
in the center of the spectators and richly carved with cherubs, who
worshiped and protected the “Tree of Life.” Several inscriptions leave
no doubt, that this was the actual market of which Herodotus gave the
following description: “Once a year the maidens of age to marry in
Babylon were collected at the market, while the men stood around them in
a circle. Then a herald called up the damsels one by one and offered
them for sale. He began with the most beautiful. When she was sold for
no small sum he offered for sale the one who came next to her in beauty.
All of them were to be sold as wives. The richest of the Babylonians who
wished to wed bid against each other for the loveliest maidens, while
the humbler wife seekers, who were indifferent about beauty, took the
more homely damsels with marriage-portions. For the custom was that when
the herald had gone through the whole number of the fair ones he should
then call up the ugliest—a cripple if there chanced to be one—and offer
her to the men, asking who would agree to take her with the smallest
marriage-portion. And the man who offered to take the smallest sum had
her assigned to him. The marriage-portions were furnished by the money
paid for the beautiful girls, and thus the fairer maidens portioned out
the uglier. No one was allowed to give his daughter to the man of his
choice, nor might any one carry away the damsel he had purchased without
finding bail really and truly to make her his wife. If, however, it was
found that they did not agree the money might be paid back. All who
liked might come, even from distant villages, and bid for the women.”
Herodotus as well as the Roman Curtius Rufus have written also about the
so-called “hierarchical or sacred prostitution,” as it was connected
with the service of Mylitta or Belit, the Babylonian goddess of the
producing agencies.[1] Her temple was surrounded by a grove, which, like
the temple, became the scene of most voluptuous orgies, about which
Jeremiah too has given indications in his letter directed to Baruch.
(Baruch VI. 42, 43.)
Footnote 1:
About this subject Rev. T. M. Lindsay, Professor of Divinity and
Church History, Free Church College, Glasgow, writes in the
Encyclopædia Britannica in an essay about Christianity: “All paganism
is at bottom a worship of Nature in some form or other, and in all
pagan religions the deepest and most awe-inspiring attribute of nature
was its power of reproduction. The mystery of birth and becoming was
the deepest mystery of Nature; it lay at the root of all thoughtful
paganism and appeared in various forms, some of a more innocent,
others of a most debasing type. To ancient pagan thinkers, as well as
to modern men of science the key to the hidden secret of the origin
and preservation of the universe lay in the mystery of sex. Two
energies or agents, one an active and generative, the other a
feminine, passive, or susceptible one, were everywhere thought to
combine for creative purpose, and heaven and earth, sun and moon, day
and night, were believed to co-operate to the production of being.
Upon some such basis as this rested almost all the polytheistic
worship of the old civilization, and to it may be traced back, stage
by stage, the separation of divinity into male and female gods, the
deification of distinct powers of nature, and the idealization of
man’s own faculties, desires, and lusts, where every power of his
understanding was embodied as an object of adoration, and every
impulse of his will became an incarnation of deity. But in each and
every form of polytheism we find the slime-track of the deification of
sex; there is not a single one of the ancient religions which has not
consecrated by some ceremonial rite even the grossest forms of sensual
indulgence, while many of them actually elevated prostitution into a
solemn service of religion.”
According to these statements every woman was compelled to visit the
temple of Mylitta at least once during her life and give herself over to
any stranger, who would throw some money on her lap and with the words:
“I appeal to Mylitta!” indicate his desire to possess her. Such an
appeal could not be rejected, no matter how small the sum was, as this
money was to be offered on the altar of the goddess and thus became
sacred.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
HEBREW WOMEN DURING THE TIME OF ANTIQUITY.
]