PAY ATTENTION

The Mesopotamian Emperor  
acted out Marduk. 

He was ALLOWED to be Emperor 
insofar as he was 
A Good Marduk. 

That meant that,
He had eyes all the way around his head, 
and
He could speak magick.

He could speak properly.

Conan: 
What gods do you pray to?

Subotai:
I pray to the four winds... and you?

Conan: 
To Crom...
but I seldom pray to Him -- 

He doesn't listen.

Subotai: 
[chuckles] 
What good is he then?
Ah, it's just as I've always said.

Conan:
He is strong!
If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me,
   "What is the riddle of steel?"
If I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me.

That's Crom — 

Strong on his mountain!

Subotai:
Ah, my god is greater.

Conan: 
[chuckles]
Crom laughs at your Four Winds.
He laughs from his mountain.

Subotai:
My God is Stronger.
He is  
The Everlasting Sky!
Your god lives underneath him.

[Conan shoots Subotai a skeptical look. Subotai laughs]

" The ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient Egyptians had some very interesting, dramatic ideas about that. 

For example
—Very Briefly—
There was a deity known as Marduk. 

Marduk was a Mesopotamian deity, and imagine this is sort of what happened. 
As an empire grew out of the post-ice age

—15,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago—

All these tribes came together. 

These tribes each had their own deity—their own image of the ideal. 
But then they started to occupy the same territory.

!! THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE !!

 One tribe had God A, and one tribe had God B,
and one could wipe the other one out, 
and then it would just be God A, who wins. 

That’s not so good, because maybe you want to trade with those people, or maybe you don’t want to lose half your population in a war. 

So then you have to have an argument about whose God is going to take priority—which ideal is going to take priority. 

What seems to happen is represented in mythology as a battle of the gods in celestial space. 

From a practical perspective, it’s more like an ongoing dialog :

' You believe this; I believe this. 
You believe that; I believe this. 
How are we going to meld that together? '

You take God A, and you take God B, and maybe what you do is extract God C from them, and you say,
 ‘God C now has the attributes of A and B.’ 

And then some other tribes come in, and C takes them over, too. 

Take Marduk, for example. 

He has 50 different names, at least in part, of the subordinate gods—that represented the tribes that came together to make the civilization. 

That’s part of the process by which that abstracted ideal is abstracted. 

You think, 
‘This is important, and it works, because your tribe is alive -

And so we’ll take the best of both, if we can manage it, 
and extract out something, that’s even more abstract, 
that covers both of us.’ 

I’ll give you a couple of Marduk’s interesting features. 

He has eyes all the way around his head. 

He’s elected by all the other gods to be King God. 

That’s the first thing. 
That’s quite cool. 

They elect him because they’re facing a terrible threat—sort of like a flood and a monster combined. 

Marduk basically says that, 

if they elect him top God,
he’ll go out and stop the flood monster, 
and they won’t all get wiped out. 

It’s a serious threat. 

It’s Chaos itself making its comeback. 

SALTWATER 

All the gods agree, 
and Marduk is the new manifestation. 

He’s got eyes all the way around His head, 
and
He speaks magic words. 

When he fights, he fights this deity called Tiamat. 

We need to know that, because the word 
‘Tiamat’ is associated with the word 'tehom.' 

Tehom is the Chaos that God makes Order out of at The Beginning of Time in Genesis, 
so it’s linked very tightly to this story. 

Marduk, with His eyes 
and 
His capacity to speak magic words, 
goes out and confronts Tiamat, 
who’s like this watery sea dragon. 

It’s a classic Saint George story: 
Go out and Wreak Havoc on The Dragon. 

He cuts Her into pieces, 
and 
He makes The World out of Her pieces. 

That’s The World that human beings live in. 

The Mesopotamian Emperor acted out Marduk. 

He was ALLOWED to be Emperor 
insofar as he was 
A Good Marduk. 

That meant that he had eyes all the way around his head, and he could speak magick; 
He could speak properly. 

We are starting to understand, at that point, 
The Essence of Leadership.

Because what’s Leadership? 
It’s the capacity to see what the hell’s in front of your face, and maybe in every direction, and maybe 

The Capacity to Use Your Language Properly to Transform Chaos into Order. 

God only knows how long it took the Mesopotamians to figure that out....

The best they could do was dramatize it, but it’s staggeringly brilliant. 

It’s by no means obvious, 
and this Chaos is a very strange thing. 

This is a Chaos that God wrestled with 
at The Beginning of Time. 

Chaos is Half-Psychological 
and 
Half-Real. 

There’s no other way to really describe it. 

Chaos is what you encounter when you’re blown into pieces and thrown into deep confusion—when your world falls apart, when your dreams die, when you’re betrayed. 

It’s The Chaos that emerges, 
and 
The Chaos is everything it wants, 
and 
It’s too much for you. 

That’s for sure. 

It pulls you down into 
The Underworld, 
and 
That’s Where The Dragons Are. 

All you’ve got at that point is your capacity to bloody well keep your eyes open, 
and 
To speak as carefully and as clearly as you can. 

Maybe, if you’re lucky, 
You’ll get through it that way 
and 
Come Out The Other Side. 

It’s taken people a very long time to figure that out, and it looks, to me, that the idea is erected on the platform of our ancient ancestors, maybe tens of millions of years ago, because we seem to represent that which disturbs us deeply  
using the same system that we used to represent  
Serpentile, or other, Carnivorous Predators. 

We’re biological creatures. 

When we formulated our strange capacity to abstract and use language, we still had all those underlying systems that were there when we were only animals. 

We have to use those systems that are there. 

Part of the emotional and motivational architecture of our thinking, part of the reason why we can
Demonize our Enemies 
who upset our axioms, 

Is Because We Perceive Them as if They’re Carnivorous Predators. 

We do it with the same system. 

That’s Chaos itself, 
The Thing That Always Threatens Us—

The Snakes That Came to The Trees 
 when we lived in them, like 60 million years ago. 

It’s the same damned systems. 

The Marduk Story 
is partly 
The Story of Using Attention and Language to Confront Those Things That Most Threaten Us. 

Some of those things are Real World threats, but some of them are Psychological Threats, 
which are just as profound but far more abstract. 

But we use the same system to represent them.

 That’s why you freeze, if you're frightened. 

You’re a prey animal. 
You’re like a rabbit, and you’ve seen something that's going to eat you. 

You freeze, and you’re paralyzed. 

You’re turned to stone, which is what you do when you see a Medusa with a head full of snakes. 

You turn to stone. 
You’re paralyzed, and the reason you do that is because you’re using the predator detector system to protect yourself. 

Your Heart Rate Goes Way Up, 
and 
You Get Ready to Move. 

Things that upset us rely on that system. 

The Marduk Story, 
for example, is the idea that, 
 If there are 
 Things That Upset You

 —chaotic, terrible, serpentine, monstrous, underworld things that threaten you—

The Best Thing to Do 
is 
Open Your Eyes, 
Keep Your Speech Organized, 
and go out, 
Confront The Thing, 
and 
Make The World Out of It. 

It’s staggering. 
When I read that story and started to understand it, it just blew me away. 

It’s such a profound idea, and we know it’s true, too, because we know, in psychotherapy, that 
you’re much better off to confront your fears head-on than you are to wait and let them find you.

Partly what you do, 
if you’re a psychotherapist, 
is you help people 
Break Their Fears into Little Pieces
—The Things That Upset Them—
and then 
To Encounter Them One by One 
and Master Them. 

You’re teaching this process of 
Internal Mastery Over The Strange 
and 
Chaotic World.

Conan's Father:

Fire and Wind come from The Sky, 

from The Gods of The Sky. 

But Crom is Your God - 

Crom and he lives in The Earth. 

Once, Giants lived in The Earth, Conan. 

And in The Darkness of Chaos, They fooled Crom,

and They took from Him The Enigma of Steel.

Crom was angered. And The Earth shook. 

Fire and Wind struck down these Giants, 

and They threw Their bodies into The Waters, 

But in Their Rage, The Gods Forgot The Secret of Steel and left it on The Battlefield.

We who found it are just Men. 

Not Gods. Not Giants. Just Men.

The Secret of Steel has always carried with it a Mystery. 

You must learn its Riddle, Conan. 

You must learn its discipline. 

For No-One - No-One in This World can you trust. Not Men, Not Women, Not Beasts.

[Points to sword]

This You Can Trust.

Your Best Friend is Always Someone Somehow Fundamentally Different to You

When Anu had heard their lamentation the gods cried to Aruru, the goddess of creation,  

‘You made Him, O Aruru, 
now create His equal; 

Let it be as like Him as His own reflection, 
His Second Self, 
Stormy Heart for Stormy Heart. 

Let them Contend Together
 and leave Uruk in quiet.’

So The Goddess conceived an image in her mind, 
and it was Of The Stuff of Anu of The Firmament.

She dipped her hands in Water and pinched off clay [Earth], 
she let it fall in The Wilderness, 
and noble Enkidu was created. 

There was virtue in him of The God of War, 
of Ninurta himself. 

His body was rough, 
he had long hair like a woman’s; 

It waved like the hair of Nisaba, 
The Goddess of Corn. 

His body was covered with matted hair like Samuqan’s, 
The God of Cattle. 

He was Innocent of Mankind; 
He knew nothing of the cultivated land.

 
TUVOK:
Vulcans Do Not Dance.

NEELIX: 
I'm going to make it my personal mission to get you to dance at least once before we reach Earth. 

TUVOK: 
Then I suggest you find a more productive hobby.

TUVOK: 
You wanted to see me. 

NEELIX: 

I've detected five warp capable species within two light years of the planet where we're taking the Talaxians. 
I'm worried they might be vulnerable to attack. 

TUVOK: 
They would be vulnerable anywhere. 

NEELIX: 
I thought maybe you could help me devise some defence strategies for their new home. 

TUVOK: 
Frankly, Mister Neelix, they don't seem inclined to defend themselves. 

NEELIX: 

No, I suppose not. 

TUVOK: 
But if they were going to make a stand, their emotional attachment to their present home might be an asset. 

NEELIX: 

Are you saying they should stay? 

TUVOK: 

I'm speaking hypothetically. 

NEELIX: 

Hypothetically, if they wanted to defend the asteroid, 

How would they do it? 

TUVOK: 

To begin with they would need to establish some kind of perimeter. 

NEELIX: 
You mean shields? 

TUVOK: 

Yes. The miners are monitoring the asteroid. 
If they detected the Talaxians erecting a shield, they would attempt to stop them. 

NEELIX: 

I suppose so. 

TUVOK: 

Your people would need competent leadership to defend against a pre-emptive attack. 

NEELIX: 

If you had the captain's permission, 
would you be willing to provide that leadership? 

TUVOK: 

Certainly not. 

It would be a violation of the Prime Directive. 

And even if it weren't, 

I don't believe that I am the person most qualified to assume that role. 

NEELIX: 

You mean me? 

TUVOK: 

I am merely speaking hypothetically. 

NEELIX:

I couldn't lead those people, Mister Tuvok. 

I'm not a fighter. 

I'm just a cook who sometimes imagines himself to be a diplomat. 

TUVOK: 

On the contrary, Mister Neelix. 

You are much more than that. 

You are perhaps the most resourceful individual I have ever known. 

NEELIX: 

I always thought you just tolerated me...

TUVOK: 

You do have some annoying habits. 

However, during your time on Voyager you've developed many valuable skills. 

Skills that would serve you well if you ever decided to assume a leadership role. 

NEELIX: 

You really think so? 

TUVOK: 

Let me be clear. 

I'm not urging you to do anything. 

I'm simply telling you that I believe that you are more than capable.

Zuul

THERE IS NO DANA ONLY ZUUL

"The Babylonians have one most shameful custom. Every woman born in the country must once in her life go and sit down in the precinct of Venus, and there consort with a stranger. Many of the wealthier sort, who are too proud to mix with the others, drive in covered carriages to the precinct, followed by a goodly train of attendants, and there take their station. But the larger number seat themselves within the holy enclosure with wreaths of string about their heads- and here there is always a great crowd, some coming and others going; lines of cord mark out paths in all directions the women, and the strangers pass along them to make their choice. A woman who has once taken her seat is not allowed to return home till one of the strangers throws a silver coin into her lap, and takes her with him beyond the holy ground. When he throws the coin he says these words- "The goddess Mylitta prosper thee." (Venus is called Mylitta by the Assyrians.) The silver coin may be of any size; it cannot be refused, for that is forbidden by the law, since once thrown it is sacred. The woman goes with the first man who throws her money, and rejects no one. When she has gone with him, and so satisfied the goddess, she returns home, and from that time forth no gift however great will prevail with her. Such of the women as are tall and beautiful are soon released, but others who are ugly have to stay a long time before they can fulfil the law. Some have waited three or four years in the precinct.[*] A custom very much like this is found also in certain parts of the island of Cyprus.

Such are the customs of the Babylonians generally. There are likewise three tribes among them who eat nothing but fish. These are caught and dried in the sun, after which they are brayed in a mortar, and strained through a linen sieve. Some prefer to make cakes of this material, while others bake it into a kind of bread."

* This unhallowed custom is mentioned among the abominations of thereligion of the Babylonians ** in the book of Baruch (vi. 43).

** Sumerian, Not Babylonian.

Did Prostitution Really Exist in the Temples of Antiquity?

"Holy harlots" in Jerusalem, temple sex in the service of Aphrodite? Many ancient authors describe sacred prostitution in drastic terms. Are the accounts nothing but legends? Historians are searching for the kernel of truth behind the reports.

Matthias Schulz

Sex in the Service of Aphrodite

Corbis

Friday, 3/26/2010   03:13 PM 

The "ugliest custom" in Babylon, the historian Herodotus wrote (who is believed to have lived between circa 490 to 425 B.C.), was the widespread practice of prostitution in the Temple of Ishtar. Once in their lifetimes, all women in the country were required to sit in the temple and "expose themselves to a stranger" in return for money.

"Rich and haughty" women, the ancient Greek historian railed, arrived in "covered chariots."

The Persians on the Black Sea were apparently involved in similarly nefarious activities. According to the Greek geographer Strabo, "virgin daughters," hardly 12 years old, were dedicated to cult prostitution. "They treat their lovers with such friendliness that they even entertain them."

There are many such reports from classical antiquity. Tribes from Sicily to Thebes are believed to have indulged in perverse religious customs.

The Jews were also involved in such practices. There are about a dozen passages in the Old Testament that revolve around "Qadeshes," a word for female and male cult practitioners. The Bible calls them "lemans" and "catamites." In the Fifth Book of Moses, male prostitutes are prohibited from donating their "dogs' money" to the House of Yahweh.

Twentieth-century researchers eagerly seized on the references, which were often mysterious. Soon it was considered a fact that priests in the Eastern World performed forced defloration. It was said that there was "dowry prostitution" and "sexual copulation at the cult site."

Temple sex, according to the "Encyclopedia of Theology and the Church," was a "moral and hygienic plague spot on the body of the people."

But is this true? More and more academics are now questioning the erotic fables of the ancients.

Were Erotic Tales Exaggerated?

Newly discovered cuneiform tablets paint a more defused picture, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the academics of earlier decades exaggerated the subject. For example, there is not a single piece of evidence proving that the ritual of forced defloration existed.

A fraction of female gender researchers take a more radical view. They dispute holy prostitution altogether, calling the whole thing a pack of lies.

According to a new book on the subject, it all began when a few Greek writers concocted defamatory, dirty customs about foreign peoples, as evidence of their moral "damnability." In the modern age, the author writes, this filth developed into a "research myth."

Julia Assante, an American scholar of the ancient Orient and the leader of the movement, is convinced that sacred whores are merely products of "male fantasy."

But for moderate scholars, this interpretation goes too far. Although they also question some of the overblown academic opinions of the past, they insist that the phenomenon existed. They believe that there were once:

Temples that operated brothels on the side; 

Temples in which girls held the highest offices of the priesthood, even before their first menstruation; 

Professional harlots who donated their own money to cult sites, such as a site devoted to the goddess "Aphrodite Porne."

A bitter debate is unfolding, as Assyriologists with feminist leanings squabble with old-school professors. While the former consistently denounce the theories of temple prostitution as nothing but lies, the latter, citing Sumerian grammar, seek to defend their supposedly "patriarchal perspective."

Street Prostitution in Ancient Times

There is, however, agreement on the subject of ordinary street prostitution in ancient times. Wearing garish makeup and yellow shawls, the whores of Athens advertised their charms at the foot of the Acropolis. Special "flute girls" offered to play the aulos for their customers before boldly getting down to business.

Rome's street prostitutes charged four aces (the equivalent of about €10, or $14). Messalina, a famous call girl, became empress when she married the Emperor Claudius.

Page 2 of 3

Sex in the Service of Aphrodite

Part 2: Mesopotamia Was Particularly Known for its Loose Morals

Corbis

Friday, 3/26/2010   03:13 PM 

The pious land of the Pyramids also offered sinful pleasures. Its prostitutes rubbed ointment onto their customers' bodies. "Your phallus is in the Chenemet women," an ancient papyrus text reads. "A man can copulate better than a donkey. It is only his purse that holds him back."

Mesopotamia was particularly known for its loose morals. A whore named Shamhat ("The Voluptuous One"), who appears in the Gilgamesh epic, beguiles the wild man Enkidu: "She unclutched her bosom, exposed her sex, and he took in her voluptuousness."

There were few objections to the profession in the Euphrates Valley. A clay tablet tells the story of a young woman who receives her customers in the house of her parents. She was paid with the meat of a piglet.

The Whore of Babylon

But what happened at the holy sites? What happened behind the walls of the Temple of Ishtar? This is a source of contention among scholars.

The Orient devoted enormous buildings to its goddess of sex and love. Hymns praised her as a "Mistress of Women" with "seductive charms." "In lips she is sweet; life is in her mouth" -- Whore of Babylon.

The Ishtar cult soon spread to the north, first to Cyprus, where Greek settlers came into contact with the goddess and renamed her Aphrodite. According to Greek myth, the beautiful Aphrodite rose from a bloody spot in the sea, where the water was colored red and full of sperm. It was the spot where Cronos, the ruler of the Titans, had thrown his father's severed genitalia into the sea.

The goddess, "born of the sea foam," was never innocent, but filled with lust and an orgy of the senses. In Uruk, an orgiastic Carneval-like festival was celebrated in her honor 5,000 years ago. Ancient lists show that female dancers and actresses worked in the Temple of Ishtar.

No Signs of Sex Acts at the Altar

Nevertheless, there are no signs that sex acts and fertility rites took place directly at the altar, as scholars once claimed. "There is no evidence whatsoever of such magical practices," explains Gernot Wilhelm, an Orientalist at Julis Maximilian University in Würzburg, Germany.

Did Herodotus invent his story of forced sex among the women of Babylon? Gender researchers think so.

Nevertheless, there is probably more to the story than meets the eye. The temple of the sex goddess also included a special cult personnel, the "Harimtu," or "prostitutes."

Some time ago, Wilhelm discovered a fascinating legal document. It is about 3,300 years old, and it recounts how a man delivered his own daughter to the Temple of Ishtar to serve as a Harimtu.

According to the document, the man wanted a loan from the priests and was offering his daughter as collateral.

But what exactly did the pawned daughter do for her new employers? Wilhelm speculates that the young girl worked as a prostitute, "but outside the temple."

As evidence, the professor cites the "Book of Baruch" in the Old Testament. It describes prostitutes standing "along the paths" between the dusty houses of Babylon. They too were somehow associated with a sacred organization.

An Academic Dispute

The skeptics are having none of it. Harimtu doesn't mean prostitute, says gender studies scholar Assante. She claims that Assyriologists simply translated the word incorrectly for 150 years.

Instead, says Assante, the word refers to a "single woman," who served as a cultish official and was not part of a male household.

Assante's adversaries cringe at her interpretation, accusing Assante of transferring her own social status into the pre-Christian era.

Her reinterpretation of the word Harimtu doesn't make semantic sense, says economic historian Morris Silver. He insists that the Harimtu were clearly "professional prostitutes with cultic connections," who offered a "sexual service" on behalf of the temple. Priests acted as pimps and collected some of the profits.

These sacred brothels probably also existed in Greece, specifically, as scholars believe, at the Temple of Aphrodite in Corinth. It was perched on a rocky promontory 575 meters (1,890 feet) above the sea.

Sex Workers, Flimsy Dresses, Garish Makeup

It is indisputable that the city itself was a raucous place. Corinth was a hub of maritime trade, with hundreds of ships docked at its jetties. Sex workers, wearing flimsy dresses and garish makeup, were lined up along the docks to offer their charms.

But the temple to the goddess of love, high up on the cliff, also appears to have been a hub of sexual activity. "The Temple of Aphrodite was so rich that it owned more than a thousand temple slaves, courtesans," Strabo writes.

Hordes of sailors and sea captains, "hungry for sex," clambered up to the cliff temple, says British academic Nigel Spivey.

Tanja Scheer, a professor of ancient history at the University of Oldenburg in northern Germany, now proposes a better solution: "The reports of a sacred brothel in Corinth are all based on an ode by Pindar," she explains. Pindar writes that a wealthy Olympic champion dedicated the temple to a "hundred-limbed" throng of prostitutes in 464 B.C.

But, as Scheer points out, it is unlikely that the prostitutes lounged directly at the altar. Instead, she says, the wealthy athlete probably offered the temple financial assistance in the form of female slaves. "The proceeds from the sale of their bodies could serve as a regular and ongoing source of income for the temple."

Scheer's theory is supported by the fact that the Athenian statesman Solon, who established government houses of pleasure in Athens around 590 B.C., imposed taxes on the prostitutes. The city used the revenues to build a temple to the goddess of love.

As a fragment from an old comedy reveals, very young girls apparently lived in the brothel. The text describes the "foals" of Aphrodite standing naked in a line," and notes: "From them, constantly and securely, you may purchase your pleasure for a little coin."

It is also possible that things were even worse for child prostitutes in the ancient world. Some scholars speculate that there may have been sacred sex between children.

Again, the trail leads to Babylon and its 91-meter, pyramid-shaped tower, one of the wonders of the ancient world. According to some sources, there was a shrine at the top of the tower that contained a bed, where a chosen girl slept at night, constantly prepared for a "sacred wedding" -- the symbolic sex act with the god Marduk.

Child Abuse on the Nile?

Farther afield, in the main temple of Thebes, in the land of the Pharaohs, there was a "godly consort of Amun."

This priesthood was occupied by "a maiden of greatest beauty and most illustrious family," Strabo writes, "and she prostitutes herself, and cohabits with whatever men she wishes until the natural cleansing of her body takes place" (menstruation).

Child abuse on the Nile? There are many historical clues that have led to speculation among academics, particularly now that a new document has fueled the debate even further.

It is a worn fragment of an Egyptian scroll, which also addresses the subject of young priestesses.

According to the text, girls are permitted to work in the temple until their first menstruation. After that, however, "they are cast out from their duties."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan