Babylonian whores

I'm always fascinated by how different cultures understand things we easily take for granted, like sexuality, because it can be so radically different from everything we may be accustomed to in our own culture. As I might have hinted before, learning history is simply the act of visiting another culture in the past, like a vacation through time rather than space.

Here's an interesting quote from Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia by Jean Bottéro that adds to my blog rants on sexuality in ancient times (p.123-124):

"Since homosexual love was perfectly tolerated in the land, provided that it did not harm anyone, it should not be surprising to see professional homosexuals here, as if to balance the 'religious' prositutes mentioned above, the assinu, the kurgarru, the kulu'u, and even, on occasion, the kolû, who had rather a bad reputation in this regard, although we do not really know why. Nor do we know under what conditions they expressed their profession or their duties. But we occasionally see them dressed as women, holding strictly feminine accessories (such as a spindle) in their hands in addition to manly weapons, as if to point out their sexual ambiguity, and taking part, at least in honor of Ištar, in ritual, ambiguous, or lascivious dances. They were not, however, firmly integrated into the clerical corps, and their specific designation referred above all to their condition and to their way of making love."

Before I continue let me just say that "professional homosexual" is unfortunate wording, making it sound as though homosexuals do nothing but have sex all day and that some even go professional. [Pause for laughter...] Within the greater context of the paragraph though, the author is talking about prostitutes as a whole, some of which happen to be homosexual.

Putting aside the risky wording, Jean mentions three terms in the Babylonian language referring to specialized types of prostitutes. John Barclay Burns from George Mason University published in The Journal of Religion & Society the article Devotee or Deviate with more detail on what exactly these terms meant as part of a larger explanation of sexuality in Ancient Israel and the Old Testament:

"Sources from Mesopotamia testify to the existence of male cult figures whose sexuality was confused or liminal and who engaged in various sex-related practices. One text refers to the sinnišānu, literally, 'woman-like,' who went into a tavern and agreed to divide his earnings, presumably with the tavern-keeper. Taverns were permitted places of resort for prostitutes of both sexes. The assinnu was a member of Ishtar’s cultic staff with whom, it seems, a man might have intercourse, whose masculinity had become femininity (Erra IV 55-56; CAD, A: 341). The effeminate kulu'u, not a zikaru, a 'real' man, and the transvestite kurgarrû sang, acted, and danced in the worship of Inanna/Ishtar. The kulu'u was certainly regarded as a male prostitute in the saying, amat LU kulu'u u: ha-rim-ti URU, “the word of the male or female prostitute of the city” (CAD, K: 529, 557). W. G. Lambert argued that there was a fair amount of evidence for a cluster of male types notorious for their femininity and that they served as prostitutes. One of these, the assinnu, lacked libido, either from a natural defect or castration (152-53). M. Nissinen pointed out that the cuneiform signs used for assinnu were UR.SAL, 'dog/woman,' evidently an insulting designation (32). Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the cognate Akkadian word for dog, kalbu, was ever employed as a metaphor in this precise context."

And thus we come full circle by ending it off with Old Testament sexuality. The picture above is old religious art portraying the so-called "Whore of Babylon" as it was written in the book of Revelation, a symbol of decaying morals. As we can tell by this wording alone, there was a sense of moral supremacy in regards to sexuality throughout the biblical scriptures and a constant war between misunderstood foreign moralities and their own. Sound familiar in the modern day?

Ni-Ankh-Khnum and Khnum-Hotep

Here's an interesting topic and helps me make a point about history and bias. It emphasizes how historical art, or any art for that matter, is just too darn easy to interpret based on how one feels. That's why inscriptions are so handy, but sometimes even experts like to ignore them or misinterpret them according to modern views or their own biases. Even well-intentioned people with degrees out their yin-yang are found debating incessantly their own pet theories back and forth without ever an agreement between them. Sometimes the suggestions are absurd; sometimes pedantic. You be the judge.

There were two male individuals named Ni-Ankh-Khnum and Khnum-Hotep strangely portrayed together and very close, standing side-by-side (almost lip-locked, some may say). They were apparently both buried within a single Egyptian tomb, yet also appear to have had wives and children if the murals have been read correctly.

This tomb was found more than forty years ago. Still today however, academics can't decide whether this is a homosexual couple, a pair of brothers, or even conjoined twins! Egad, this debate sounds painfully narrow to me. This is just like the nonsense that goes on with Etruscan burial murals with which I'm more familiar. Essentially many whimsical statements are made by learned people about what they (think they) see in a mural, but nothing productive comes of it, save more conjecture, of course, until somebody comes a long with a thorough and comprehensive analysis.

We need to be careful with this. While I don't hold to any particular view on this so far, after just finishing a blog on sexuality and based on what I know about sexuality, I do know that what we now call "homosexual" love between men and a "heterosexual" life of wives and children is not necessarily incompatible in many societies.

First, bisexuals are not unicorns. They exist now and they existed in the past. Ancient texts may not have necessarily had a term "bisexual" but it happened (nb. consider Julius Caesar and the open claims of his bisexuality). To even label this Egyptian mural as specifically homo- rather than bisexual shows a naiveté about the human spectrum of sexual tastes and the added possibilities this mural may or may not represent.

In Ancient Greece, our concepts and terms relating to sexual orientation would have seemed to them quite foreign. (See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/ for more details.) Due to the vaguer way that they looked at sexual orientation, a man could easily love another man without any social disdain while still having a wife and children. The latter could be seen as a societal obligation to procreate while the former, pleasure. To an Ancient Greek, we know there was no conflict in this behaviour, hard as it may be for some conservative-minded individuals to comprehend today.

So then, to understand what's going on with these murals and be fair on ethnological grounds, I might ask: In what way is Ancient Egyptian views of sexual orientation different from Ancient Greek views? If no significant difference, how then do we distinguish here between brothers and lovers? If Ancient Greece, as just one example, is to be our cultural guide on what is possible in human societies, the mere presence of wives and children in these murals does not say anything afterall.

However, this is just an idle thought I had when I read the story. It doesn't seem that the New York Times author was aware of these added considerations and I fear that without going through all the possibilities we're being one-dimensional about this debate.

Read here the New York Times article on the subject and get informed about a kooky corner of Egyptology your professor may not have told you. Perhaps you too will see other unique perspectives on these images from the past that haven't yet been considered by the old school.

Thoughts on sexuality and history

Hide the children. As I promised you in my blog "Nostratic-L yahoogroups update", outraged by the bigoted attitudes of a yahoogroups moderator, Andy Howey, and some members like Patrick C. Ryan, I think it's constructive to tackle the complex world of sexuality maturely, covering the broad range of opinions which continue to exist today and which have existed throughout time. Allowing our own ethnocentric feelings of moral supremacy will forever prevent us from understanding our past, our present and even our future.

On Nostratic-L, Patrick's paranoia towards the light-hearted term "sweetie" as a kind of accusation of homosexuality (see here) and Andy's subtle use of quotation marks around the pronouns "he" to refer to me (see here) are subtle examples of continued bigotry in the modern day. They demonstrate unscientific, fear-driven myths seen countless times elsewhere that a) to be a gay male or to be associated with one is a sign of moral deficiency, and b) that gay males aren't male enough to be referred to as he without quotation marks. Considering the available information on sites like the American Psychological Association, it's hard to believe that these online individuals masquerading as history buffs are not purposely being ignorant in order to unload their baggage of self-hatred on random scapegoats whether it be groups united by sexuality, by gender, by culture, by religion, by skin colour, etc.

It's interesting also that Patrick Ryan and Andy Howey should both reside in the United States, a country that frequently airs homophobic propoganda as we would expect in other countries intolerant towards homosexuality such as Iraq, Algeria and Mozambique (see Debra Rosenberg/Karen Breslau, Newsweek: Culture Wars Winning the 'Values' Vote, Online: Feb 05 2006^[1]; CNN: GOP Renews Fight Against Gay Marriage). In that country, gay marriages are recognized in some states while others maintain laws against sodomy that were written a century ago. (This in itself teaches us that no culture, ancient or modern, is entirely monolithic in views and attitudes about anything, by the way.) I live in quite a different country just next door, Canada, where gay marriage is now legally recognized throughout all of its provinces and territories. Similar positive attitudes now prevail in modern countries around the world like Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Luxembourg, Monaco, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom, to list only a few. As we can see then, Patrick and Andy's unscientific attitudes towards sexuality probably in part were shaped by their own cultural biases of what they learned to be "right" and "wrong" from their parents and their parents before them. However with just the above facts about laws around the world, these morals are not universal and it's naive to impose them on other cultures, whether they be prehistorical, historical or modern. They certainly have no business being in an educated debate as a low-handed way to personally attack other members of a forum.

There are many quick examples of how moral supremacy can cause the destruction of historical artifacts and infect our knowledge of history. Consider for example the many books that Mayans had produced recording their advanced knowledge of the sciences, completely destroyed by Spanish catholic priests who deemed them demonic according to their own narrow religious views. Only a few books now remain such as the Dresden Codex. In Victorian times, many Egyptian statues of a phallic nature, devoted to the god Min, were purposely maimed to agree better with the sensibilities of that era rather than being properly studied in order to truthfully comprehend the past. Ignorance is a destructive imp and allowing it to fester leads to chaos.

Many people when they study ancient cultures think that they can hide themselves away from the uneasy topic of sexuality and yet still gain deep insight into these cultures, but they are deluding themselves. Inevitably one will accidentally trip over cultural curiosities such as this sexually overt image displayed on a classical Greek amphora or a carefully carved facade of an ancient temple in India and then what does one do? Hide in a bomb shelter? Is the end really nigh, or has history just blown your mind wide open and showed you how small your own culture really is in the grand scheme of time?

And this is just scratching the surface of this topic...

NOTES
^[1] Originally published online by MNSBC at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6401635/site/newsweek/, the article is now curiously absent and unretrievable from their site. Thankfully it has been archived by others however.