Ishtar
Ishtar West Asia‘The foulest Babylonian custom’, Herodotus remarks, ‘is that which compels every woman of the land once in her life to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and lay with some stranger…. When a woman has once taken her place there she cannot leave before a man has cast money into her lap and united with her outside the temple. On casting the coin, he has to say, “I demand you in the name of Mylitta”, which is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite…. After sexual union has made the woman holy in the goddess' sight, she returns home: thereafter no bribe would be large enough to win her favour again. Handsome women are of course soon free to depart, but it happens that the uncomely sometimes have to wait several years. There is a custom like this in some parts of Cyprus.’
Mylitta was the mother goddess Ishtar, who derived from the Sumerian Inanna, goddess of fertility and love. In Babylonian mythology Ishtar, the wife and sister of...
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