The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity

Dispels the myth of sacred prostitution in the ancient world.

Stephanie Lynn Budin (Author)

9780521178044, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 14 December 2009

382 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.57 kg

'… the book is based on a solid knowledge of modern scholarship. It should be read both by those who maintain that sacred prostitution existed and by those who remain sceptical.' Arctos

Stephanie Budin demonstrates that sacred prostitution, the sale of a person's body for sex in which some or all of the money earned was devoted to a deity or a temple, did not exist in the ancient world. Reconsidering the evidence from the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman texts, and the early Christian authors, Budin shows that the majority of sources that have traditionally been understood as pertaining to sacred prostitution actually have nothing to do with this institution. The few texts that are usually invoked on this subject are, moreover, terribly misunderstood. Contrary to many current hypotheses, the creation of the myth of sacred prostitution has nothing to do with notions of accusation or the construction of a decadent, Oriental 'Other'. Instead, the myth has come into being as a result of more than 2,000 years of misinterpretations, false assumptions, and faulty methodology.

1. Introduction
2. The ancient Near Eastern data
3. The so-called 'evidence'
4. Herodotos
5. In the footsteps of Herodotos: Lucian and 'Jeremiah'
6. Pindar Fragment 122
7. Strabo, confused and misunderstood
8. Klearkhos, Justinus, and Valerius Maximus
9. Archaeological 'evidence' from Italy
10. The early Christian rhetoric
11. Last myths.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]