The Greek historian Herodotus in the Historiae tells of a particular religious tradition practiced in Babylon: sacred prostitution.
This practice required that every Babylonian woman once in her life should go to the temple of the Goddess Ishtar to offer herself upon payment to any man who desired her and to lay on the altar the money received.
The ritual was that the girl would sit in the sacred enclosure of Ishtar with a wreath of rope around her head and never return home until some stranger, after throwing money on her knees, had joined her inside the temple.
In the act of throwing the money he had to pronounce this sentence "I invoke for you the Goddess", after having given herself the girl she returned home and from that moment she could not offer herself for money.
Also, there were the priestesses of Ishtar who were permanently prostituted in the temples of the Goddess during religious rituals. The priestesses of Ishtar offered themselves to the faithful as a form of worship of the Goddess.
The main motivation that gave rise to the practice of sacred prostitution was the belief of storing vital energy: in the temple, the priest or the faithful joined the priestess carnally celebrating with their union a rite praising the Goddess of Love Ishtar so as to propitiate the fertility of women belonging to fertility.
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