Temple Women

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Sargon the Great lived from about 2290 to 2215 BC. Sargon's empire included the southern region of Mesopotamia, Syria, and part of Iran. When Sargon died, his son Rimush (Ramesh) by his sister-wife ascended the throne. 

Sargon's maternal grandfather - Sargon the Elder- conquered Nippur in 2340 B.C. and established his capital in Akkad (Agade/Agadez). His daughter was the mother of Sargon the Great. She was a temple dedicated Sumerian princess according to Sargon the Great's birth narrative: 

My mother was a high priestess... My high priestess mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me. Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener. 

 

High status temple women such as Sargon the Great's mother were independently wealthy. Some served as royal officials over the king's water shrines with their luxurious gardens. That was the case for Sargon's daughter, Enheduanna. Sargon appointed Heduanna as the En (master, mistress, royal official) of the shrine at Ur. This was a shrewd political move to secure power in the south of his kingdom. En-Heduanna served the Creator God Anu, at the house or temple (pr) of Anu (Iannu). As with Roman Catholic nuns, she would have been considered “married” to the deity she served. En-Heduanna is credited with a large body of cuneiform poetry.

Some temple women went into business as tavern-inn keepers. They were skilled beer brewers because this was one of the duties of temple women. Temple women performed sacred music and dance. They drew water, wove fabric, and ministered to women. They also baked bread and brewed beer. As early as 4000 BC beer was offered in the inner sanctum of the temple to gladden the deity’s heart. Some temple women were so adept at brewing beer that they operated taverns. This enabled them to become women of independent means. A tavern meant financial independence for the fortunate women who had the resources to own one. In some cases, women were able to set up a business because they had received royal beneficences. Temple women also received wealth from their mothers who were temple women.

Banquet scene from the tomb chapel of Nebamun, 14th century BC. Its imagery alludes to Hathor, the archetype of the mother of the Son of God. (Wikimedia Commons)

The Sumerian King Lists name Kug-Bau as a "tavern keeper" and the single ruler of the Third Dynasty of Kish. She ruled between 2500 B.C. and 2330 B.C. The King List refers to her as lugal (ruler), not as eresh (queen consort). She was deified centuries later as the protector of the city of Carchemish. She also was known as Ku-Baba. The prefix Ku means holy or righteous.

Beer was ubiquitous in Mesopotamia, the Nile Valley, and the Indus Valley. In addition to its ritual use as an offering at the temples, it was consumed at sacred festivals. Beer was also a dietary staple and was served at taverns to local people and to travelers. It is likely that the Hebrew tavern keeper Rahab had at one time been a temple woman. She married Salma whose ancestral home was Bethlehem, and she is listed as one of Jesus Christ's ancestors. 

Rahab of Jericho

Taverns were near the city gates and were attached to the city walls with casemate cells as rooms. This sheds light on the probable arrangement of Rahab's tavern. In fortified towns such as Beersheba, Khirbet Qeiyafa, and Jericho, houses attached to the city walls had casemate foundations. Rahab’s tavern likely had casemates in which she stored provisions. Jericho’s casemate walls were engineered to prevent collapse in the event of an earthquake. The casemates were constructed of two parallel walls with perpendicular braces. Some of the casemate cells were filled with dirt to increase stability. An earthquake might cause an individual casemate to collapse without causing the rest of the wall to fall.

Rahab's city of Jericho was situated at the major commercial routes of the Via Maris and the King's Highway. Her tavern would have been a prosperous business that required considerable executive and management skills. Rahab preserved her household and business from attack when she hung a scarlet cord from a window. This was the sign that had been decided beforehand with the Israelite visitors. The cord was visible from outside the city walls.

Biblical sources used different Hebrew words to describe Rahab. One refers to a sacred prostitute (tantric sex), and the other to an inn keeper. The first word is qādēš, and the second is the biradical zn. Leah Bronner points out that the ZN root could refer to zonah (one who sells her body) or to the word zon, an innkeeper. The biblical scholar and archaeologist D. J. Wiseman noted that tzond can be translated as “barmaid.”

The hospitality that Rahab showed to the Hebrew spies suggests that she was simply doing her job. There is no evidence that Rahab was a harlot or that she ran a brothel. In fact, her marriage to a Salma, a Hebrew chief suggests that she was Hebrew since the Hebrew ruler-priests married exclusively within their ruler-priest caste. 

The punishment for Hebrew women who had sex outside of marriage was severe. They were to be stoned to death or burned alive. Leviticus 21:9 states, “And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire.” Neither happened to Rahab. Instead, she became the wife of Salma (Salmon), a righteous Hebrew. Their son Boaz was a ruler or elder of Bethlehem. Boaz married Ruth and their son was Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of King David (Matt. 1:5).

Music, beer, and sex are found in combination throughout human history. It is likely that among the non-Hebrew the occupations of innkeeper, brothel manager, and prostitute were considered as synonymous in ancient times. Because inns gained such a bad reputation, it is not surprising that the Jews and early Christians recommended keeping an open house for the benefit of strangers. The early Christians were admonished to “not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Heb. 13.2) and they were encouraged to “practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another” (1 Pet. 4.9).

Temple Dancers  

Some female tavern owners were former temple dancers or “Devadasi.” They were highly trained in the mudras of sacred dance. Some came from royal bloodlines and were among the few literate women in the region. The temples were under the rule of regional kings who sometimes gave these women sufficient gold and gems to gain their independence. It was considered an honorable deed to sponsor the Devadasi.

Hindu temple dancer performs mudras. 

Mudras are gestures that convey specific meanings within Buddhist and Hindu culture. They are used in daily life and, in a very stylized form, in temple dancing. This is a photo of a temple dancer taken around 1956. Her hands say, "My heart is aflame."

Many of the professional dancers worked in taverns. Nubian women who managed taverns were known for their skill as dancers and their devotion to Hathor. These women are related to the cattle-herding C-Group peoples who migrated out of Africa. The importance of cattle to the early Nilotic and Sumerian herdsmen explains the association of Hathor with her crown of bull horns in which the solar orb rests as a sign of divine appointment by overshadowing (cf. Luke 1:35). The early Hebrew were devotees of the High God and his son who was born of Hathor. Like the Nubians dancers, Horite Hebrew temple dancers participated in ritual performances to honor Hathor, the mother of Horus (HR - "Most High One" in Egyptian). The festivals included the consumption of beer. However, the Nubian dancers and tavern keepers lost status when Islamic law forbade beer consumption and the Hindu temples in northern India were demolished.

Related reading: Temple Dedicated Daughters of Hebrew Priests; Was the Virgin Mary a Temple Dedicated Daughter?; The Virgin Mary's Life in the Temple Cloister; Horite and Sethite Mounds

Nimrod and the Nile-Indus Connection

 

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

This article explores connections between Nimrod and the spread of religious beliefs and practices associated with the early Akkadians. According to Genesis 10, Nimrod was a Nilote (son of Kush) who built his kingdom in Mesopotamia. He is one of "the mighty men of old" described in Genesis 6. These earliest kingdom builders constructed cities, temples, and fortified high places. They controlled commerce on the major water systems of the ancient world. They migrated out of the Upper Nile Valley in different directions, and they were served by a prestigious caste of priests who later became known as Hebrew.

Akkad was one of the principal cities of Nimrod's kingdom. The language of his territory was Akkadian, the oldest known Semitic language. The Indian scholar, Malati J. Shendge, concluded that the language of the Harappans of the Indus Valley was Akkadian.

Ajay Pratap Singh has written, "Comparisons of Akkadian and Sanskrit words yielded at least 400 words in both languages with comparable phonetic and semantic similarities. Thus Sanskrit has, in fact, descended from Akkadian."

The Hebrew yasuah and the Sanskrit words asvah, asuah or yasuah, refer to salvation.

The Semitic words svam or samyim and the Sanskrit svah refer to the sky or heavens and resemble the Proto-Dravidian word van, meaning heaven.

The Semitic word wadi and the Sanskrit nadi mean river.

The Hebrew root thr means to be pure. It probably corresponds to the Tamil word tiru, meaning holy, and to the proto-Dravidian tor, meaning blood.

The Hebrew word for mother is iya and corresponds to the Dravidian ka ayi, meaning mother.

There also is a correspondence between the names Ram/Rama, Kush/Kusha, Karnak/Karnataka, and Hari/Hori which are found in Vedic and Hebrew texts. Other places names include Orisha in Nigeria and Orissa in India.

In the Omotic languages of Ethiopia the word ganga is related to words meaning river. This likely is the source of the name of the Ganges River. Other words like sanga (“having limbs”) suggest the meaning of the intervocalic "ng" which in Sanskrit appears in words associated with tributaries, extensions, off-shoots, or limbs. 

The word "Har-appa" is comprised of two words. One is Nilotic and the other is Dravidian. HR refers to the Most High God, symbolized by the Sun. "Appa" means father in Dravidian. Harappa means the Most High God is Father. Evidently, the Horite Hebrew priests spread their religion from ancient Kush to Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. 

Artifacts

Further evidence of the connection between the Nile and Indus Valley is demonstrated by comparing early Egyptian and Indus pottery inscriptions. Note that 17 figures under the headings "Indus Valley" and "Egyptian" (two columns on left) are almost identical.

Harappan artifacts are similar to those of the ancient Nile. The Indian archaeologist, B. B. Lal contends that the Dravidian artifacts reflect the pottery and structures of the Upper Nile Valley. Lal writes: "At Timos the Indian team dug up several megalithic sites of ancient Nubians which bear an uncanny resemblance to the cemeteries of early Dravidians which are found all over Western India from Kathiawar to Cape Comorin. The intriguing similarity extends from the subterranean structure found near them. Even the earthenware ring-stands used by the Dravidians and Nubians to hold pots were identical." 

Various sciences confirm an early Nile-Indus connection: DNA studies, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology. Michael Petraglia (University of Cambridge) and his team found stone tools at Jwalapuram in Andhra Pradesh in southern India. These were above and below a thick layer of ash from the Toba super eruption (74,000 years ago). Petraglia noted that the tools found in southern India are like those from the African Middle Stone Age about 100,000 years ago. He states, “Whoever was living in India was doing things identical to modern humans living in Africa.”

DNA research has shown that there have been two major migrations into India in the last 10,000 years. One originated from the Zagros region in south-western Iran between 7,000 and 3,000 B.C. The Zagrosian herders mixed with the earlier inhabitants of the subcontinent, descendants of the Out of Africa migrants who had reached India around 65,000 years ago. Together, they went on to create the Harappan civilization.

The German archaeologists Friedrichs and Muller identified some of the skulls of Mohenjo-Daro as "Hamitic." The term "Nilotic" would be more accurate.

Paleontologists B.K. Chatterjee and G.D. Kumer reported in "Comparative Study and Racial Analysis of the Skeletal Remains of the Indus Valley Civilization" that the 18 Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa skulls that they examined are "similar to skulls from Nubia during the third to second Millennium B.C." (See Wayne Chandler: "The Jewel in the Lotus: The Ethiopian Presence in the Indus Valley Civilization" in African Presence in Early Asia, Ivan Van Sertima et. a1. eds., 1985 p. 87)

Some old Hindu fire altars were constructed in the shape of a falcon. The falcon was the totem of Horus (HR), the son of the High God. This explains why the Shulba Sutras state that "he who desires heaven is to construct a fire-altar in the form of a falcon."

B. B. Lal noted that originally there were seven fire altars at Kalibangan. The number seven represented fullness and heavenly blessing among the Harappans as it did for the biblical Hebrew. In Jewish weddings the Sheva Brachot (seven marriage blessings) are recited under the huppah and the wedding feast lasts 7 days. Among the Agharias of Orissa, India, the wedding begins with the bride’s father delivering a bracelet and seven small earthen bowls to the bride. The bride is seated in the open, and seven women hold the bowls over her head one above the other. Water is poured from one bowl into the other, each being filled in turn and the whole finally falling over the bride's head. The bowls of water represent the blessings from above by which the High God overcame the demonic forces that inhibited life on earth by withholding water. The bride is then bathed and carried in a basket seven times round the marriage-post, after which she is seated in a chair and seven women place their heads together round her while a male relative winds a thread seven times round the heads of the women.

It appears that the early Hebrew ruler-priests spread the Proto-Gospel concerning God Father and God Son. In the Axial Age, their faith degraded into polytheism and the proliferation of numerous world religions, including Hinduism and Judaism.

Related reading: Belief in the High God; The Oldest Known Religion; Understanding the Axial Age

Touching the Royal Hem

Matthew 14:36 and Mark 6:56 refer to the desire of the sick to touch the hem of Jesus' garment at Gennesaret. “They besought him that they might only touch the hem of his garment; and as many as touched (it) were healed.”

The woman who had been sick for twelve years came behind Jesus and touched the hem of his outer garment and was healed (Matthew 9:19-22, Mark 5:25–34; Luke 8:43–48). There is a theory that the woman touched the tzitzit (tassels, fringes) of his robe. For Jews, these indicated a nobleman or a royal person. However, the practice of touching the royal hem is much older than Judaism.

The gesture reflects a very ancient custom, as is evident by the wide geographical dispersion of the practice. It is found in the Ancient Near East, in Asia, India, Persia, and the British Isles.

Allusion to this gesture of supplication for healing is found in Christian prayers such as this one: "Dear God, I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. I reach forward today, touch the hem of Your garment, and receive my healing. Yes, I want to get well. Give me the faith to walk in freedom and victory. In Jesus’ Name, Amen." (From here.)

It is found also in this Bahai prayer: "I implore Thee to keep safe him who hath held fast and returned unto Thee, and clung to Thy mercy, and seized the hem of Thy loving providence. Send down, then, upon him Thy healing, and make him whole, and endue him with a constancy vouchsafed by Thee, and a tranquility bestowed by Thy highness. Thou art, verily, the Healer, the Preserver, the Helper, the Almighty, the Powerful, the All-Glorious, the All-Knowing." (From here.)

In Buddhism, it is not uncommon for supplicants to kiss the hems of the Buddhist monks.

In his April 1621 letter to the King, Sir Francis Bacon, wrote, "It may please your most excellent Majesty, I think myself infinitely bounden to your majesty, for vouchsafing me access to your royal person, and to touch the hem of your garment..." (From here, p. 29.)

The gesture is mentioned in ancient Akkadian prayers - sissikta ṣabātu, "to seize the hem." (From here, p. 13.)

To touch the hem is an act of supplication of royal persons or ruler-priests. It also indicates devotion to one's king or deity. In a festschrift for Nahum Sarna, Shalom Paul gives parallels from Akkadian and Ugaritic ritual prayers:

[asḫur]ki aš’ēki sissiktaki aṣbat kīma sissikti ilija u ištarija – “I [turned to] you and sought you. I grasped (aṣbat) your hem (sissikta) as if it were the hem of my own god and goddess.”

sissikti ilūtišu rabīti aṣbat ašte’â ašrātešu – “(When Marduk entrusted the rule of Assyria to me), I grasped (aṣbat) the hem (sissikti) of his divine majesty. I sought his shrine.”

sissikti Sin šar ilāni aṣbatma – “I grasped (aṣbatma) the hem (sissikti) of Sin, king of the gods.”

aššum sissikti Marduk bēlija ṣabtākuma Marduk bēlī jâti irammannima – “Because I grasped the hem of Marduk, Marduk, my lord, loves me.”

In Isaiah 6, the hem or train (ve·shu·lav) of God's royal robe is said to fill the temple.

Apparently, the practice of touching the hem of someone with authority was associated with Jews because Zechariah 8:23 says: "In those days ten men from every language of the nations shall grasp (ḫazaq) the hem (kanaph) of a Jewish man, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.” 

God is with us. His name is Emmanuel and his identity has been made known: Jesus Messiah.

Related reading: Key to a Grammar of Akkadian (Third Edition) By John Huehnergard; Archaic and Ancient Symbols of Authority