Ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia are both examples of cultures that performed sexual acts as a form of worship. The intent for the utilization of these sexual encounters was to mimic events from their cultural myths to ensure the continuity of that event. This mimicry can be categorized as a form of sympathetic magic, or a type of magic predicated on the belief that an event can be affected through an object or act symbolizing it. For ancient Egyptians the purpose of these acts was to ensure the coming of the each day and for ancient Mesopotamians it was to ensure the coming of the next harvest.
A creation myth originating from Heliopolis in ancient Egypt dictates the world being created by the god Atum, “Atum “the complete one” rising up out of the primeval watery chaos and producing the world” (Sproul, 80). On the first day Atum stood in the horizon on the first hillock of land upon the waters of the Nile. As the sole entity in this early world, Atum masturbated and ejaculated into his mouth; his mouth, acting as a womb, incubated his semen and allowed him to spit out Shu, god of air, and Tefnut, goddess of moisture. Atum wept with joy over the creation Shu and Tefnut and in these tears man and woman were created, “a splurge of creativity ensured. Men and women had already been made from Neb-er-tcher’s (Atum’s) tears, and now he came forth in the forms of plants and animals” (Sproul, 80). It is in the actions Atum underwent on this first day, masturbating and crying with joy, that are responsible for the creation of the world as the ancient Egyptians knew it. As the ancient Egyptians were concerned with the continued renewal of each day, they strived to reaffirm that Atum would awaken to create the world anew each day. Every morning priests would enter a temple to stand a statue representing Atum upright. The statue being ithyphallic represented Amun as he was on the day he created the world, “to create all things, in a semiandrogynous fashion he masturbated” (Sproul, 80). In an act of sympathetic magic, the ancient Egyptians believed that if they were to stand the Atum statue erect …show more content…
A particular instance of these mimicry acts was that of reassuring the filling of the communal store house. One region would typically share a communal storage house in which the harvest’s yield would be kept in; the patron goddess of this storage house was called Inanna. A Mesopotamian artifact called the Uruk Vase illustrates the rite of sacred marriage and the story of how Inanna becomes married to Dumuzi. The husband Dumuzi, meaning “the one great source of date clusters”, is the embodiment of the power behind the production of crop (Jacbosen, 36). After the wedding and subsequent consummation of that marriage lies the essential detail that Dumuzi, the power behind agricultural production, has inseminated Inanna, the communal storehouse. This sacred marriage has brought forth the filling of the storehouse, “that these two powers are wed means that the power for fertility and yield has been captured by the numen of the storehouse- and has become its trusty provider for all time” (Jacobsen, 36). Therefore, this marriage of Damuzi and Inanna truly represented the promise of a communal storehouse filled with
A creation myth originating from Heliopolis in ancient Egypt dictates the world being created by the god Atum, “Atum “the complete one” rising up out of the primeval watery chaos and producing the world” (Sproul, 80). On the first day Atum stood in the horizon on the first hillock of land upon the waters of the Nile. As the sole entity in this early world, Atum masturbated and ejaculated into his mouth; his mouth, acting as a womb, incubated his semen and allowed him to spit out Shu, god of air, and Tefnut, goddess of moisture. Atum wept with joy over the creation Shu and Tefnut and in these tears man and woman were created, “a splurge of creativity ensured. Men and women had already been made from Neb-er-tcher’s (Atum’s) tears, and now he came forth in the forms of plants and animals” (Sproul, 80). It is in the actions Atum underwent on this first day, masturbating and crying with joy, that are responsible for the creation of the world as the ancient Egyptians knew it. As the ancient Egyptians were concerned with the continued renewal of each day, they strived to reaffirm that Atum would awaken to create the world anew each day. Every morning priests would enter a temple to stand a statue representing Atum upright. The statue being ithyphallic represented Amun as he was on the day he created the world, “to create all things, in a semiandrogynous fashion he masturbated” (Sproul, 80). In an act of sympathetic magic, the ancient Egyptians believed that if they were to stand the Atum statue erect …show more content…
A particular instance of these mimicry acts was that of reassuring the filling of the communal store house. One region would typically share a communal storage house in which the harvest’s yield would be kept in; the patron goddess of this storage house was called Inanna. A Mesopotamian artifact called the Uruk Vase illustrates the rite of sacred marriage and the story of how Inanna becomes married to Dumuzi. The husband Dumuzi, meaning “the one great source of date clusters”, is the embodiment of the power behind the production of crop (Jacbosen, 36). After the wedding and subsequent consummation of that marriage lies the essential detail that Dumuzi, the power behind agricultural production, has inseminated Inanna, the communal storehouse. This sacred marriage has brought forth the filling of the storehouse, “that these two powers are wed means that the power for fertility and yield has been captured by the numen of the storehouse- and has become its trusty provider for all time” (Jacobsen, 36). Therefore, this marriage of Damuzi and Inanna truly represented the promise of a communal storehouse filled with