3. A Mesopotamian Goddess Was Worshipped With Domination Rituals
One of humanity’s earliest civilizations had a goddess whose priests engaged in domination rituals to appease here. In Sumer, the earliest Mesopotamian civilization in what is now Iraq, the goddess Inanna ruled over love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and war. Through the ages, she became known as the Assyrian goddess Ishtar and the Greek goddess Aphrodite.
Through many Akkadian writings, Inanna is always portrayed as a beautiful young woman, but interestingly never as married, faithful or a mother. She is pictured in The Epic of Gilgamesh as a promiscuous and spiteful young woman. Inanna was afforded a reverence for her bold confidence and independent, often even reckless behavior that would be unheard of in later religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths.
Her temples in Mesopotamia were thought to be primarily staffed by prostitutes who served as her priests and priestesses. Her sacred prostitutes were considered to promote fertility and the procreation of the people. At least some of their rituals involved domination. She was a famous and influential god in the Sumerian pantheon. It wasn’t until the reign of Hammurabi, which saw a drastic decline in the rights and power of women that Inanna fell out of favor.
