Similarly among the Tshi peoples of the Gold Coast there are sacred men and women, who are supposed to be inspired by the deity.
Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, who border on the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast to the west, the customs and beliefs in regard to the dedicated men and dedicated women, the priests and priestesses, are very similar. These persons are believed to be from time to time possessed or inspired by the deity whom they serve; and in that state they are consulted as oracles. They work themselves up to the necessary pitch of excitement by dancing to the music of drums; each god has his special hymn, sung to a special beat of the drum, and accompanied by a special dance. It is while thus dancing to the drums that the priest or priestess lets fall the oracular words in a croaking or guttural voice which the hearers take to be the voice of the god. Hence dancing has an important place in the education of priests and priestesses; they are trained in it for months before they may perform in public. These mouthpieces of the deity are consulted in almost every concern of life and are handsomely paid for their services.[215] “Priests marry like any other members of the community, and purchase wives; but priestesses are never married, nor can any ‘head money’ be paid for a priestess. The reason appears to be that a priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the property of a man, as would [pg 070] be the case if she married one. This prohibition extends to marriage only, and a priestess is not debarred from sexual commerce. The children of a priest or priestess are not ordinarily educated for the priestly profession, one generation being usually passed over, and the grandchildren selected. Priestesses are ordinarily most licentious, and custom allows them to gratify their passions with any man who may chance to take their fancy.”[216] The ranks of the hereditary priesthood are constantly recruited by persons who devote themselves or who are devoted by their relations or masters to the profession. Men, women, and even children can thus become members of the priesthood. If a mother has lost several of her children by death, she will not uncommonly vow to devote the next born to the service of the gods; for in this way she hopes to save the child's life. So when the child is born it is set apart for the priesthood, and on arriving at maturity generally fulfils the vow made by the mother and becomes a priest or priestess. At the ceremony of ordination the votary has to prove his or her vocation for the sacred life in the usual way by falling into or simulating convulsions, dancing frantically to the beat of drums, and speaking in a hoarse unnatural voice words which are deemed to be the utterance of the deity temporarily lodged in the body of the man or woman.[217]
§ 4. Sacred Women in Western Asia.
In like manner the sacred prostitutes of Western Asia may have been viewed as possessed by the deity and married to the god.
Thus in Africa, and sometimes if not regularly in India, the sacred prostitutes attached to temples are regarded as the wives of the god, and their excesses are excused on the ground that the women are not themselves, but that they act under the influence of divine inspiration. This is in substance the explanation which I have given of the custom of sacred prostitution as it was practised in antiquity by the peoples [pg 071] of Western Asia. In their licentious intercourse at the temples the women, whether maidens or matrons or professional harlots, imitated the licentious conduct of a great goddess of fertility for the purpose of ensuring the fruitfulness of fields and trees, of man and beast; and in discharging this sacred and important function the women were probably supposed, like their West African sisters, to be actually possessed by the goddess. The hypothesis at least explains all the facts in a simple and natural manner; and in assuming that women could be married to gods it assumes a principle which we know to have been recognized in Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt.[218] At Babylon a woman regularly slept in the great bed of Bel or Marduk, which stood in his temple on the summit of a lofty pyramid; and it was believed that the god chose her from all the women of Babylon and slept with her in the bed. However, unlike the Indian and West African wives of gods, this spouse of the Babylonian deity is reported by Herodotus to have been chaste.[219] Yet we may doubt whether she was so; for these wives or perhaps paramours of Bel are probably to be identified with the wives or votaries of Marduk mentioned in the code of Hammurabi, and we know from the code that female votaries of the gods might be mothers and married to men.[220] At Babylon the sun-god Shamash as well as Marduk had human wives formerly dedicated to his service, and they like the votaries of Marduk might have children.[221] It is significant that a name for these Babylonian votaries was ḳadishtu, which is the same word as ḳedesha, “consecrated woman,” the regular Hebrew word for a temple harlot.[222] It is true that the law [pg 072] severely punished any disrespect shown to these sacred women;[223] but the example of West Africa warns us that a formal respect shown to such persons, even when it is enforced by severe penalties, need be no proof at all of their virtuous character.[224] In Egypt a woman used to sleep in the temple of Ammon at Thebes, and the god was believed to visit her.[225] Egyptian texts often mention her as “the divine consort,” and in old days she seems to have usually been the Queen of Egypt herself.[226] But in the time of Strabo, at the beginning of our era, these consorts or concubines of Ammon, as they were called, were beautiful young girls of noble birth, who held office only till puberty. During their term of office they prostituted themselves freely to any man who took their fancy. After puberty they were given in marriage, and a ceremony of mourning was performed for them as if they were dead.[227] When they died in good earnest, their bodies were laid in special graves.[228]
§ 5. Sacred Men in Western Asia.
Similarly the sacred men (ḳedeshim) of Western Asia may have been regarded as possessed by the deity and as acting and speaking in his name.
As in West Africa the dedicated women have their counterpart in the dedicated men, so it was in Western Asia; for there the sacred men (ḳedeshim) clearly corresponded to the sacred women (ḳedeshoth), in other words, the sacred male slaves[229] of the temples were the complement of the sacred female slaves. And as the characteristic feature of the dedicated men in West Africa is their supposed possession or inspiration by the deity, so we may conjecture was it with the sacred male slaves (the ḳedeshim) of Western Asia; they, too, may have been regarded as temporary or permanent embodiments of the deity, possessed from time to time by [pg 073] his divine spirit, acting in his name, and speaking with his voice.[230] At all events we know that this was so at the sanctuary of the Moon among the Albanians of the Caucasus. The sanctuary owned church lands of great extent peopled by sacred slaves, and it was ruled by a high-priest, who ranked next after the king. Many of these slaves were inspired by the deity and prophesied; and when one of them had been for some time in this state of divine frenzy, wandering alone in the forest, the high-priest had him caught, bound with a sacred chain, and maintained in luxury for a year. Then the poor wretch was led out, anointed with unguents, and sacrificed with other victims to the Moon. The mode of sacrifice was this. A man took a sacred spear, and thrust it through the victim's side to the heart. As he staggered and fell, the rest observed him closely and drew omens from the manner of his fall. Then the body was dragged or carried away to a certain place, where all his fellows stood upon it by way of purification.[231] In this custom the prophet, or rather the maniac, was plainly supposed to be moon-struck in the most literal sense, that is, possessed or inspired by the deity of the Moon, who was perhaps thought by the Albanians, as by the Phrygians,[232] to be a male god, since his chosen minister and mouthpiece was a man, not a woman.[233] It can hardly therefore be deemed improbable that at other sanctuaries of Western Asia, where sacred men were kept, these ministers of religion should have discharged a similar prophetic function, even though they did not share the tragic [pg 074] fate of the moon-struck Albanian prophet. Nor was the influence of these Asiatic prophets confined to Asia. In Sicily the spark which kindled the devastating Servile War was struck by a Syrian slave, who simulated the prophetic ecstasy in order to rouse his fellow-slaves to arms in the name of the Syrian goddess. To inflame still more his inflammatory words this ancient Mahdi ingeniously interlarded them with real fire and smoke, which by a common conjurer's trick he breathed from his lips.[234]