Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
Location 139
“Marduk, the new god of this rather new city, certainly had no right to appropriate to himself the glory of so great a deed … But in Hammurabi’s time Babylon was the center of the kingdom … Marduk, backed by Hammurabi’s armies, could now claim to be the most important god in the land.” Professor Chiera also explained that in Assyria, where the god Ashur eventually became the supreme deity, “The Assyrian priests gave the honor to Ashur simply by taking the old Babylonian tablets and recopying them, substituting the name of their own god for that of Marduk. The work was not very carefully done, and in some places the name of Marduk still creeps in.”
Location 158
The enormous number of Goddess figurines that have been unearthed in excavations of the Neolithic and early historic periods of the Near and Middle East suggest that it may well have been the evident female attributes of nearly all of these statues that irked the advocates of the male deity. Most “pagan idols” had breasts.
Location 166
sexual and religious bias of many of the erudite scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Location 185
In most archaeological texts the female religion is referred to as a “fertility cult,” perhaps revealing the attitudes toward sexuality held by the various contemporary religions that may have influenced the writers. But archaeological and mythological evidence of the veneration of the female deity as creator and lawmaker of the universe, prophetess, provider of human destinies, inventor, healer, hunter and valiant leader in battle suggests that the title “fertility cult” may be a gross oversimplification of a complex theological structure.
Location 196
Within descriptions of long-buried cities and temples, academic authors wrote of the sexually active Goddess as “improper,” “unbearably aggressive” or “embarrassingly void of morals,” while male deities who raped or seduced legendary women or nymphs were described as “playful,” even admirably “virile.”
✏️ Power of language as always 🔗 Location 196
Location 198
overt sexual nature of the Goddess, juxtaposed to Her sacred divinity, so confused one scholar that he finally settled for the perplexing title, the Virgin-Harlot. The women who followed the ancient sexual customs of the Goddess faith, known in their own language as sacred or holy women, were repeatedly referred to as “ritual prostitutes.
✏️ Consistently portraying sex as bad 🔗 Location 198
Location 207
The female divinity, revered as warrior or hunter, courageous soldier or agile markswoman, was sometimes described as possessing the most “curiously masculine” attributes, the implication being that Her strength and valor made Her something of a freak or physiological abnormality.
✏️ More about how language helps color things 🔗 Location 207
Location 337
I had somewhere assimilated the idea that the earth was invariably identified as female, Mother Earth, the one who passively accepts the seed, while heaven was naturally and inherently male, its intangibility symbolic of the supposedly exclusive male ability to think in abstract concepts. This too I had accepted without question—until I learned that nearly all the female deities of the Near and Middle East were titled Queen of Heaven, and in Egypt not only was the ancient Goddess Nut known as the heavens, but her brother-husband Geb was symbolized as the earth.
✏️ Need to look more into our ancient history of female goddesses. 🔗 Location 337
Location 344
In India the Goddess Sarasvati was honored as the inventor of the original alphabet, while in Celtic Ireland the Goddess Brigit was esteemed as the patron deity of language. Texts revealed that it was the Goddess Nidaba in Sumer who was paid honor as the one who initially invented clay tablets and the art of writing. She appeared in that position earlier than any of the male deities who later replaced Her. The official scribe of the Sumerian heaven was a woman. But most significant was the archaeological evidence of the earliest examples of written language so far discovered; these were also located in Sumer, at the temple of the Queen of Heaven in Erech, written there over five thousand years ago. Though writing is most often said to have been invented by man, however that may be defined, the combination of the above factors presents a most convincing argument that it may have actually been woman who pressed those first meaningful marks into wet clay.
Location 361
The Celtic Cerridwen was the Goddess of Intelligence and Knowledge in the pre-Christian legends of Ireland, the priestesses of the Goddess Gaia provided the wisdom of divine revelation at pre-Greek sanctuaries, while the Greek Demeter and the Egyptian Isis were both invoked as law-givers and sage dispensers of righteous wisdom, counsel and justice. The Egyptian Goddess Maat represented the very order, rhythm and truth of the Universe. Ishtar of Mesopotamia was referred to as the Directress of People, the Prophetess, the Lady of Vision, while the archaeological records of the city of Nimrud, where Ishtar was worshiped, revealed that women served as judges and magistrates in the courts of law.
Location 369
Myths present ideas that guide perception, conditioning us to think and even perceive in a particular way, especially when we are young and impressionable. Often they portray the actions of people who are rewarded or punished for their behavior, and we are encouraged to view these as examples to emulate or avoid. So many of the stories told to us from the time we are just old enough to understand deeply affect our attitudes and comprehension of the world about us and ourselves. Our ethics, morals, conduct, values, sense of duty and even sense of humor are often developed from simple childhood parables and fables. From them we learn what is socially acceptable in the society from which they come. They define good and bad, right and wrong, what is natural and what is unnatural among the people who hold the myths as meaningful. It was quite apparent that the myths and legends that grew from, and were propagated by, a religion in which the deity was female, and revered as wise, valiant, powerful and just, provided very different images of womanhood from those which we are offered by the male-oriented religions of today.
✏️ The power of myth and storytelling 🔗 Location 369
Location 379
what it meant to be born a female, another Eve, progenitress of my childhood faith.
✏️ Eve was written by a man. She is made of man, to serve man. She is foolish and gullible. She defied God, was a bad influence on Adam and doomed all mankind. So, suffer the pain of childbirth and obey your husband as master. 🔗 Location 379
Location 419
This curious mythological idea, and the still more curious fact that for two thousand years it was accepted throughout the Western World as the absolutely dependable account of an event that was supposed to have taken place about a fortnight after the creation of the universe, poses forcefully the highly interesting question of the influence of conspicuously contrived, counterfeit mythologies and the inflections of mythology upon the structure of human belief and the consequent course of civilization.
Location 469
in the most ancient human societies people probably did not yet possess the conscious understanding of the relationship of sex to reproduction. Thus the concepts of paternity and fatherhood would not yet have been understood. Though probably accompanied by various mythical explanations, babies were simply born from women. If this was the case, then the mother would have been seen as the singular parent of her family, the lone producer of the next generation. For this reason it would be natural for children to take the name of their mother’s tribe or clan. Accounts of descent in the family would be kept through the female line, going from mother to daughter, rather than from father to son, as is the custom practiced in western societies today.
Location 491
the concept of the creator of all human life may have been formulated by the clan’s image of the woman who had been their most ancient, their primal ancestor and that image thereby deified and revered as Divine Ancestress.
Location 509
The connections between the Paleolithic female figurines and the later emergence of the Goddess-worshiping societies in the Neolithic periods of the Near and Middle East are not definitive, but are suggested by many authorities.
Location 557
Halafian town of Arpachiyah these figures were associated with serpents, double axes and doves, all symbols connected with Goddess worship as it was known in historical periods. Along with the intricately designed polychromed ceramic ware, at Arpachiyah buildings known as tholoi appeared. These were circular shaped rooms up to thirty-three feet in diameter with well-engineered vaulted ceilings. The round structures were connected to long rectangular corridors up to sixty-three feet in length. Since it was close to these tholoi that most of the Goddess figurines were discovered, it is likely that they were used as shrines.
✏️ 5000bc, halaf culture Cobbled streets and metal use 🔗 Location 557
Location 564
with the invention of writing, history emerged in both Sumer (southern Iraq) and Egypt—about 3000 BC. In every area of the Near and Middle East the Goddess was known in historic times. Though many centuries of transformation had undoubtedly changed the religion in various ways, the worship of the female deity survived into the classical periods of Greece and Rome. It was not totally suppressed until the time of the Christian emperors of Rome and Byzantium, who closed down the last Goddess temples in about 500 AD.
Location 622
names used in diverse areas were simply various titles of the Great Goddess, epithets such as Queen of Heaven, Lady of the High Place, Celestial Ruler, Lady of the Universe, Sovereign of the Heavens, Lioness of the Sacred Assembly or simply Her Holiness.
Location 627
In Strong and Garstang’s Syrian Goddess of 1913, some of the connections are explained. “Among the Babylonians and northern Semites She was Ishtar; She is Ashtoreth of the Bible and the Astarte of Phoenicia. In Syria Her name was Athar and in Cilicia it had the form Ate (Atheh).” In Robert Graves’s translation of The Golden Ass by the Roman writer Apuleius of the second century AD, the Goddess Herself appears and explains: I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. My nod governs the shining heights of Heaven, the wholesome sea breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below. Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names, and propitiated with all manner of different rites, yet the whole round earth venerates me. The primeval Phrygians call me Pessinuntica, Mother of the gods; the Athenians sprung from their own soil, call me Cecropian Artemis; for the islanders of Cyprus I am Paphian Aphrodite, for the archers of Crete I am Dictynna; for the tri-lingual Silicians, Stygian Prosperine; and for the Eleusinians their ancient Mother of Corn. Some know me as Juno, some as Bellona of the Battles; others as Hecate, others again as Rhamnubia, but both races of Aethiopians, whose lands the morning sun first shines upon, and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning and worship me with ceremonies proper to my godhead, call me by my true name, namely Queen Isis. Ironically, Isis was the Greek translation for the Egyptian Goddess Au Set.
Location 641
similarities of statues, titles, symbols such as the serpent, the cow, the dove and the double axe, the relationship of the son/lover who dies and is mourned annually, eunuch priests, the sacred annual sexual union and the sexual customs of the temple,
✏️ Symbols 🔗 Location 641
Location 685
asserted that the female divinity in Semitic religion was deified as a direct result of the juxtaposition of ancestor worship and a female kinship system.
Location 723
“In Arabian religion a goddess and a god were paired, the goddess being supreme, the god, her son, a lesser deity. Gradually there was a change whereby the attributes of the goddess were presented to the god, thus lowering the position of the female below the male.” Smith pointed out that the Goddess was still known in later patriarchal religion and claimed that Her worship was attached to “cults” which found their origins in the “ages of mother-kinship.” He then discussed the time when: … the change in the law of kinship deprived the mother of her old pre-eminence in the family and transferred to the father the greater part of her authority and dignity … women lost the right to choose their own partners at will, the wife became subject to her husband’s lordship … at the same time her children became, for all purposes of inheritance and all duties of blood, members of his and not her kin. So far as the religion kept pace with the new laws of social morality due to this development, the independent divine mother necessarily became the subordinate partner of a male deity … or if the supremacy of the goddess was too well established to be thus undermined, she might change her sex as in Southern Arabia where Ishtar was transformed into the masculine Athtar. Summing up, he observed that, upon the acceptance of male kinship, the woman was placed in a subordinate status and the principal position in the religion was no longer held by the Goddess, but by a god.
Location 819
Diodorus described a nation in Libya as follows: All authority was vested in the woman, who discharged every kind of public duty. The men looked after domestic affairs just as the women do among ourselves and did as they were told by their wives. They were not allowed to undertake war service or to exercise any functions of government, or to fill any public office, such as might have given them more spirit to set themselves up against the women. The children were handed over immediately after birth to the men, who reared them on milk and other foods suitable to their age. Diodorus wrote of warrior women existing in Libya, reporting that these women had formed into armies which had invaded other lands. According to him, they revered the Goddess as their major deity and set up sanctuaries for Her worship. Though he gives no specific name, the accounts probably refer to the Libyan warrior-Goddess known as Neith, who was also revered under that name in Egypt.
Location 840
He then recorded what we today may find a most startling description of the laws of Egypt, explaining that they were the result of the reverence paid to this mighty Goddess. He wrote, “It is for these reasons, in fact, that it was ordained that the queen should have greater power and honour than the king and that among private persons the wife should enjoy authority over the husband, husbands agreeing in the marriage contract that they will be obedient in all things to their wives.”
Location 847
Herodotus of Greece, several centuries before Diodorus, wrote that in Egypt, “Women go in the marketplace, transact affairs and occupy themselves with business, while the husbands stay home and weave.” His contemporary, Sophocles, stated that “Their thoughts and actions all are modelled on Egyptian ways, for there the men sit at the loom indoors while the wives work abroad for their daily bread.”
Location 863
Love poems, discovered in Egyptian tombs, strongly hint that it was the Egyptian women who did the courting, oftimes wooing the male by plying him with intoxicants to weaken his protestations. Robert Briffault wrote of an Egyptian woman clerk who later became a governor and eventually the commander-in-chief of an army.
Location 875
ancient Egypt. He pointed out how their position had changed between the time of the earliest dynasties (3000 BC onward) to the Eighteenth Dynasty (1570–1300 BC).
✏️ Potentially same time line for Mesopotamia 🔗 Location 875
Location 929
In Susa, at the northern end of the Elamite territories, the male consort was known as In Shushinak. In earliest times he was known as Father of the Weak, by mid-second millenium he was called King of the Gods and in the eighth century BC he was invoked as Protector of the Gods of Heaven and Earth.
Location 1021
“Among the Mediterraneans,” wrote Seltman, “as a general rule society was built around the woman, even on the highest levels where descent was in the female line. A man became king or chieftain only by a formal marriage and his daughter, not his son, succeeded so that the next chieftain was the youth who married his daughter … Until the northerners arrived, religion and custom were dominated by the female principle.”
Location 1030
while private worship was performed in front of small idols, in public worship the part of the goddess was played by a woman. It is the high priestess who takes her place on the seat of the goddess, sits at the foot of the sacred tree or stands on the mountain peak to receive worship and offerings from her acolytes and from the faithful.
Location 1083
Although classical Greece is so often presented as the very foundation of our western culture and civilization, it is interesting to realize that it actually came into being twenty-five centuries after the invention of writing and was itself formulated and deeply influenced by the Near Eastern cultures that had preceded it by thousands of years.
✏️ Putting in context the timeline of things. Ancient Greece wasn’t so ancient in retrospect. 🔗 Location 1083
Location 1087
“Achaean invasions of the thirteenth century BC seriously weakened the matrilineal tradition … when the Dorians arrived, towards the close of the second millenium, patrilineal succession became the rule.” With these northern people came the worship of the Indo-European Dyaus Pitar, literally God Father, eventually known in Greece as Zeus and later in Rome as Jupiter.
✏️ Discussion here and below about Greece shift from female to male 🔗 Location 1087
Location 1092
By carefully tracing the lineage of the royal houses, he ultimately showed that many of the greatest pre-Greek cities, which were essentially small nations, were originally matrilineal. He pointed out that Argos, Thebes, Tiryns and Athens, as well as other cities, at one time followed matrilineal customs of descent. He explains that this was the result of the worship of the Goddess and Her Cretan origins, stating that Crete itself was matrilineal and possibly even matriarchal.
Location 1098
Matrilineality, though not universal in the Greek and Aegean world, was widely spread … the effect of the system of succession to the kingship and to the inheritance of property on the life of the times was immense. The majority of the clans were matrilineal by custom, and the greatest revolution in the history of early Greece was that by which the custom was changed from matrilineal to patrilineal succession and the loyalty to the clan destroyed.
Location 1101
From 3000 BC onward, priestesses had been portrayed in sculptures and appeared in murals and other artifacts of Crete, strongly suggesting that it was women who controlled the worship. Crete was later ruled by the Mycenaeans, who then adopted their religion and many aspects of their culture. Since the religious artifacts of the Mycenaeans depict the clergy of the Goddess as female, it is quite probable that the women in the Mycenaean communities of Greece also held this privilege.
Location 1106
The attack upon the matrilineal clans destroyed the power of the clan world itself and with it, its religion … the history of the times is penetrated through and through with the clash of patrilineal and matrilineal as the old religious dynasties were broken, swept away and re-established … The matrilineal world was brought to an end by a number of murderous assaults upon the heart of that world, the Potnia Mater [The Great Goddess] herself.
Location 1111
Hera, whose worship appears to have survived from Mycenaean times, and Her thwarted rebellion against Her newly assigned husband Zeus, surely an allegorical reminder of those who struggled for the primacy of the Goddess—and lost.
Location 1112
attitudes about the lowly position of the women of classical Greece were greatly exaggerated by “the bias of nineteenth century scholarship.”
Location 1115
Just as in Crete, women shared the power of the Goddess both psychologically and socially; priestesses were of high standing and priestly associations of women were formed round temples and holy places. There was an influential one for example associated with the famous temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus. At this city and indeed in Ionia generally, women and girls enjoyed much freedom. While women certainly won influence and responsibility by serving at the temples and great state festivals of the goddesses, there was also the liberation of the ancient cults. Respectable matrons and girls in large companies would spend whole nights on the bare hills in dances which stimulated ecstasy, and in intoxication, perhaps partly alcoholic, but mainly mystical. Husbands disapproved, but, it is said, did not like to interfere in religious matters.
Location 1122
young Spartan women were not to be found at home but in the gymnasia where they tossed off their restricting clothing and wrestled naked with their male contemporaries. Women of Sparta appear to have had total sexual freedom, and though monogamy was said to be the official marriage rule, it was mentioned in several classical accounts that it was not taken very seriously. Plutarch reported that in Sparta the infidelity of women was even somewhat glorified,
✏️ Spartan women was entitled to get impregnated by the handsomest man they could find (foreign or native) showing that it was very feminine focused 🔗 Location 1122
Location 1167
according to Hebrew law a woman had no right to money or property upon divorce and since her vow was invalid, presumably she could not engage in business. Perhaps the most shocking laws of all were those that declared that a woman was to be stoned or burned to death for losing her virginity before marriage, a factor never before mentioned in other law codes of the Near East, and that, upon being the victim of rape, a single woman was forced to marry the rapist; if she was already betrothed or married she was to be stoned to death for having been raped.
Location 1211
It may be helpful at this point to summarize the changes in the laws as they affected various aspects of the lives of women. In Eshnunna (in Sumer) at about 2000 BC, if a man raped a woman he was put to death. In the Old Babylonian period of Hammurabi, before the major incursions of the Indo-Europeans, though many of the northerners were in Babylonia even at that time, the same punishment was given. In the laws of Assyria, which are dated between 1450 and 1250 BC (when Assyria was under Indo-European control), we read that if a man rapes a woman the husband or father of that woman should then rape the rapist’s wife or daughter and/or marry his own daughter to the rapist. The last part of the law was also the law of the Hebrews, who added that a raped woman must be put to death if she was already married or betrothed. Assyrian laws appear to be the first to mention abortion, assigning the penalty as death. The reforms of Urukagina (about 2300 BC) refer to the fact that women used to take two husbands, though at the time of his reign this was no longer allowed. In the laws of Eshnunna a man who took a second wife, after his first had given birth to a child, was to be expelled from the house without any possessions. In Eshnunna, if a woman had a child by another man while her husband was away at war, her husband was expected to take her back as his wife. No punishment for adultery was mentioned. In Hammurabi’s laws, if a woman related to another man sexually she was expected to take an oath at the temple and return home to her husband. The Assyrian and Hebrew laws give the husband the right to murder both the wife and lover.
✏️ Summary of how laws things shifted 🔗 Location 1211
Location 1245
continued presence of the Goddess as supreme deity in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic societies of the Near and Middle East, Goddess worship, probably accompanied by the matrilineal customs, appears to have existed without challenge for thousands of years.
Location 1304
historical, mythological and archaeological evidence suggests that it was these northern people who brought with them the concepts of light as good and dark as evil (very possibly the symbolism of their racial attitudes toward the darker people of the southern areas) and of a supreme male deity. The emergence of the male deity in their subsequent literature, which repeatedly described and explained his supremacy, and the extremely high position of their priestly caste may perhaps allow these invasions to be viewed as religious crusade wars as much as territorial conquests.
Location 1311
“Theology is ultimately political. The way human communities deify the transcendent and determine the categories of good and evil have more to do with the power dynamics of the social systems which create the theologies than with the spontaneous revelation of truth from another quarter.”
Location 1324
In many of these myths the female deity is symbolized as a serpent or dragon, most often associated with darkness and evil. At times the gender of the dragon seems to be neuter, or even a male (closely associated with his mother or wife who is the Goddess). But the plot and the underlying symbolic theme of the story is so similar in each myth that, judging from the stories that do use the name of the female deity, we may surmise that the allegorical identity of the dragon or serpent is that of the Goddess religion.
Location 1329
With slight variations we find the myth in Hittite Anatolia in the battle between the storm god and the dragon Illuyankas; in India between Indra, Lord of the Mountains, and the Goddess Danu and Her son Vrtra; in northern Canaan between Baal (who plays a dual role as the storm god of Mount Saphon as well as the brother/consort of the Goddess Anath) and the serpent Lotan or Lawtan (in the Canaanite language Lat means Goddess); in Babylon, probably in the Indo-European period of Kassite control, between Marduk and the Goddess Tiamat; in Indo-European Mitannian-controlled Assyria, Ashur simply assumes the deeds of Marduk; in Indo-European Greece between Zeus and the serpent Typhon (son of the Goddess Gaia), between Apollo and the serpent Python (also recorded as the son of Gaia) and between Hercules and the serpent Ladon who guards the sacred fruit tree of the Goddess Hera (said to be given to her by Gaia at the time of her marriage to Zeus).
Location 1337
conquest by the Hebrew god Yahweh (Jehovah) of the serpent Leviathan (another Canaanite name for Lotan). It may even survive in the legends of St. George and the dragon and St. Patrick and the snakes.
Location 1349
INDIA—“ORIGIN OF THE CASTES …”
✏️ Need to read again 🔗 Location 1349