Getting in knots over (ancient) bestiality

For some reason I cannot quite fathom, scholars continue to squirm over bestiality. I am preparing to write a piece on bestiality and other paraphilias for a collection with Routledge called Sex in Antiquity. In reading the scant literature on this topic, I came across a piece by JoAnn Scurlock (in Encyclopaedia of the Bible and Its Reception), who appears to be slightly unsettled by the relaxed approach of some of our civilisational forebears to matters sexual and bestial.  She wants to argue that they found it all rather distasteful, skipping by material that suggests otherwise. But the highlight is perhaps this moment in her argument. She notes that in the list of omens in the Cuneiform Texts in the Kuyunjik Collection at the British Museum, the following omen appears:

In the one preserved omen where the human takes the initiative, a man inseminates a horse and kisses it (for Mesopotamians a post-coital act), and it means he will have long days.

Not quite sure whether is the “insemination” or the kiss that is problematic here (how do you pash a horse?). Nonetheless, Ms Scurlock proceeds with this stunner:

This would appear to be an endorsement; however, behavioral omens inhabit an amoral universe where the only calculation is of whether anything about the behavior could be interpreted as being of benefit or harm to the solicitor of the omen. It does not follow that good-omened behavior is necessarily desirable or even legal.

What? How is a collection of omens amoral, especially when their purpose is to ensure benefit or harm? And how can good-omened behaviour not be desirable? The presence of bestiality does seem to unsettle the normal processes of logic.

Anyway, I plan to include the smooching horse in my article, along with further reflections on the hippophilic Hittites and the fascinating ritual for a man who has a twinge of guilt for a dalliance with a goat.

 

The creativity of religion, or, some unexpected uses of sheep and goats

Given that sheep and goats formed the economic basis (as far as fauna are concerned) of the sacred economy in the ancient Near East, one would expect creative uses of such animals. That is, one used every conceivable part of the animal, and the animals performed all manner of functions. Some would be expected – fibre, milk, meat, bones – others less so. Such as:

If a woman quarrelled with her man, she could seek to overcome his anger by knifing a sheep, touching its death wound, holding a magnet in her right hand and an iron boat in the left – not to forget the necessary prayer to the goddess Ishtar. Why? Her man’s anger would be as dead as the sheep and he would – like the iron boat – find her magnetism simply irresistible.

More intriguing is the ritual for the man with a twinge of regret for intercourse with a goat. Yes, there is a ritual for this too. It goes:

You take hair from the she-goat. On the roof, before Shamash, you tie up a virgin she-goat and you take hair from a she-goat whose hair and body are red. You lay them out before the virgin she-goat and pour a libation of beer over them.

Of course one wonders why, but it may well be that the opposition between one’s recent dalliance and the goat with whom one has not copulated, along with the opposition between the colours red and white (hair from the respective goats), all point to the wish for separation.

It goes on:

You tie that hair up in a linen cloth. You put it on the ground before Shamash. You kneel on it and say as follows … You say this three times and report your doings and then prostrate yourself. You throw that linen cloth into the gate of a beer distributor and after fifteen days you remove it. The gain of the beer distributor will be diminished but the omen will stand to one side and its evil will not approach the man and his household.

Why a beer distributor? Not only was beer a crucial product of agriculture, perhaps one of the reasons why human beings gathered together in the first place, but it may also be due to the fact that the goddess Ishtar was the patron of both goats and sex.

 

Free pussy in Berlin

One of the heartwarming things about spending some time in east Berlin is the plentiful architecture from the time of the DDR. There’s the stunning Stalin baroque along Karl-Marx Allee, the imposing Dietz Verlag, and the slender Mauer.

The wall had certainly grown in the ideological retelling, attaining monstrous proportions, but it is really a rather modest affair.

Anyway, sauntering along I came up short with this offer from the generous Berliners:

Ah, but I was to be disappointed, for it turned out to be something else:

 

On gay marriage: Obama, Penny Wong and Kant

I must admit that I can’t get excited over Obama’s comfy ‘evolution’ to support gay marriage, apart from its relevance to electoral issues in the USA. Or even in Australia Penny Wong’s made-for-TV heartfelt admission concerning ‘the most important person in my life’. All the same, there is much celebration over the potential extension of marriage – should these personal opinions ever make it into legislation – to good, middle class gay couples, especially when we keep in mind Kant’s definition, slightly adapted from The Metaphysics of Morals:

Sexual union (commercium sexuale) is the reciprocal use that one human being makes of the sexual organs and capacities of another (usus membrorum et facultatum sexualis alterius).

Sexual union in accordance with law is marriage (matrimonium), that is, the union of two persons of [either the same sex or] different sexes for lifelong possession of each other’s sexual attributes.

In light of which Brecht wrote the following: Über Kants Definition der Ehe in der ‘Metaphysik der Sitten’

Den Pakt zu wechselseitigem Gebrauch
Von den Vermögen und Geschlechtsorganen
Den der die Ehe nennt, nun einzumahnen
Erschent mir dringend und berechtigt auch.

Ich höre, einige Partner sind da säumig.
Sie haben – und ich halt’s nicht für gelogen -
Geschlechtsorgane kürzlich hinterzogen:
Das Netz hat Maschen und sie sind geräumig.

Da bleibt nur: die Gerichte anzugehn
Und die Organe in Beschlag zu nehmen.
Vielleicht wird sich der Partner dann bequemen

Sich den Kontrakt genauer anzusehn.
Wenn er sich nicht bequemt – ich fürchte es sehr -
Muß eben der Gerichtsvollzieher her.

The agreement concerning reciprocal use
Of chattels and sexual organs
Which he calls “marriage,” appears to me
In urgent need of clarification.

From what I hear, some partners are remiss.
They have—I don’t count it a false report –
Withdrawn their sexual organs from the bargain:
The net has holes, and some of them are large.

Only one course remains: go to court
Arrange an attachment of those organs.
And perhaps that will afford the partner occasion

To contemplate that contract more scrupulously.
If he doesn’t give it care, I fear very much
That the sheriff will have to appear.

 

Why did Lenin and Krupskaya not have children?

All sorts of rumour on this one – that he was an ascetic, that the relationship was purely convenient for party purposes, that he was gay, etc.

But when Nadya arrived in Shushenskoye in 1898, they set about swimming, ice-skating, hiking and … energetic bonking, as randy young couples do. So why didn’t she become pregnant? In reply to the discreet inquiries from Lenin’s mother, Maria Alexandrovna, as to when she might expect a grandchild, Nadya wrote:

As far as my health is concerned I am quite well but as far as concerns the arrival of a little bird – there the situation is, unfortunately, bad; somehow no little bird wants to come.

Krupskaya in Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume 37, p. 578.

 

Biblical Erotica: David and Bathsheba

Like nearly every biblical scholar who has to write on Genesis 1-3 at some time or other, it seems like artists can’t resist David and Bathsheba. So, to select the best out of a massive collection and to practice for judging the Blake Prize, some of the better efforts.

To begin with, the purely sensuous:

And then the intriguing:

But notice how artists can’t help themselves by focusing on Bathsheba. So one or two returning the gaze and looking at David:

Then again, we can always have some fun with Mr Rembrandt:

Ah well, Britney …

There’s always the literalists, concerned with Bathsheba ‘bathing’:

And of course our trusty Brick Testament:

But let us cut to the chase and ask what was really going on:

NB: since this is a family blog, I have opted to censor some of the, um, more raunchy pieces of art.

 

Biblical Erotica: David and Abigail

The priapic David certainly gets around, not only in the biblical texts (as we have already seen with David and Jonathan) but also in art. So let’s begin with David and Abigail, the wife of the freshly dead Laban (1 Samuel 25:2-44).

In much of the traditional art, David comes through as complete tool:

If not a wanker:

And Abigail appears at times a somewhat ‘cuddly’ blond:

But once we leave these turgid paintings behind, things start to get interesting:

The Brick Testament, of course, gives us a few more positions:

The outcome of which is …

The catch is that in the following verse (1 Samuel 25:43) we read: ‘And David had also taken Ahinoam of Jezreel as a wife’.

But I can’t let this one go by without referring to the Abigail Lingerie series:

Or, to be fair, the David Lingerie series:

Or indeed that great Australian actor from 1970s TV series such as ‘Number 96′. Abigail became a nation-wide sex-symbol, mainly for showing the briefest flashes of nudity – the first on television in the land of Oz:

 

Save our fags?

Here in Newcastle a battle royal is under way between a ‘business-friendly’ dominated city council and the local residents (plus the greens and the mayor). The issue: iconic 80 year-old figs in the city centre. You see, the council wants them removed, but everytime they try, some old fogeys chain themselves to the trees, swear at the council workers and fart in their general direction.

Meanwhile, a visitor with less than 20-20 vision was in town and noticed one of the many protests. Peering across, he then turned to his host and said, ‘Save our fags! Isn’t that wonderful. I heard Australia is on the way to recognising gay marriage’.

So he walked on over and effusively congratulated one of the protestors for their progressive stand, only to look up at the placard and read ‘Save our figs‘.

The possibilities are endless:

 

Lenin on sex

This comes from a long discussion with Clara Zetkin, when she visited Moscow in 1920:

Freud’s theory has now become a fad. I mistrust sex theories expounded in articles, treatises, pamphlets, etc. – in short, the theories dealt with in that specific literature which sprouts so luxuriently on the shit heap of bourgeois society. I mistrust those who are absorbed in sex problems, the way an Indian saint is absorbed in the contemplation of his navel. It seems to me that the superabundance of sex theories, which for the most part are mere hypotheses, and often quite arbitrary ones, stems from a personal need. It stems from the desire to justify one’s own abnormal or excessive sex life before bourgeois morality and to plead for tolerance towards oneself. This veiled respect for bourgeois morality is as repugnant to me as rooting about in all that bears on sex. No matter how rebellious and revolutionary it may be made to appear, it is in the final analysis thoroughly bourgeois. Intellectuals and others like them are particualrly keen on this.

You might want to replace ‘sex theories’ with any number of intellectual fashions. I would love to have seen him at your run-of-the-mill intellectual conference.

 

Why conservatives should support same-sex marriage, or any other marriage

Champion of the conservative wing of politics, writer for right-wing think-tanks, avid Zionist – Ted Lapkin has recently put before us this brilliant argument as to why we should not permit same-sex marriage (up before the Aussie parliament):

You can rest assured there’ll be other aggrieved groups waiting in the wings, eager to push the envelope further.

Case in point: American polygamist Kody Brown. He is a fundamentalist Mormon from the state of Utah whose family unit includes four wives and 16 children. And he’s so proud of his lifestyle that his clan was featured on a TV show entitled Sister Wives. But Brown is more than a television reality star. He’s also the plaintiff in a lawsuit intended to strike down America’s bigamy statutes. The lynchpin of his legal pleading is premised upon the 2003 US Supreme Court Lawrence v Texas ruling that overturned America’s sodomy laws.

And truth be told, there’s something to be said for the logic of Brown’s argument. If restriction of marriage to male-female couples is the indefensible fruit of prejudice, isn’t it equally bigoted to impose arbitrary limits on the number of spouses one can take?

And then the next cab off the rank will surely be consensual sex between adult brothers and sisters, adult fathers and daughters or adult mothers and sons. After all, we’re told individual choice is Holy Writ in such matters. And if people over the age of 18 years freely want to indulge in incestuous pursuits, who are we to tell them they can’t do whomever they want to do?

The problem for Lapkin is that he has completely miscued. He should be supporting same-sex marriage, or any other marriage for that matter, since the widening its scope reinforces the institution itself.