HISTORY

HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION

The history of prostitution extends to all ancient and modern cultures.It has been described euphemistically as "the world's oldest profession"

Prostitution was common in ancient Israel, despite being tacitly forbidden by Jewish Law. Within the religion of Canaan, a significant portion of temple prostitutes were male. It was widely used in Sardinia and in some of the Phoenician cultures, usually in honour of the goddess ‘Ashtart. Presumably under the influence of the Phoenicians,this practice was developed in other ports of the Mediterranean Sea, such as Erice (Sicily), Locri Epizephiri, Croton, Rossano Vaglio, and Sicca Veneria. Other hypotheses include Asia Minor, Lydia, Syria and the Etruscans.

The Biblical story of Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) provides a depiction of prostitution as practiced in the society of the time. The prostitute plies her trade at the side of a highway, waiting for travelers. She covers her face; which marks her as a prostitute. She gets paid in kind, asking for a kid as her fee; a rather high price in a herding society, in which only the wealthy owner of numerous herds could afford to pay for a single sexual encounter. If the traveler does not have his cattle with him, he must give some valuables as a deposit, until the kid is delivered to the woman.

Though in this story the woman was not a real prostitute but Judah's widowed daughter-in-law, who had good reasons of seeking to trick Judah and become pregnant by him, she succeeds in impersonating a prostitute and her conduct can be assumed to be the real conduct expected of a prostitute in the society of the time.

A later Biblical story, in the Book of Joshua, a prostitute in Jericho named Rahab assisted Israelite spies with her knowledge of the current socio-cultural and military situation due to her popularity with the high-ranking nobles she serviced, among others. The spies, in return for the information, promised to save her and her family during the planned military invasion as long as she fulfilled her part of the deal by keeping the details of the contact with them secret and leaving a sign on her residence that would be a marker for the advancing soldiers to avoid. When the people of Israel conquered Canaan, she converted to Judaism and married a prominent member of the people.