The Origin Of Prostitution In The Sumerian World

Earlier in civilization we would refers to prostitution as a sex trade. Sex trades, trace back all the way up to the third millennium. The first major inhabitants of Mesopotamia were the Sumerians, who are known as the founders of prostitution. Ironically, their religious practices are what gave birth to prostitution. The Sumerians worship the goddess Ishtar, a deity that would remain constant throughout Mesopotamia’s Babylonian and Assyrian empires. Ishtar was the goddess of love and war, symbolized by the planet Venus, and was born anew as a maiden every morning only to become a ‘whore’ every evening. The etymology of the word lying in the Indo-European root meaning ‘desire’. (Fanni, 2014) Women in Ishtar’s service would help men who offered money to her temples with the ‘sacred’ powers of their bodies. Achieving a priority of communication with the goddess from their fertility, only women enjoyed this religious position. Thus Ishtar temples became knowledge centers concerning birth, birth control, and sexuality. Throughout the world prostitution was viewed as a religious act almost, a sacrifice. As time progression people swayed away from this idea and it became sometime that was no longer done for religious purposes but simply for money in a hard economic

In some form or other, prostitution has been recognized throughout history and all over the world. There

Often called the worlds oldest profession prostitution has existed for centuries, despite this many people look down upon prostitution especially people who hold conservative and religious views because prostitution is the sale of sex for money these people believe that it is a sign of societies moral decay. Different societies hold different views and opinions on prostitution some object the thought of legalization while others go aboard with it. This topic is very broad

In order to answer this question, it is important to first understand the histories of both prostitution and human trafficking. Often dubbed “the world’s oldest profession”, prostitution can be found in the records of most major civilizations throughout human history. The first known reference to

A nineteenth century San Francisco song reads, “The miners came in forty-nine, the whores in fifty-one; and when they got together they produced the native son.” This sheds some light as to how long prostitution has been a part of America. Prostitution dates back to the beginning of colonization in the United States, but wasn’t considered a legal act. At the time the laws just didn’t acknowledge what a prostitute or the act of prostitution itself was. In 1721, the French government shipped eighty women to the colony of New Orleans that housed seven hundred men to promote marriage. Also, as a means to detour the men from having relations with the Native American women. However, the women sent were previous prostitution offenders in France,

    The origin of sex brothels is all thanks to humans, in addition to their hormones. The hormones estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, as well as oxytocin gives humans their sexual urges. All of our actions in life are controlled by hormones along with electrodes from our brain. Humans are biologically designed to want sex. So humans, being the dumb animals that they are, they choose the easy way out. Going to bars and finding someone who we like was deemed too hard,  so people go to the suspicious looking alley and pay twenty dollars for thirty minutes of pleasure that only they will enjoy. Quoting the book Sold, by Patricia McCormick, which is about a thirteen year old girl named Lakshmi is sold as a sex slave in India, Lakshmi does not abide by the rules set by the brothel’s headmistress, Mumtaz. When she is caught, Lakshmi is drugged and tied to a bed to continue working. Lakshmi says, “Underneath the weight of him, I cannot see or move or breathe. He fumbles with his pants, forces my legs apart, and I can feel him pushing himself between my legs. I gasp for air and kick and squirm.” (page 103). Soon, after she fights back some more, Lakshmi chomps the mysterious man and tries to run away. Lakshmi thinks she is traveling to the city to become a maid plus to  help her family after a typhoon hit their crops. Alternatively, she is tortured as well as forced to have sex when she clearly does not want to. The man who tried to

No one can say that Sumer was exclusively a male-dominated society when some women made powerful impacts on their culture. Take Baranamtarra for example. This woman was the wife of king Lugalbanda. Exercising her position as the queen, she sent strategic missions to neighboring rulers in other city-states with her own consent. Moreover, as a queen, she managed estates that she owned and even possessed a temple. A follow-up model of the revelation of the true importance of women in Sumerian custom is Queen Ku-baba. Unlike most queens who gained their status through marriage, Ku-baba was a sole ruler, that is, she had no king that she was maritally attached to and individually ruled over the Sumerians. As queen, she is said to have reigned for

Prostitution is considered the world’s oldest profession because it has been existent for as long as people could remember. It was around way before there were any governments and laws that determine whether or not it’s allowed, but it was always considered morally wrong. There will always be a demand for prostitutes and there will always be people willing to be prostitutes to be able to make money and a living. It’s legalized in

The oldest profession in the world, prostitution. It is seen all throughout history, even in the holiest of books. In ancient Athens, Greece prostitutes or "heterae" were well educated, free, independent women and on the other hand during the reformation and counter-reformation combined with the syphilis epidemic prostitutes were severely persecuted (Ringdal, 59 and 176). During the Protestant Reformation, prostitutes were punished in the streets, being treated so poorly. It is evident that prostitution has had its battles with their safety, in every sense of the word throughout history especially when their work is deemed absolutely illegal, or they are heavily restricted. Prostitution seems to be a fact of life that cannot be avoided and if it is evident historically that pushing this demographic to the side does not work, why are we still enabling an environment that makes them face similar bouts?

Prostitution is defined as the act of “providing or receiving sexual acts, between a prostitute and a client, in exchange for money or some other form of remuneration” (Hock 557). The idea of exchanging sex for valuables has been around since the beginning of human society. The first reported data about prostitution was reported around 3000 B.C.E in one of the first known civilizations, Mesopotamia (Caraboi and Fierbinteanu 362). It is often referred to as “the world’s oldest profession.” Today, even though prostitution is illegal in most parts of the world, it is still prevalent worldwide with different ways to exchange sexual services for payment and many different types of prostitutes. One of these types of prostitutes are brothel workers; brothel workers work in “a house of prostitution,” a brothel, which are normally in areas where prostitution is not criminalized or is legalized (Hock 560). Like prostitution, human trafficking has been around for thousands of years and is still present today.

Prostitution is known to be one of the oldest professions in history, although it is now illegal. “In the United States, prostitution was at best sporadically controlled until passage of the federal Mann Act (1910), which prohibited interstate transportation of women for “immoral purposes.” “ (Jenkins) If caught in the act of buying or selling sex, there is a tremendous price to pay and a great amount of time to be sent to jail and convicted for the activity. If they legalized prostitution it would be superior for our society. Therefore, prostitution should be legalized because it will help lower the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, secure women from uncertainty, and the government will gain more money.

Wherever there has been sign of human culture, evidence of prostitution can also be found. When the earliest of human societies began to develop in Mesopotamia, sex trade also evolved. The article “A History of Prostitution: How Old is the Sex Trade?” by Zac Fanni states, “Beginning in the third millennium B.C, the Sumerians, the first major inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia, worshiped the goddess Ishtar, a deity that would remain a constant throughout Mesopotamia’s Babylonian and Assyrian empires.” Ishtar was the goddess of love and war who “was born anew as a maiden every morning only to become a ‘whore’ every evening” (Fanni). The origin of the word ‘whore’ being ‘desire’ in the Indo-European root meaning.

Prostitution is often said to be the oldest profession, and there is a lot of evidence that this is true. The earliest texts we have reference prostitutes, either sacred ones working for a temple or common street prostitutes. Throughout the Bible, prostitutes played greater or lesser roles in many stories, from Delilah to Mary Magdalene. Prostitution has been in existence for millennia, going back to the Byzantine, Roman, Greek, and Egyptian empires. (Goldman)

Casual sex for currency has been a major part of history that many upstanding citizens frown upon or overlook completely. ?Wherever we find evidence of human culture, we find evidence of prostitution.? (Fanni) Prostitution may in fact be the world?s oldest profession; as early as the third millennium B.C. In ancient times, prostitution was a way of worshipping and honoring the gods.

The act of prostitution was actually legal and taxed in the Thai government from the 1300’s to the 1700’s. After that until the late 1800’s, there was a large surge in labor work and prostitution in the country. In the early 1900’s prostitution hit sky high numbers when slavery was abolished in the country. This was the case because former slave wives found themselves homeless and struggling financially. With no education they were forced to fall into prostitution to be able to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads.