have discussed elsewhere.[267.3] It seems that the Queen by uniting her body with the god’s, unites to him the whole Athenian state and secures its prosperity and fruitfulness; this historic fact may also explain the myth of the union {268} of Althaia, Queen of Kalydon, with the same god. Finally, let us observe that nothing in any of these Hellenic records suggests any element of what we should call impurity in the ritual; we are not told that these holy marriages were ever consummated by the priest as the human representative of the god; or that the ceremony involved any real loss of virginity in the maiden-priestess. The marriage could have been consummated symbolically by use of a puppet or image of the deity. We may believe that the rite descends from pre-Homeric antiquity; the ritual which the Queen-Archon performed might naturally have been established at the time of the adoption into Athens of the Dionysiac cult, and there are reasons for dating this event earlier than 1000 B.C.[268.1] We now come to a very difficult and important question concerning the position of women in the old Mesopotamian temple-ritual. Our first document of value is the code of Hammurabi, in which we find certain social regulations concerning the status of a class of women designated by a name which Winckler translates doubtfully as “God’s-sisters,” regarding it, however, as equivalent to consecrated, while Johns translates it merely as “votary.”[268.2] At least, we have proof of a class of holy women who have certain privileges and are under certain restrictions. They were the daughters of good families dedicated by their fathers to religion; they could inherit property, which was exempt from the burden of army-tax; they could not marry, and were prohibited from setting-up or even entering a wine-shop under penalty of death. It is something to know even as much as this about them, {269} but we would very gladly learn more. Is it to their order that the personage described as “the wife of Marduk”[269.1] belongs, who has been considered above? Is it from among them that the priestesses of Ishtar were chosen, who interpreted the oracles of the goddess?[269.2] It seems clear that a father could dedicate his daughter to any divinity, that their position was honourable, and that they are not to be identified with the temple-prostitutes of Babylon or Erech, who excited the wonder and often the reprobation of the later Greek world. This peculiar order of temple-harlots is also recognised--according to some of the best authorities[269.3]--in Hammurabi’s code, where they are mentioned in the same context with the “consecrated” or the “God-sisters,” and yet are clearly distinct from them; another clause seems to refer to male prostitutes (§ 187). Certain rules are laid down concerning their inheritance of property, and concerning the rearing of their children, if they had any, who might be adopted into private families. Evidently