The suppliant bathes. He twines cords of red and of white wool. A sheep is sacrificed. An invocation is made, beseeching help and favor: Come to this man, the cry arises. Come down to this man. Make his wife conceive and let him beget sons and daughters. * * * * * An Egyptian love song, belonging in the second millennium B.C., is still extant. The love song was usually chanted to a musical accompaniment. The lover is addressed as sister, or brother. The heart is sick from love, laments the victim, and no physician, no magician can heal this disease, except the appearance of the sister. There is abundant reference to spices, to myrrh and incense, and the tone of the amatory supplications and yearnings is the tone of the Song of Songs. Listlessness on the part of the love-sick suppliant is banished, as soon as he beholds his beloved, as soon as her arms open in embrace. * * * * * In ancient orgiastic cults, particularly those dedicated to Dionysus and to the Syrian Baal, religious frenzies were accompanied or stimulated by drugs, fermented drink, by rhythmic dance movements, by tambourine, drum, and flute music that culminated in ecstatic self-mutilation followed by wild sexual debaucheries. * * * * * Passion, lust, incest, fornication, adultery, as well as concubinage and polygamy, most of the sexual perversions and aberrations that are now included under medico-psychiatric categories, occur in the Bible, in both Testaments. King David married eight women. On his flight from Absalom he left ten concubines behind him. Jacob had two wives. King Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. There are instances of enduring affection too, as in the case of Jacob, who labored for Rachel for fourteen years. There is sudden, rapturous love at first sight, at all costs: It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and he lay with her. Amnon is overwhelmed by a passionate infatuation for his half sister Tamar. He was so tormented that he made himself sick because of his sister. He is advised by his friend Jonadab to go to bed and claim illness. Tamar brings him food and at this point Amnon attempts seduction. When she suggests an approach to the king, for permission to marry Amnon, his lust overpowers him, and he consummates his passion. After which, in a frenzy of hate, he banishes her. The Song of Solomon is a paean to sexual love, an erotic exultation, the apogee of amatory sensuality.