[136] I do not say an earlier "promiscuity," for the theory of a primitive sexual promiscuity is now widely discredited, though there can be no reasonable doubt that the early prevalence of mother-right was more favorable to the sexual freedom of women than the later patriarchal system. Thus in very early Egyptian days a woman could give her favors to any man she chose by sending him her garment, even if she were married. In time the growth of the rights of men led to this being regarded as criminal, but the priestesses of Amen retained the privilege to the last, as being under divine protection (Flinders Petrie, _Egyptian Tales_, pp. 10, 48). [137] It should be added that Farnell ("The Position of Women in Ancient Religion," _Archiv für Religionswissenschaft_, 1904, p. 88) seeks to explain the religious prostitution of Babylonia as a special religious modification of the custom of destroying virginity before marriage in order to safeguard the husband from the mystic dangers of defloration. E.S. Hartland, also ("Concerning the Rite at the Temple of Mylitta," _Anthropological Essays Presented to E.B. Tyler_, p. 189), suggests that this was a puberty rite connected with ceremonial defloration. This theory is not, however, generally accepted by Semitic scholars. [138] The girls of this tribe, who are remarkably pretty, after spending two or three years in thus amassing a little dowry, return home to marry, and are said to make model wives and mothers. They are described by Bertherand in Parent-Duchâtelet, _La Prostitution à Paris_, vol. ii, p. 539. [139] In Abyssinia (according to Fiaschi, _British Medical Journal_, March 13, 1897), where prostitution has always been held in high esteem, the prostitutes, who are now subject to medical examination twice a week, still attach no disgrace to their profession, and easily find husbands afterwards. Potter (_Sohrab and Rustem_, pp. 168 et seq.) gives references as regards peoples, widely dispersed in the Old World and the New, among whom the young women have practiced prostitution to obtain a dowry. [140] At Tralles, in Lydia, even in the second century A.D., as Sir W.M. Ramsay notes (_Cities of Phrygia_, vol. i, pp. 94, 115), sacred prostitution was still an honorable practice for women of good birth who "felt themselves called upon to live the divine life under the influence of divine inspiration." [141] The gradual secularization of prostitution from its earlier religious form has been traced by various writers (see, e.g., Dupouey, _La Prostitution dans l'Antiquité_). The earliest complimentary reference to the _Hetaira_ in literature is to be found, according to Benecke (_Antimachus of Colophon_, p. 36), in Bacchylides. [142] Cicero, _Oratio prô Coelio_, Cap. XX.