her vocation for the sacred life in the usual way by falling into or simulating convulsions, dancing frantically to the beat of drums, and speaking in a hoarse unnatural voice words which are deemed to be the utterance of the deity temporarily lodged in the body of the man or woman.(217) § 4. Sacred Women in Western Asia. (M54) Thus in Africa, and sometimes if not regularly in India, the sacred prostitutes attached to temples are regarded as the wives of the god, and their excesses are excused on the ground that the women are not themselves, but that they act under the influence of divine inspiration. This is in substance the explanation which I have given of the custom of sacred prostitution as it was practised in antiquity by the peoples of Western Asia. In their licentious intercourse at the temples the women, whether maidens or matrons or professional harlots, imitated the licentious conduct of a great goddess of fertility for the purpose of ensuring the fruitfulness of fields and trees, of man and beast; and in discharging this sacred and important function the women were probably supposed, like their West African sisters, to be actually possessed by the goddess. The hypothesis at least explains all the facts in a simple and natural manner; and in assuming that women could be married to gods it assumes a principle which we know to have been recognized in Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt.(218) At Babylon a woman regularly slept in the great bed of Bel or Marduk, which stood in his temple on the summit of a lofty pyramid; and it was believed that the god chose her from all the women of Babylon and slept with her in the bed. However, unlike the Indian and West African wives of gods, this spouse of the Babylonian deity is reported by Herodotus to have been chaste.(219) Yet we may doubt whether she was so; for these wives or perhaps paramours of Bel are probably to be identified with the wives or votaries of Marduk mentioned in the code of Hammurabi, and we know from the code that female votaries of the gods might be mothers and married to men.(220) At Babylon the sun-god Shamash as well as Marduk had human wives formerly dedicated to his service, and they like the votaries of Marduk might have children.(221) It is significant that a name for these Babylonian votaries was _ḳadishtu_, which is the same word as _ḳedesha_, “consecrated woman,” the regular Hebrew word for a temple harlot.(222) It is true that the law severely punished any disrespect shown to these sacred women;(223) but the example of West Africa warns us that a formal respect shown to such persons, even when it is enforced by severe penalties, need be no proof at all of their virtuous character.(224) In Egypt a woman used to sleep in the temple of Ammon at Thebes, and the god was believed to visit her.(225) Egyptian texts often mention her as “the divine consort,” and in old days she seems to have usually been the Queen of Egypt herself.(226) But in the time of Strabo,