at the beginning of our era, these consorts or concubines of Ammon, as they were called, were beautiful young girls of noble birth, who held office only till puberty. During their term of office they prostituted themselves freely to any man who took their fancy. After puberty they were given in marriage, and a ceremony of mourning was performed for them as if they were dead.(227) When they died in good earnest, their bodies were laid in special graves.(228) § 5. Sacred Men in Western Asia. (M55) As in West Africa the dedicated women have their counterpart in the dedicated men, so it was in Western Asia; for there the sacred men (_ḳedeshim_) clearly corresponded to the sacred women (_ḳedeshoth_), in other words, the sacred male slaves(229) of the temples were the complement of the sacred female slaves. And as the characteristic feature of the dedicated men in West Africa is their supposed possession or inspiration by the deity, so we may conjecture was it with the sacred male slaves (the _ḳedeshim_) of Western Asia; they, too, may have been regarded as temporary or permanent embodiments of the deity, possessed from time to time by his divine spirit, acting in his name, and speaking with his voice.(230) At all events we know that this was so at the sanctuary of the Moon among the Albanians of the Caucasus. The sanctuary owned church lands of great extent peopled by sacred slaves, and it was ruled by a high-priest, who ranked next after the king. Many of these slaves were inspired by the deity and prophesied; and when one of them had been for some time in this state of divine frenzy, wandering alone in the forest, the high-priest had him caught, bound with a sacred chain, and maintained in luxury for a year. Then the poor wretch was led out, anointed with unguents, and sacrificed with other victims to the Moon. The mode of sacrifice was this. A man took a sacred spear, and thrust it through the victim’s side to the heart. As he staggered and fell, the rest observed him closely and drew omens from the manner of his fall. Then the body was dragged or carried away to a certain place, where all his fellows stood upon it by way of purification.(231) In this custom the prophet, or rather the maniac, was plainly supposed to be moon-struck in the most literal sense, that is, possessed or inspired by the deity of the Moon, who was perhaps thought by the Albanians, as by the Phrygians,(232) to be a male god, since his chosen minister and mouthpiece was a man, not a woman.(233) It can hardly therefore be deemed improbable that at other sanctuaries of Western Asia, where sacred men were kept, these ministers of religion should have discharged a similar prophetic function, even though they did not share the tragic fate of the moon-struck Albanian prophet. Nor was the influence of these Asiatic prophets confined to Asia. In Sicily the spark which kindled the devastating Servile War was struck by a Syrian slave,