Herodotus, writing about Babylon in the fifth century BC, states that every woman once in her life had to go to the temple of ‘Aphrodite’, i.e. Ishtar (Inanna), and sit there waiting until a stranger cast a coin in her lap as the price of her favours. Then she was obliged to go with him outside the temple and have intercourse, to render her duty to the goddess. The story is probably highly imaginative. However, the second-century AD writer Lucian describes, apparently from personal knowledge, a very similar custom in the temple of ‘Aphrodite’ (probably Astarte) at Byblos in Lebanon.

Of course prostitution exsited in ancient Mesopotamia (where marriage was an important legal contract), and is often referred to. A famous prostitute in Babylonian literature is Samhat, who first seduces Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Later, on his deathbed, Enkidu curses her in a passage which implies that the normal places for prostitutes would be in the tavern, by the city walls, at the crossroads and in the desert.

Prostitutes are mentioned together with various groups of women engaged in more or less religious activites. Inanna/Ishtar seems to have been presented as a protective goddess, and her temple is metaphorically called a tavern. It seems possible that prostitution was to some extent organized in the same way as other female activities (such as midwifery or wet-nursing) and in some way manipulated through the temple organization. But this is a subject which is still not clearly understood and where further research would shed light upon the exploitation of omen in Mesopotamia.

Numerous objects from Mesopotamia ranging in date from prehistoric to Middle Assyrian times depict scenes of sexual intercourse, which, rightly or wrongly, have been interpreted as representations of ritual sex, in particular the Sacred Marriage. The practice of other sexual rituals involving lesser mortals and with less nationally important aims seems to be implicit in the many obscure allusions in literate to sexual activities of a public nature, and the pictorial evidence should probably be related to these. Analysis is made difficult both because the few remarks in written sources are vague and obscure, and because much of the iconographic material is unpublished (a reflection of modern academic etiquette).

Depiction of frontal sexual intercourse with the man on top seems to be restricted to the glyptic art of the Early Dynastic Period (with one possible attestation in Akkadian Period art). A distinctive type of bed with animal legs, the presence of other figures besides the lovers and, occasionally, banquets suggest that a definite ritual -perhaps the Sacred Marriage- and not private intercourse, is involved.

In the early second millennium BC, numerous baked clay plaques show a scene of sexual intercourse with the man entering the woman from behind while she is bending over, drinking from a vessel through a long straw.

On Middle Assyrian lead figurines depicting intercourse, the man stands and the woman always rests upon a high structure, usually interpreted as an altar. These figurines may very likely represent ritual intercourse, although definitely not the earlier Sacred Marriage, which involves a bed not an altar. Instead they are probably in some way associated with the cult of Ishtar (Inanna) as goddess of physical love and prostitution, and were, in fact, found in her temple at Assur. From the same building comes models of male and female sexual organs: phalli of stone and clay, realistically pierces longitudinally down the middle (and possibly worn on the person or by wooden statues) and clay models of the female pubes and vulva.

All these objects doubtless had some amuletic property, and since sexual scenes involving only the copulating couple and no other persons are very rare, it may be that most of the representations are of some kind of cultic rather than private sex. Babylonian incantations to help overcome sexual impotence prescribe, as part of the accompanying procedures: ‘You make a figurine’, to be placed at the head of the bed during intercourse. Old Babylonian Period clay plaques with scenes of a secual nature may have served such a function.