by León, Vicki
You may be chortling, but the same nonsensical beliefs persisted well into modern times. In fact, during two hysteria-prone centuries from the 1700s into the early 1900s, so many women on so many continents flooded medical offices with their complaints that a number of physicians developed an early but virulent form of carpal tunnel disorder.
Although doctors knew a bit more about female anatomy than their counterparts had two millennia prior, the whole idea of female orgasm and sexual pleasure was terra incognita. They called the relief experienced by women receiving genital massage “hysterical paroxysm.”
Wombs had a nasty habit of wandering about women’s bodies. To remedy that, medicos used bad smells, loud noises, and milder cures, such as the fennel plant.
Physician-assisted healing manipulations came to occupy so much time that an emergency program, an all-out War on Wandering Wombs, was launched to find mechanical aids to carry out such therapy. Thus in 1869 was born the prototype of the mechanical vibrator and its revolving, ever-evolving versions. Doctors Taylor and Granville invented the first ones, followed by a flood of imitators. Most devices were powered by steam, water, or batteries; when electricity came into consumers’ lives, so did the plug-in vibrator.
Doctors and midwives continued to service women patients who were not do-it-yourselfers. Vibrating machinery in doctors’ offices got ever more impressive, culminating in such devices as the four-foot-tall Chattanooga Vibrator. Little-known technology factoid: in the United States circa 1905, there were only five household appliances considered “essential” enough to electrify. And the vibrator was one of them!
In other sections of this book, you’ll find more details on orgasm, masturbation, and on the ingenious sex toys of long ago.
Abortion & Infanticide:
The sad arithmetic of babies
“If she is bled, a woman will miscarry.” That quote comes from the pen of Soranus, the leading gynecologist in the early part of the second century A.D., who was quoting Hippocrates, who probably flourished around 420 B.C. Their advice about early-stage abortions suggested bleeding the pregnant female, administering sitz baths, using vaginal suppositories, or giving her effective herbals such as silphium or more dangerous drugs.
The Athenian philosopher Socrates, whose own mother was a midwife, remarks in Plato’s Theaetetus, “The midwives, by means of drugs and incantations, are able to arouse the pangs of labor and, if they wish, to make them milder, and to cause those to bear who have difficulty in bearing. And they [the midwives] cause abortions at an early stage if they think them desirable.”
About now, perhaps you’re wondering: what about that blasted Hippocratic Oath? Didn’t long-ago medical practitioners swear that they would never do abortions? Actually, no. The Greek has often been mistranslated (sometimes deliberately) to suggest a wider prohibition of abortion. Here’s what it did say, verbatim: “I will not give a [vaginal] suppository (called a pessary in ancient times) to cause an abortion.” Other abortion measures, including drugs, bleeding, and manipulation of the woman’s body, were allowed, however.
About five centuries after the original Hippocratic writings, a Stoic writer physician named Scribonius interpreted the oath to mean that Hippocrates was antiabortion and possibly anticontraception. Scribonius’s writings in turn influenced many others, even though a third-century A.D. papyrus text of the Hippocratic Oath confirms the “suppository only” reading.
These “lost in translation” issues might seem to be quibbles, but they are supremely relevant in our day and age. John Riddle, in his book Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, notes their relevance, “when so many states have passed anti-abortion laws based in part on a misreading of the oath and thus of a doctor’s sacred obligations.”
Infant exposure and infanticide were other difficult alternatives for females unable or unwilling to keep the child. (The number could have been substantial, keeping in mind that female slaves during their fertile years were often the unwilling sex objects of owners, pimps, and customers.)
In slave-holding societies, unwanted pregnancies were terminated via abortion or infant exposure. Ritual sacrifice of children, however, now appears to have been quite rare.
In our century, much has been made of a papyrus letter found in an ancient Egyptian rubbish heap, written by a Greek man to his expectant wife. The document is a mix of husbandly affection and casual brutality. It ends: “If it’s a boy, let it be. If it’s a girl, expose it.” The letter provokes urgent questions. Were all female babies considered throwaways? Was infanticide of either sex a crime?
Here is another not-so-amusing example, written by an Athenian comic poet named Posidippus: “Everyone, even a poor man, raises a son. Everyone, even a rich man, exposes a daughter.”
Numerous scholars have done population studies by gender, and their opinions are far from unanimous. Laws in ancient times generally did not protect newborns or fetuses. Depending on time and place, certain cultures did not even consider a fetus or newborn fully human yet; Romans required the father to publicly accept the child first. Thus such children might lawfully be buried in the garden of the household. That said, female infanticide, based on studies of ancient gravesites and skeletal remains, does not seem to have been extensive enough to skew the ratio of males to females.
Nearly everyone has heard about the ghastly doings of the Carthaginians, the onetime superpower of the Mediterranean on the north coast of Africa, whose worship of the god Baal and the goddess of love and war Astarte required regular sacrifices of infants. For nearly six hundred years, babies were supposedly incinerated in small batches—and during a crisis, in huge offerings of five hundred or more. The motive for such mayhem? These sacrifices were thought to confer blessings on the parents who offered up their children.
That grim picture may not be true, however, as a painstaking, long-term archaeological study is revealing. A University of Pittsburgh team has for decades studied the cremated remains of 540 children in 348 burial urns in the Tophet cemetery near Carthage. As reported in a recent issue of Archaeology magazine, “[they] determined that about half the children were prenatal or would not have survived more than a few days after birth, and the rest died between one month and several years after birth.” The bottom line? As the article notes, “Their findings suggest a credible and biologically consistent explanation of the Tophet burials that offers an alternative to sacrifice.”
Section II
Sexual Pioneers Around the Mediterranean
Egyptian Fertility:
Lettuce love & lust
Many millennia ago in Egypt, a nation that extravagantly admired fertile women, adored its children, and celebrated lovemaking, stumbled on a discovery with deep implications for deity worship, family planning, and personal intimacy.
In a word, lettuce. To be specific, Lactuca serriola and Lactuca sativa, a prickly variety found on Egyptian soil that was a dynamite aphrodisiac. (To the Egyptians, anyway; the Greeks thought otherwise and viewed lettuce with horror, as you’ll learn from the entry in this book on anti-aphrodisiacs.)
The lettuce discovery occurred in conjunction with the early worship of a god called Min, whose fertility cult was in full swing even before human pharaohs started to reign in 3150 B.C. As the lead deity of male sexual potency, Min carried a harvesting flail in one hand and his upright organ in the other. His festivals were spectacular, at times orgiastic.
Just before the harvest began, the statue of Min was taken from the temple and brought into the fields lining both banks of the Nile River so that he could bless the crops. Folks at the festival played games in the nude, the climax of the shindig being a maypole-climbing competition.
Naturally, the festival food revolved around lettuce. This particular variety was romainelike in appearance, tall and straight-leafed. When squeezed or rubbed, the lettuce gave off a milky substance that looked a lot like semen to the Egyptians. Since this type of lettuce was described as having opiate a
nd aphrodisiac properties, those festivals must have been memorable.
Although the Greeks condemned lettuce as a virility killer, the Egyptians drew the opposite conclusion. Lettuce played a prominent role in their fertility festivals.
Being a relaxed and sensuous society even after the rigid, top-down pharaoh system of governance was instituted, Egyptians continued to worship Min. In fact, whenever a new pharaoh came to power, he was obliged to honor Min in a special way. At his coronation ceremonies, the new pharaoh had to sow his seeds. Literally. Some experts and wishful thinkers take this to mean that he hunkered down in the dirt and planted some brussels sprouts. But ancient accounts hint that the incoming ruler had to demonstrate his virility by manfully cuffing the camel, shall we say, then ejaculating into the Nile River. Only then could the annual flooding of the Nile be assured, a phenomenon that all of Egypt depended on for life to thrive.
The Egyptians had additional myths in which lettuce took a leading role, including the hot competition as to who would reign over Egypt, the sky god Horus or his uncle Seth.
These gods being extravagantly sexual beings, Uncle Seth greets his nephew by attempting an anal probe, which misses, spattering semen between the legs of Horus. The quick-witted Horus wipes up some of his uncle’s sperm sample and tosses it into the Nile.
Somewhat later, Horus collects a sperm sample of his own, then invites his uncle over for lunch. He serves Seth his favorite food, lettuce, made with a white “dressing” of his own invention. Seth apparently enjoys his lunch, after which the two go down to the river to ask the rest of the gods to help settle their rivalry.
The end result? Horus wins the wank-off. He becomes Egypt’s leading god, thanks to his quick wit and clearly superior procreative juices.
Masturbation:
Solo sex can be divine
For those times when a person is depressed, distressed, or just can’t be bothered to get dressed, masturbation has always offered a modicum of comfort.
In the United States, masturbation has gone through long periods of being utterly reviled and/or hysterically forbidden. Today it seems to be looked at uneasily but without revulsion, a private, slightly embarrassing pleasure that barely qualifies as a transgression in the Catholic Church.
In ancient times, however, masturbation was a necessary and celebrated act that gods around the world performed. Men and women of long-ago civilizations whose lives and livelihoods depended on river water—such as the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates—believed that their gods supplied their own ejaculate to keep those fresh waters flowing.
To maintain the rivers upon which all life depended, folks in Egypt and Mesopotamia believed that their male gods routinely fired sperm samples into the waters.
Sumerians, among the earliest of literate cultures, wrote about their god Enki, who used to fondle himself to keep the Tigris River topped up. The Egyptian god Hapy did the same for the Nile River, to maintain its yearly flooding. (Read the prior entry to see the additional help given the Nile by its pharaohs and other gods.)
One Egyptian creation myth has the god Atum appear out of the void— and then, since voids are generally empty and boring, he masturbates, which brings him a nice surprise in the form of Shu and Tefnut, the first human beings, who set to work creating humans in a more gregarious fashion. But the highly imaginative Egyptian story-spinners didn’t stop there. Their god Osiris performed even more astonishing feats with his own semen by resurrecting himself through sacred masturbation. He also conceived his own son Horus using his semen alone.
When the gods engaged in masturbation, it was perceived as a magical, creative act. Many cultures around the Mediterranean Sea also regarded its use by humans as natural and a healthy substitute for other sexual experiences.
Greek mythology pointed to the god Hermes (Mercury among the Romans) as an early adopter. He then taught it to the goatish god Pan, an ancient Arcadian deity of shepherds, forests, and animals tame and wild. This was an act of kindness, since shaggy, loud-voiced Pan had great difficulty getting any girlfriends in human form—or goat form, for that matter. He once had the hots for a nymph named Echo, but she’d rebuffed him. Newly inspired by masturbator techniques, Pan went on to teach solo sex to shepherds and others.
On the less exalted human plane, Greeks and Romans alike approved of masturbation as well. Poets such as Martial mentioned the common practice of fondling oneself while reading erotic material and gazing at pornographic
art. Masturbation was also a popular subject on Greek vase paintings— including drinking cups.
Mark Twain once gave an impudent speech called “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism.” In it, he quoted none other than Julius Caesar, who appeared to have been a real fan: “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and impotent it is a benefactor; they that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.” To that statement he adds, possibly in jest: “There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.”
Speaking of Onan; remember that poor guy in the Old Testament’s Genesis 38:8-10, who took a lot of flak for refusing to inseminate the wife of his recently deceased brother? Maybe he just hated being rushed into something that personal. No small talk, no engagement ring, just God ordering him to procreate with his sister-in-law Tamar, since his brother had died before producing a son and heir. Unenthused, Onan nevertheless had dutiful sex with Tamar, although afterward he spilled his seed on the ground. Deeply displeased, God promptly put Onan to death.
Although modern students on the subject are pretty sure that what Onan did was coitus interruptus or pulling out before ejaculating, Jewish rabbis from about 100 B.C. took the passage to mean that Onan wasted his seed, a type of birth control. Very sinful. The early Christian fathers took a different tack: since Onan’s copulation wasn’t for procreation, it must have been for pleasure. And thus was immoral.
Eventually Onan’s name and his activity became a synonym for masturbation: onanism. From the earliest Christians onward, a variety of religions came down heavily on masturbation, calling it one of the four “unnatural vices.” (The other three vices: homosexuality, bestiality, and sex in anything other than the missionary position.) Some Early American colonists went them one better, making it a death penalty crime.
In the mid-1700s, thanks to a flood of avidly read “dangers of onanism” books and pamphlets written by English crank S. A. D. Tissot and other quacks, Onan’s deed newly panicked the English-speaking world about masturbation. And boy, did the Victorians run with it. Manual manipulation was life-threatening and would cause blindness, spinal consumption, polio, suicide. “Experts” selling potions and weird devices abounded. Some educators lobbied for schoolboys to wear skirts instead of tight trousers. Onanism-phobia and bizarre masturbation-quelling diets ruled until well into the twentieth century, possibly until the cathartic year of 1969, when Philip Roth’s hilarious, revelatory Portnoy’s Complaint came out.
Pornographers:
A gender-friendly occupation
The word pornography was created by cobbling together the Greek word porne, “prostitute,” and the Greco-Latin root -graphy,”writing.”
But porn, explicit sex manuals, and very graphic graphics were around much earlier than Greco-Roman times.
So far, the record for the oldest how-to on love couplings is the five-thousand-year-old Chinese Handbook of Sex, written by an emperor with time on his hands, evidently. (Sorry to disappoint, but the often-cited Kama Sutra from India is not only a Ravi-come-lately for sex advice, having been composed between the second and fourth centuries A.D., but only a fraction of it is on sex.)
Judging by what has come to light, the ancient Egyptians were the first to produce X-rated graphic novels. Or at least one. In early 1897, as British archaeologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt drearily plowed through thousands of papyrus fragments they’d found in the ancient rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynthus, Egypt, they stumbled upon a lascivious picture book. On
the sadly damaged eight-and-a-half-foot scroll, the erotic connection between music and sex was explored, illustrated with twelve panels of satirical, eye-popping graphics covering a wide range of Egyptian ideas on smutty fun.
One vignette shows a “sexual Olympics” sort of challenge; an aroused man attempts sex with a nearly naked woman who is standing above him in a chariot! The whole thing may be a parody, expensively carried out for a private audience. Now called the Turin Erotic Papyrus, it reposes in the Egyptian Museum of Turin, Italy. Other explicit works, including a painted leather scroll, have turned up at Hatshepsut’s Deir el-Bahari temple and elsewhere.
Writing porn began almost as early as writing itself. Archaeologists have found examples in Egypt, Rome, and Greece—more than a few penned by women.
Again, amid the masses of papyri hidden in the ancient ruins of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, archaeologists and researchers discovered a tantalizing fragment of a sex manual, a work of art by a Greek woman called Philaenis. This find proved even more shocking because it revealed that women of Greco-Roman times not only behaved as lasciviously as men, but they also wrote about the imaginative sex they’d had (and/or had fantasized).
Philaenis lived during Hellenistic times, on the Greek island of Samos or perhaps Leucadia (accounts disagree). She may have been the courtesan that inspired the coining of the word pornography. Whatever her day job, she began her literary odyssey by coming up with a killer title for her book. She called it On Indecent Kisses. Her erotic manual was clearly popular (judging by its mention by other writers, plus the number of papyrus fragments found at multiple sites), and centuries later would provide inspiration for Ovid’s bestselling Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love).
