4,000-year-old erotica depicts a strikingly racy ancient sexuality. And yes. The site is definitely Not Safe For Work, unless you work in the proper discipline. Archeology, ancient history, and B&D establishments probably qualify.
Museums are often misconstrued as dusty and lifeless — the least likely place to find something hot and steamy. But the Ancient Near East section in The Israel Museum’s Archaeology Wing features rare erotic art from the land between the rivers (Tigris and Euphrates), which predates India’s Kama Sutra by over 1,500 years. Such astonishingly intimate works reveal a side to the ancient Near East that contrasts sharply with the modesty prevalent in the modern Middle East.
Modest? It is down right puritan. Outwardly. Except that Jewish Porn Sweeps Arab World.
Which brings us back to the age old question: what is pornography? Traci Lords. A goddess to be sure. But underage.
Comments
6 responses to “Mass Produced NSFW 2,000 BC”
My comment is slightly related to this post, so here goes.
I suspect that sexual mores everywhere would generally be quite different today if sexually transmitted diseases had never existed. I think that is certainly true WRT the sexual mores from the Old Testament that have shaped the sexual mores for all three Abrahamic religions, even into modern times.
Making the correlation between multiple sex partners (or having sex with a partner who had had many partners) and contracting diseases (aka STD’s) led the ancients to label the practice as sinful. Conversely, noting the lack of those same diseases for virgins who mated led them to deem that type of sex as holy and blessed by God. Virginity was seen as a sanitary safety seal and that is what made virgins a desired commodity.
So while these ancients did get the correlations correct, they got the cause wrong due to the rampant ignorance of the day. They didn’t know what they didn’t know. For them, sexually transmitted diseases were punishment from God for straying from the holy path in one’s sexual practices. They had no concept of germs or viruses as the actual culprits here. There are other considerations that helped shape sexual mores besides the sin/disease angle, but it certainly played a major role in crafting the sexual mores of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
IMO, the understanding we now have about diseases, even STD’s, not being God’s judgment and punishment, but rather being caused by micro organisms has reshaped the attitudes of many towards sex.
Generally speaking, the persons most likely to be troubled by today’s more permissive sexual attitudes are the devout believers who still view the world through their religious beliefs. They view the ancient moral proclamations governing sexual conduct as being from God and therefore a divine truth and therefore non-negotiable.
Most believers dismiss out of hand the notion that the moral proclamations of those long ago days were from ordinary men who believed in God and therefore attributed their morality as coming from God. Because believers reject that notion, the ignorance of the day is seen by them as irrelevant and having no effect on these ancient moral proclamations. I think that is incorrect, which will surprise no one who has read some of my other posts. LOL
I have an atheist friend who thinks that people should be believers because without the FEAR OF GOD society will fall apart.
I couldn’t hold two such diametrically opposed positions at once.
I can’t remember the neocon who explicitly endorse the idea of religion for the masses even if it was unnecessary for the elites. I’m tempted to say it was one of the Kristols but I don’t know for certain.
SciFi Trivia:
IIRC, “I Remember Babylon” was the Arthur Clarke story wherein he first posits the idea of an artificial satellite to be used as a communication nexus. And, Horrors upon Horrors, the guy that comes up with the idea is going to use it to broadcast PORNOGRAPHY beyond the reach of terrestrial censors. That is, if bas reliefs of Indian Holy Sites depicting the Kama Sutra are in fact Porn…
Wow, my comment was long. Just to clarify how it relates to this blog post from Simon is that I think it probable that erotica would not have been seen as problematic by the Abrahamic religions these last several thousand years had the ancients known then the things we know today about what causes diseases.
Randy,
Enjoy your comments – long or short.