Rasa Von Werder

Saturday, 5 October 2013

WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN 1

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful
www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic. This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships. It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex. There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru. There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN

Merlin Stone

Chapter Three: Women – Where Woman Was Deified

The question most pressing – perhaps the one that has most insistently caused this book to come into being – is this: What effect did the worship of the female deity actually have upon the status of women in the cultures in which She was extolled? Hinz, Evans, Langdon and many others have referred to the ancient Goddess-worshipping societies as matriarchal. Exactly what does this imply?

It would be easy to enter into a see-saw type of reasoning here; that is to say, they worshiped a Goddess, therefore women must have held a high status, or because women held a high status, therefore a Goddess was worshipped; though these two factors, if we judge by the attitudes of the societies that worshipped the male deities of today, may have been closely related. Yet various views on the subject should be considered, even those in which cause and effect appear to be confused or simultaneous events are perceived as linear. What we want to achieve is as comprehensive an understanding as possible of the relationship of the female religions to the position of women.

In The Dominant Sex, M. and M. Vaerting, writing in Germany in 1923, asserted that the sex of the deity was determined by the sex of those who were in power:

The ruling sex, having the power to diffuse its own outlooks, tends to generalize its specific ideology. Should the trends of the subordinate sex run counter, they are likely to be suppressed all the more forcibly in proportion as the dominant sex is more overwhelming. The result is that the hegemony of male deities is usually associated with the dominance of men and the hegemony of female deities with the dominance of women.

Sir James Frazer believed that the high status of women was initially responsible for the veneration and esteem of the female deity. He cited the Pelew clan of Micronesia, where the women were considered to be socially and politically superior to the men. "This preference for goddesses over gods," he wrote, "in the clan of the Pelew Islanders have been explained, no doubt rightly, by the high importance of women in the social system of the people."

Robertson Smith connected the choice of the sex of the supreme deity to the position of the dominance of the male or female within the family. He suggested that, as a result of the kinship system, the sexual identity of the head of the family formulated the sexual identity of the supreme deity.

Each of these is an example of the theory that the sex of the deity is determined by a previously existing dominance of one sex over the other – in the case of the Goddess, the higher position of women in the family and in society. Alongside these theories there have been reams of pseudo-poetic material about the deification of the female as the symbol of fertility – by the male – the awe of the magic of her ability to produce a child supposedly making her the object of his worship.

As I just mentioned, Frazer suggested that the high status of women led to the worship of the Goddess as supreme being, basing his conclusions on years of study of "primitive" and classical societies. But as a result of his research, he also connected the worship of the female deity to a mother-kinship system and ancestor worship, explaining that, "wherever the goddess is superior to the god, and ancestresses more reverently worshipped than ancestors, there is nearly always a mother-kin structure." Robertson Smith also related the sexual identity of the supreme deity to the kinship system prevalent in each society.

-----------------------------------------------------

Whatever the suggested order of cause and effect, one of the major factors which continually appears in the material concerned with the status and role of women in the ancient female religion in historic times is its close connection to female kinship, matrilineality, perhaps the very origins of its development. In examining the position of women, this mother or female kin structure, leading to matrilineal descent of name and property, should be carefully studied.

Matrilineality is generally defined as that societal structure in which inheritance takes place through the female line, sons, husbands or brothers gaining access to the title and property only as the result of their relationship to the woman who is the legal owner. Matrilineal descent does not mean matriarchy, which is defined as women in power, or more specifically the mother, as the head of the family, taking this position in community or state government as well. In some matrilineal societies, the brother of the woman who holds the rights to the name and property plays an important role. Yet we cannot ignore the probability that matrilineal and matrilocal customs would affect the status and position of women in various ways. The subtleties of the power and bargaining position that come with the ownership of house, property or title, or as in matrilocal societies, women residing in the village or home of their own parents rather than their in-law', should be considered.

The economics of the Neolithic and early historic agricultural societies were discussed by sociologist V. Klein in 1946. She suggested that, "In early society women wielded the main sources of wealth; they were the owners of the house, the producers of food, they provided shelter and security. Economically, therefore, man was dependent upon women."

Societies that followed female or mother kinship customs have been known is the past and still appear in many areas of the world. The theory that most societies were originally matrilineal, matriarchal and even polyandrous (one woman with several husbands) was the subject of several extensive studiers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scholars such as Johann Bachofen, Robert Briffault and Edward Hartland accepted the idea of ancient matriarchy and polyandry, substantiating their theories with a great deal of evidence, but they regarded these systems as a specific stage in evolutionary development. They suggested that all societies had to pass through a matriarchal stage before becoming patriarchal and monogamous, which they appear to have regarded as a superior stage of civilization. But as Jacquetta Hawkes observes, "Today it is unfashionable to talk about former more matriarchal orders of society. Nevertheless, there is evidence from any parts of the world that the role of women has weakened since earlier times in several section of social structure."

Many of the studies of matriarchy were based upon anthropological analogy and the classical literature of Greece and Rome. Since most of these works were researched in the nineteenth and earliest part of the twentieth centuries, these writers did not have access to much of the archaeological evidence that is available today. Despite specific misunderstandings, or biased value judgments, we may yet find that these writers were prophetically ahead of their time.

Today we have the use of a much greater body of material, produced by extensive archaeological excavation of the Near and Middle East throughout this century, as well as the material available to those earlier writers. It is true that the chance fortunes of archaeological finds – what remains undiscovered, what is found too damaged to read, what cannot be deciphered and what has perished as the result of nature of the original material – present limitations.

Hammurabi's law code of Babylon (about 1790 BC), long regarded as the oldest ever compiled, is now know to have been preceded by several others, more recently discovered. Still, only one of these dates back to about 2300 BC and the others to about 2000 BC or slightly later. So we must still rely on material that appears in written form only after the beginnings of the northern invasions. But carefully sifting through the available evidence and commentary, which differ according to the location and era, we may gain some insight into the status of women in Goddess-worshipping societies. The Goddess religion, though slowly declining, still existed.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

ETHIOPIA AND LIBYA – "ALL AUTHORITY WAS VESTED IN THE WOMAN…"

Forty nine years before the birth of Christ, a man from Roman Sicily wrote of his travels in northern Africa and some of the Near Eastern countries, recording his observations of people along the way. He was keenly interested in cultural patterns and was certainly one of the forerunners of the field of anthropology and sociology. This man was known as Diodorus Siculus, Diodorus of Sicily. Many statements reporting the high or even dominant status of women were included in his writings. We may question why he, more than any other classical writer, recorded so much information about women warriors and matriarchy in the nations all about him. He did not belittle the men who lived in such social systems; that did not appear to be his aim. Indeed he seemed to be rather admiring and respectful of the women who wielded such power.

It was Diodorus who reported that the women of Ethiopia carried arms, practiced communal marriage and raised their children so communally that they often confused even themselves as to who the natural mother had been. In parts of Libya, where the Goddess Neith was highly esteemed, accounts of Amazon women still lingered even in Roman times. Diodorus described a nation in Libya as follows:

All authority was vested in the woman, who discharged every kind of public duty. The men looked after domestic affairs just as the women do among ourselves and did as they were told by their wives. They were not allowed to undertake war service or exercise any functions of government, or to fill any public office, such as might given them more spirit to set themselves up against the women. The children were handed over immediately after birth to the men, who reared them on milk and other foods suitable to their age.

Diodorus wrote of warrior women existing in Libya, reporting that these women had formed into armies which had invaded other lands. According to him, they revered the Goddess as their major deity and set sanctuaries for Her worship. Though he gives no specific name, the accounts probably refer to the Libyan warrior-Goddess know a Neith, who was also revered under that name in Egypt.

EGYPT – "WHILE THE HUSBANDS STAY HOME AND WEAVE"

In prehistoric Egypt, the Goddess held supremacy in Upper Egypt (The South) as Nekhebt, symbolized as a vulture. The people of lower Egypt, which includes the northern delta region, worshiped their supreme Goddess as a cobra, using the name Ua Zit (Great Serpent). From about 3000 BC onwards the Goddess, known as Nut, Net or Nit, probably derived from Nekhebt, was said to have existed when nothing else had yet been created. She then created all that had come into being. According to Egyptian mythology, it was She who first placed Ra, the sun god, in the sky. Older texts of Egypt tell of the Goddess as Hathor in this role of creator of existence, explaining that She took the form of a serpent at that time.

In Egypt the concept of the Goddess always remained vital. The introduction of male deities, just as the dynastic period begin (about 3000 BC) will be more thoroughly discussed in Chapter Four. This probably lessened Her original supremacy as it was known in Neolithic societies. But Goddess worship continued and in conjunction with this, the women of Egypt appear to have benefited in many ways.

Diodorus wrote at great length of the worship of the Goddess Isis (the Greek translation for Au Set), who had incorporated the aspects of both Ua Zit and Hathor. Isis was also closely associated with the Goddess as Nut, who was mythologically recorded as Her mother; in paintings Isis wore the wings of Nekhebt. Diodorus explained that, according to Egyptian religions, Isis was revered as the inventor of agriculture, as a great healer and physician and as the one who first established the laws of justice in the land.

He then recorded what we today may from a most startling description of the laws of Egypt, explaining that they were the result of the reverence paid to this mighty Goddess. He wrote, "It is for these reasons, in fact, that it was ordained that the queen should have greater power and honour than the king and that among private persons the wife should enjoy authority over the husband, husbands agreeing in the marriage contract that they will be obedient in all things to their wives."

Frazer commented on the relationship between the veneration of Isis and the customs of female kinship and stated that "In Egypt, the archaic system of mother-kin, with its preference for women over men in matters of property and inheritance, lasted down to Roman times…"

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

There is further evidence that Egypt was a land where women had great freedom and control of their own lives, and perhaps of their husbands' as well. Herodotus of Greece, several centuries before Diodorus, wrote that in Egypt, "Women go in the market-place, transact affairs and occupy themselves with business, while the husbands stay home and weave." His contemporary, Sophocles, states that "Their thoughts and actions all are modelled on Egyptian ways, for there the men sit at the loom indoors while the wives work abroad for their daily bread."

Professor Cyrus Gordon wrote in 1953 of life in ancient Egypt. He tells us that "In family life, women had a peculiarly important position for inheritance passed through the mother rather than through the father…This system may well hark back to prehistoric time when the only obvious relationship between mother and child was recognized, but not the less apparent relationship between father and child."

Dr Murray suggested that "Women's condition was high, due perhaps to their economic independence." S.W. Baron writes that in Egyptian papyri, "many women appear as parties in civil litigations and independent business transactions even with their own husbands and fathers." One of the earliest archaeologists of the pyramids of Egypt, Sir William Flinders Petrie, wrote in 1925 that "In Egypt all property went in the female line, the woman was the mistress of the house; and in early tales she is represented as having entire control of herself and the place."

Discussing the position of women in ancient Egypt, theologian and archaeologist Roland de Vaux wrote in 1965 that "In Egypt the wife was often the head of the family, with all the rights such a position entailed." Obedience was urged upon husbands in the maxims of Ptah-Hotep. Marriage contracts of all periods attested the extremely independent social and economic position of women. According to E. Meyer, who is quoted in the Vaertings' study, "Among the Egyptians the women were remarkably free…as late as the fourth century BC there existed side by side with patriarchal marriage, a form of marriage in which the wife chose the husband and could divorce him on payment of compensation."

Love poems, discovered in Egyptian tombs, strongly hint that it was the Egyptian women who did the courting, oftimes wooing the male by plying him with intoxicants to weaken his protestations. Robert Briffault wrote of an Egyptian woman clerk who later became a governor and eventually the commander-in-chief of an army.

A most enlightening and significant study on the social structure and position of women in Egypt was done in 1949 by Dr. Margaret Murray. Painstakingly tracing the lineage of royal families in Egypt, she eventually proved that, at the level of royalty, the Egyptian culture at most periods was matrilineal. Royalty was studied because records for these people were most available. According to Murray it was the daughters, not the sons, who were the actual inheritors of the royal throne. She suggests that the custom of brother/sister marriage then developed, allowing the son to gain access to the royal privilege in this way. She writes that the matrilineal right to the throne was the reason that Egyptian princesses for so many centuries were married within the family and were not available for international marriage alliances. This may clarify why the Goddess Isis, who Frazer stated was a more important deity than Her brother/husband Osiris, and whom Diodorus cited as the origin of the generally high position of women in Egypt, was known as The Throne.

But even in Egypt women were slowly losing their prestigious position. Sir Flinders Petrie, incidentally a deeply respected colleague of Dr. Murray's at the University of London, discussed the role of priestesses in ancient Egypt. He pointed out how their position had changed between the time of the earliest dynasties (3000 BC onward) to the Eighteenth Dynasty (1570 – 1300 BC). According to the available records, the Goddess known as Hathor, much the same deity as Isis, was in earliest times served by sixty-one priestesses and eighteen priests, while the Goddess known as Neith was attended solely by priestesses. By the time the Eighteenth Dynasty women were no longer even part of the religious clergy, but served only as temple musicians. It is in the Eighteenth Dynasty that Egypt was made to feel the greatest influence of the Indo-Europeans, a factor again discussed at greater length in Chapters Four and Five. Incidentally, the use of the world "pharaoh," generally summoning up images even more powerful that the word "king," actually comes from the term par-o, which literally means "great house." It was only from the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty that the world was used to signify the royal male of that household.

WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN 2

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

www.WomanThouArtGod which will house many thousands of her photos, including erotic. This website will educate regarding sex & male-female relationships. It is a far cry from the celibacy Rasa practiced for most of her life - she will now espouse the goodness of sex. There will be shrines to the Lingam (penis), Yoni (vagina) & a shrine to Rasa as Guru. There will be teachings on Tantra, the way to God by worship of the female body.

----------------------------------------------------------

SUMER – "THE WOMEN OF FORMER DAYS USED TO TAKE TWO HUSBANDS…

Professor Saggs wrote in 1962 of the societies of Mesopotamia, which included both Sumer and Babylon. Mesopotamia generally refers to the areas of Iraq along and between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, starting at the Persian Gulf and reaching up to Anatolia. He examined the relationship of the reverence for Goddesses to the status of women in Sumer (about 3000 BC – 1800BC, in southern Iraq), concluding that in the earliest periods women were much better off than in the later periods, and that they gradually lost ground over the years. Professor Saggs reports that.

The status of women was certainly much higher in the early Sumerian city state than it subsequently became…There are hints that in the very beginning of Sumerian society, women had a much higher status than in the hey-day of Sumerian culture: this chiefly rests on the fact that in early Sumerian religion a prominent position is occupied by goddesses who afterwards virtually disappeared, save – with the one exception of Ishter – as consorts to particular gods. The Underworld itself was under the sole rule of a goddess, for a myth explains how she came to take a consort; and goddesses played a part in divine decision making assembly in the myths. There is even one strong suggestion that polyandry may have at one time been practised, for the reforms of Urukagina refer to women who had taken more than one husband; some scholars shied away from this conclusion suggesting that the reference might be only to the remarriage of a widow but the wording of the Sumerian text does not support this.

I may add that the Goddess of the Underworld does not merely take a consort but has Her hair pulled, is dragged from the throne and is threatened with death until She agrees to marry Her assailant, the god Nergal, who then kisses away Her tears, becomes Her husband and rules besides Her.

The Urukagina reform is dated at about 2300 BC. It reads, "The women of former days used to take two husbands but the women of today would be stoned with stones if they did this." Polyandry has been reported in the Dravidian Goddess-worshiping areas of India even in this century.

The laws of the Sumerian state of Eshnunna, written about 2000 BC, were found in a small town, thus possibly reflecting older attitudes. In them we read that "if a man rejects his wife after she bears a child, and takes another wife, he shall be driven from the house and from whatever he owns and if any accept him they may follow him." These same laws also state that if a woman is married but has a child with another man while her husband is away at war, she is still legally regarded as the wife of the first man. There is not mention of punishment for adultery. Permission for marriage had to be received from both mother and father.

The position and activities of a group of Sumerian women known as the naditu were studied in depth by Rivkak Harris in 1962. Carefully examining Sumerian text, she found that the naditu women were engaged in the business activities of the temple, held real estate in their own names, lent money and generally engaged in various economic activities. She also found accounts at this same period of many women scribes. Yet we read in Professor Sidney Smith's chapter in Hooke's Myth, Ritual and Kingship that the world naditu "probably means women thrown down, that is surrendered to the god."

In the Sumerian hymns the female precedes the male. The epic of Gilgamish reveals that the official scribe of the Sumerian heaven was a woman, while the initial invention of writing was credited to a Goddess. As I mentioned previously, it may well have been the priestesses, possibly the naditu who kept the temple business accounts, who first developed the art of writing. The earliest examples of writing (from about 2300 BC), discovered in the temple of the Goddess Inanna of Erech, where many of the naditu, women lived, turned out to be the temple's accounts of payment for land rental.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

-----------------------------------------------------------

Stephen Langdon, eminent Oxford scholar, writing in 1930, observed that the legends associated with the Sumerian Queen of Heaven, Inanna, had probably been worked out under a "matriarchal system" of society. This is also suggested by the changes in the image and role of the Goddess Inanna, when we find her centuries later as the Babylonian Ishtar. In the Sumerian myth, Inanna exhibited Her power and omnipotent wrath at Her son/lover Demuzi's refusal to show proper respect to Her by turning him over to the demons of the Land of the Dead, while thirteen centuries later, in the Babylonian myth of Ishtar, a newer version of much the same story, the Goddess grieved at the accidental death of the youth.

In general, the records of the Sumerian reforms of Urukagina of about 2300 BC were strongly communally oriented. They referred to the fruit trees and food of the temple lands, which were to be used from those in need rather than by priests, which apparently fast becoming the custom at that time. The fact that on these tablets it was repeatedly mentioned that there reforms harked back to the way things were done in earlier periods suggests that the earlier societies of Sumer were more communal. Most interesting is the word used to label these reforms, amargi, which has received the double translation of "freedom" and "return to the mother."

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

-----------------------------------------------------------

ELAM – NAKED BEFORE THE HIGH PRIESTESS

In 1973 Dr. Walther Hinz suggested that the original supremacy of the Goddess in Elam (slightly east of Sumer and in close contact by 3000 BC), indicated a "matriarchal approach" in the devotees of Her religion. He explained that, though She was supreme in the third millennium, She later became secondary to Her consort Humban; She was then known as the Great Wife. In Susa, at the northern end of the Elamite territories, the male consort was known as In Shushinak. In earliest times he was known as Father of the Weak, by mid-second millennium he was called King of the Gods and in the eighth century BC he was invoked as the Protector of the Gods of Heaven and Earth.

In the early periods of Elam the deities appeared to have been served by female and male clergy, the men appearing naked before the high priestess, as was the custom in early Sumer. Hinz explains that in Elam, much like the naditu women of Sumer, "One special group among the priestesses was formed by those women or maidens who had dedicated their lives to the Great Goddess." These women were primarily involved in the buying, selling and renting of land.

Legal documents from Elam, primarily from after 2000 BC, reveal that women were often the sole heirs. One married woman refused to make her inheritance joint with her husband and intended to pass the inheritance to her daughter. Another tablet stated that a son and a daughter were to share equally; the daughter was mentioned first. Several tablets described situations where the husband was leaving everything he owned to his wife and insisted that their children would inherit only if they cared for their mother with the greatest respect.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

------------------------------------------------------------

BABYLON – "TO HOLD AND MANAGE THEIR OWN ESTATES"

In Mesopotamia, the Akkadiens, after the rise in position under Sargon in 2300 BC, eventually gained supremacy in about 1900 BC gradually superseding the Sumerians as the cultural and political leaders of the area. They formed the nation known as Babylon, installing their capital in the city of Babylon on the central Euphrates. The Akkadian language of the Babylonians became the international language of the Near East, but the religion of the Sumerians was incorporated into the Babylonian culture and the Sumerian language was used much as Latin was employed in the masses of Roman Catholic Church all over the world. By 1600 BC the Kassites gained control of Babylon. Linguistic evidence suggests that the Kassites were ruled by the northern invaders, the Indo-Europeons, who had gradually infiltrated into Babylon and Assyria.

Despite a loss of status in the position of women in Babylon, compared with their predecessors of Sumer – a loss that was accompanied by the gaining ascendancy of male deities such as Marduk, who mythically murdered the Creator Goddess Tiamat to gain and secure his position – the women of Babylon still continued to hold certain rights of independence. The following quote is based upon the law code of Hammurabi, which preceded total Kassite control, but which may have been somewhat affected by continual Indo-European incursions from the north from at least 2000 BC onward. W. Boscawen, writing in 1894, reported that.

The freedom granted to the women in Babyonia allowed them to hold and manage their own estates and this was especially the case with priestesses of the temple, who traded extensively…One of the most interesting and characteristic features of this early civilization of the Babylonians was the high position of women. The mother here is always represented by a sign which means "goddess of the house." Any sin against the mother, and repudiation against the mother was punished by banishment from the community. These are the facts which are evidently indicative of a people who are one time held the law of matriarchal descent.

According to de Vaux, writing in 1965, "In Babylonian law, the father gave the young bride certain possessions, which belonged to her in her own right, the husband having only the use of them. They reverted to the wife if she was widowed or divorced without fault on her part. In Babylon she could acquire property, take legal action, be a party to contracts and she had a certain share in her husband's inheritance."

In Hammurabi's time women were free to request divorce, and one Babylonian law declared that if a wife did not intend to be responsible for her husband's premarital debts she had to obtain a document from him stating that he had agreed. This assumption of the financial responsibility in marriage suggests that most women may have taken part in business and financial affairs (as they did in Egypt) and perhaps at one time been economically responsible for the family. Seven of Hammurabi's laws were concerned with the priestesses of the temple, their rights to inherit and what they might or might not pass along to offspring, suggesting that the economic position of these women was a matter of concern and probably was quickly changing.

Ishtar was revered as "majestic queen whose decrees are preeminent." In one text Ishtar Herself says, "When at a trail of judgement I am present, a woman understanding of the matter, I am." At Nimrud, in northern Mesopotamia, records of women judges and magistrates have been unearthed, testifying to the vital and respected position of women held there even in the eighth century BC. In several cities there were accounts of Babylonian priestesses who acted as oracular prophetesses, providing military and political advice to kings and leaders, revealing their powerful influence upon the affairs of state. Accounts of women scribes occur in all Babylonian periods, though there were more males in this field than women.

We find in the laws of later Babylonia, which belong to some time at the end of the second millennium, that a married woman might no longer engage in business, unless it was directed by her husband, or brother-in-law. If anyone engaged in business with her, even if he insisted that he did not know she was married, he was to be prosecuted as a criminal.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

----------------------------------------------

ANATOLIA – "FROM OF OLD THEY HAVE BEEN RULED BY THE WOMEN"

Just north of Babylon, and in very close political contact, was the area known as Anatolia, present-day Turkey, sometimes known as Asia Minor. In Neolithic periods in Anatolia, the Great Goddess was extolled. Her worship appeared in the shrines at Catal Huyuk of 6500 BC. Little is yet known of Anatolia directly after the Catal Huyuk period, but sometimes before 2000 Anatolia was invaded by the Indo-Europeans.

The areas where the northern peoples made the heaviest settlements were in the central and south-central section of Anatolia. Some of them conquered the land known as Hatti. The invaders as well as the original inhabitants thus came known as the Hittites. Most of the Goddesses who appear in the literature and texts of this area, written after the Hittite arrival, were actually the older Hattian deities. One of the most important female deities to survive was the Sun Goddess of Arinna. Upon the Hittite conquests She assigned a husband who was symbolized as a storm god. Although this storm god gained supremacy in most of the cities where the northern people ruled, in Arinna he remained in second place. But curiously enough, Hittite queens appear in several texts in a very close relationship to this Hattian Sun Goddess; they acted as Her high priestess. Though there is no conclusive evidence to substantiate it, the existence of these texts suggest the possibility that the invaders, once martially conquering the land, may then married Hattian priestesses to gain a more secure legitimate right to the throne in the eyes of the conquered population.

In the western sections of Anatolia, matrilineal descent and Goddess worship continued into classical times. Strabo, shortly before the birth of Christ, wrote of northern Anatolian towns, as far east as Armenia, where children who were born to unmarried women were legitimate and respectable. They simply took the name of their mothers, who, according to Strabo's reports, were some of the most noble and aristocratic of citizens.

It is possible that at the time of the Hittite invasions many of the Goddess-worshipping peoples may have fled to the west. The renowned temple of the Goddess in the city of Ephesus was the target of the apostle Paul's zealous missionary effort (Acts 19:27), This temple, which legend and classical reports claim was founded by "Amazons," was not completely closed down until AD 380. All along this western section, which included the areas known as Lycia, Lydia and Caria, there were accounts in classical Greek and Roman literature of widespread veneration of "The Mother of all Deities," along with reports of women warriors, the Amazons. Diodorus wrote of a nation in this area in which "women held the supreme power and royal authority." According to his reports the queen of this land assigned the tasks of spinning wool and other domestic duties to the men, while law was established by the queen. He claimed that the rights to the throne belonged to the queen's daughter and succeeding women in the family line. It was in the land of Lydia that the legendary Indo-European Greek Hercules was said to have been kept as a servile lover to Queen Omphale. We may at this point question whether the numerous tales of "Amazon" women may not actually have been the later Indo-European Greek accounts of the women who tried to defend the ancient Goddess shrines and repel the patriarchal northern invaders. Yet we read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "The only plausible explanation of the story of the Amazons is that it is a variety of the familiar tale of a distant land where everything is done the wrong way about; thus women fight, which is a man's business."

Throughout the classical Greek period, matrilineal descent and suggestions of matriarchy in western Anatolia were repeatedly reported among the Lycians, where they appear to have lingered the longest or were most noted. Herodotus wrote, "As a Lycian who he is and he answers by giving his own name, that of his mother and so on in the female line." Nicholas of Damascus reported, "They name themselves after their mothers and their possessions pass by inheritance to the daughters instead of the sons." Heraclides Ponticus said of the Lycians, "From of old they have been ruled by the women."

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN 3

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

-----------------------------------------------------------

CRETE – "DOMINATED BY THE FEMALE PRINCIPLE"

Many classical authors wrote that the Lycians and the Carians had strong affinities with the island of Crete. Some claimed that Lycia had once been a colony of that thriving island culture. Upon Crete, Goddess figures have been found in various Neolithic sites, though none as old as those on the mainland. On the Messara plain of Crete, the buildings known as tholoi, extremely similar to those of the Halaf site of Arpachiyah, have also been discovered. From Neolithic periods until the Dorian invasion, Crete was the society that is most repeatedly thought to have been matrilineal and possibly matriarchal.

The former director of the British School of Archaeology in Greece, Sinclair Hood, wrote in The Minoans, Crete in the Bronze Age:

It seems likely enough that customs of the kind described as matriarchy (mother rule) persisted in Crete. These arise in primitive societies where people no not comprehend when a baby is born who its father can be. The children are therefore named after the mothers and all inheritance is through the female line. Primeval traditions of this kind survived in western Anatolia into classical times. Thus among the Carians on the west coast of Anatolia succession was still through the mother in the fourth century BC and in Lycia, to the south-east of Caria, children were named after their mothers.

Charles Seltman wrote in 1952 of this highly developed culture of Crete, whose beginnings preceded biblical times by many centuries. He stated that, upon Crete, matriarchy had been the way of life. He discussed the sexual freedom of women, matrilineal descent and the role of the "king," pointing out the high status of women in and around the land in which the Goddess appears to have been the very core of existence.

"Among the Mediterraneans," wrote Seltman, "as a general rule society was built around the woman, even on the highest levels where descent was in the female line. A man became King or Chieftain only by a formal marriage and his daughter, not his son, succeeded so that the next chieftain was the youth who married his daughter…Until the northerners arrived, religion and custom were dominated by the female principle."

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

--------------------------------------------------------

In The Aegean Civilization. Gustave Glotz, writing in 1925, examined the role of women on Crete and asserted that women initially controlled the form and rites of the religion. He explains that.

The priestesses long presided over religious practices. Woman was the natural intermediary with divinities, the greatest of whom was women deified. Hosts of objects represent the priestesses at their duties…the participation of men in the cult was, like the association of a god with a goddess, a late development. Their part in religious ceremonies was always a subordinate one, even when the king became the high priest of the bull. As if to extenuate their encroachment and to baffle the evil spirits to whose power this act had exposed them, they assumed for divine services the priestly costume of women…while private worship was performed in front of small idols, in public worship the part of the Goddess was played by a woman. It is the high priestess who takes her place on the seat of the Goddess, sits at the foot of the sacred tree or stands on the mountain peak to receive worship and offerings from her acolytes and from the faithful.

Stylianos Alexiou, Director of the Archaeological Museum in Iraklion, writes in the chapter on the religion of Crete in Minoan Civilization, "The alabaster throne at Knossos was intended, according to Helga Reusch, for the Priestess-queen, who, flanked by the griffins painted on the wall, personified the goddess. In the Royal Villa the throne which is set apart like a kind of sacred altar, shows that an actual person sat there to receive worship. According to Matz, when the queen descended the palace stairs to the courts within the shrines, she represented an authentic epiphany of the deity to the host of ecstatic worshippers."

In 1958 Jacquetta Hawkes presented some perceptive observations on the status of women on Crete, commenting that, although one may consider the possibility that the Goddess may have been a masculine dream, "Cretan men and women were everywhere accustomed to seeing a splendid goddess queening it over a small and suppliant male god, and this concept must surely have expressed some attitude present in the human society that accepted it." She continued by pointing out that the self-confidence of women and their secure place in society was perhaps made evident by another characteristic. "this is the fearless and natural emphasis on sexual life that ran through all religious expression and was made obvious in the provocative dress of both sexes and their easy mingling – a spirit best understood through its opposite: the total veiling and seclusion of Moslem women under a faith which even denied them a soul."

In viewing the artefacts and murals at Knossos, the Archaeological Museum at Iraklion and other museums of Crete there is little doubt that the female divinity was for several millennia the principal sacred being on Crete, with women acting as Her clergy. It is therefore interesting to follow the manifestations of the Cretan culture as they later appeared in early Greece, about on thousand years before the classical Golden Age (about 500-200 BC), with which we are more familiar.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

-----------------------------------------------------

GREECE – "THE ATTACK UPON THE MATRILINEAL CLANS"

The connection are made by the settlements of Crete and/or the mainland of Greece that are attributed to people known as the Mycenaeans, so named by archaeologists for one of the sites on the mainland – Mycenae. Clues to the origins of the people who inhabited these sites have presented scholars with some intriguing possibilities. Most believe that the Myycenaeans were a group of Indo-Europeans, perhaps the same people as the Acheans, or possibly those from an earlier migration of tribes from the north. Other scholars assert that they were already residents of Crete and that they overthrew the previous government shortly before 1400 BC. Some relate them to the group known as the Sea Peoples, while still others suggest that they were the Philistines or that the Philistines were a branch of the Mycenaeans. There has been the suggestion that the Mycenaens were related to the Hyksos, the "shepherd kings" who used horse-drawn war chariots and had previously held Egypt under their rule for several centuries. The Hyksos were driven out of Egypt at much the same time as the Mycenaens first appeared.

Whatever their initial origins, the reason that the Mycenaeans are important to us here is that their culture, as we best know it, was partially Cretan and partially Greek. Most scholars believe that they carried the Cretan culture from Crete to Greece. The Linear B tablets of the Mycenaeans, which are inventory lists, found at the palace of Knossos and all dated to the same year, about 1400BC, used a language that scholars believe differed from those previously used on Crete. After many years of debate, most authorities accept that the language used these tablets (written with many of the symbols and signs that had been used for an earlier language not yet deciphered, though Gordon has offered a body of evidence suggesting that it was closely related to the Canaanite language used in Ugarit) is an early form of Greek. If the Mycenaeans or their leaders were originally Indo-European, as the tablets suggest, once they settled in Crete they soon adopted much of the subject matter and the style of the crafts techniques, the style of dress, the manner of writing, and the religion of the previous inhabitants of the island.

Cottrell tells us that, "Mycenaean art continued to reflect the "Minoan" culture of the Mediterranean peoples…whose system of writing they had adopted." R.W. Hutchinson of the University of Cambridge writes that, "By the middle of the second millennium, probably, Greeks were already settling in Crete, but only in comparatively small numbers, and these Mycenaean Greeks had already adopted many Creten cults and religious customs. Even on the mainland we find survivals from Minoan or least pre-Hellenic religion…

In the Catalog of Prehistoric Collections of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens the curators point out, "In Mycenaean religion, where the adoption of many Cretan features is obvious, we may note above all the appearance of the Cretan nature goddess." In this vast museum is the collection of artifacts discovered in the excavations of Mycenaean settlements on the mainland of Greece, a collection highlighted by the intricate craftsmanship of gold signet rings and seals that depict scenes of the Goddess and Her priestesses – Scenes nearly identical with those produced in "Minoan" Crete.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

-------------------------------------------------

Discussing the Linear B tablets, in which the names of several deities later known in classical Greece are briefly mentioned, Cottrell explains…there is also at Pylos [on the mainland] and at Knossos [on Crete] a frequent reference to Potia – "Mistress" or "Our lady"; these last inscriptions confirm what archaeologist has long suspected from the evidence on seals discovered on the mainland – that the Mycenaeans also worshipped the Minoan mother goddess."

The Mycenaeans inhabited and ruled Crete at the Palace of Knossos shortly before a major holocaust, possibly caused by an invasion or earthquake. These same people also founded many pre-Greek cities on the mainland – and with them they brought the worship of the Cretan Goddess. The Mycenaean Age is generally placed between about 1450 and 1100 BC. Its beginning date just before the period generally assigned to Moses. It thrived for centuries before the Greece of Homer and it is likely that it was of events during or just after this period that Homer wrote. The quest for Helen may well have been a quest for the legal rights to the throne of Sparta. Although classical Greece is so often presented as the very foundation of our western culture and civilization, it is interesting to realize that it actually came into being twenty-five centuries after the invention of writing and was itself formulated and influence by the Near Eastern culture that had preceded it by thousands of years.

Greece was invaded by the northern peoples several times. Robert Graves, in his introduction to The Greek Myths, wrote in 1955, "Achaean invasions of the thirteenth century BC seriously weakened the matrilineal tradition…when the Dorians arrived, towards the close of the second millennium, patrilineal succession became the rule." With these northern people came the worship of the Indo-European Dyar Pitar, literally God Father, eventually known in Greece as Zeus and later in Rome as Jupiter. This transitional period of the change from the worship of the Goddess to the male deity, the change most intensively brought about by the Dorian invasions, was the subject of E. Butterworth's Some Traces of the Pre-Olympian World, written in 1966.

Butterworth managed to accomplish with Greece what Murray had done with Egypt. By carefully tracing the lineage for the royal houses, he ultimately showed that many of the greatest pre-Greek cities which were essentially small nations, were originally matrilineal. He pointed out that Argos, Thebes, Tiryns and Athens, as well as other cities, at one time followed matrilineal customs of descent. He explains that this was the result of the worship of the Goddess and Her Cretan origins, stating that Crete itself was matrilineal and possibly even matriarchal.

His primary interest was in the patrilineal revolution, the time at which the patrilineal clans violently set about superimposing their customs upon those around them:

Matrilineality, though not universal in the Greek and Aegean world, was widely spread…the effect of the system of succession to the kingship and to the inheritance of property on the life and times was immense. The majority of the clans were matrilineal by custom, and the greatest revolution in the history of early Greece was that by which the custom was changed from matrilineal to patrilineal succession and the loyalty of the clan destroyed.

From 3000 BC onward, priestesses had been portrayed in sculptures and appearing in murals and other artifacts of Crete, strongly suggesting that it was women who controlled the worship. Crete was later ruled by the Mycenaens, who then adopted their religion and many aspects of their culture. Since the religious artifacts of the Myceneeans depict the clergy of the Goddess as female, it is quite probable that the women in the Mycenaean communities of Greece also held this privilege. Butterworth asserted that it was the women, especially the women of the royal houses, who were the protectors of the religion. He further explains that.

The attack upon the matrilineal clans destroyed the power of the clan world itself and with it, its religion…the history of the times is penetrated through and through with the clash of patrilineal and matrilineal as the old religious dynasties were broken, swept away and re-established…The matrilineal world was brought to an end by a number of murderous assaults upon the heart of that world, the Potia Mater (The Great Goddess) herself.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

----------------------------------------------------------

I cannot help but recall the Greek legend of the Goddess known as Hera, whose worship appears to have survived from Mycenaean times, and Her thwarted rebellion against Her newly assigned husband Zeus, surely and allegorical reminder of those who struggled for the primacy of the Goddess – and lost. Yet, according to Hawkes, many of the attitudes about the lowly position of the women of classical Greece were exaggerated by "the bias of nineteenth century scholarship." She suggests that, even in the classical period of Greece, women retained some of their Cretan predecessors' freedom:

Just as in Crete, women shared the power of the Goddess both psychologically and socially; priestesses were of high standing and priestly associations of women were formed round temples and holy places. There was an influential one for example associated with the famous temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus. At this city and indeed in Ionia generally, women and girls enjoyed much freedom. While women certainly won influence and responsibility by serving at the temples and great state festivals of the goddesses, there was also the liberation of the ancient cults. Respectable matrons and girls in large companies would spend whole nights on the bare hills in dances which stimulated ecstasy, and intoxication, perhaps partly alcoholic but mainly mystical. Husbands disapproved, but, it is said, did not like to interfere in religious matters.

In the classical age of Sparta, where the veneration of the Goddess as Artemis continued to thrive, women were extremely free and independent. According to both Euripedes and Plutarch, young Spartan women were not to be found at home but in the gymnasia where they tossed off their restricting clothing and wrestled naked with their male contemporaries. Women of Sparta appear to have had total freedom, and though monogamy was said to be the official marriage rule, it was mentioned in several classical accounts that it was not taken very seriously. Plutarch reported that in Sparta the infidelity of women was even somewhat glorified, while Nicholas of Damascus, perhaps as the result of some personal experience, tells us that a Spartan woman were entitled to have herself made pregnant by the handsomest man she could find, whether native or foreigner.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN 4

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

-----------------------------------------------

CANAAN – "THE SOCIAL AND LEGAL POSITION OF AN ISRAELITE WIFE…"

I have saved the examination of the women in the two Hebrew nations of Judah and Israel for last, since we generally regard them as part of an isolated patriarchal society which worshipped the male deity alone. At this point it will be clarifying to compare the position of Hebrew women not only with their contemporaries in Babylon and Egypt, cultures so intertwined with their own, but also with the other women of Canaan, where they finally settled.

In the city of Ugarit in northern Canaan of the fourteenth century BC, which was not a Hebrew community, there are records of a woman whose title was translated as "Important Lady of the Royal House." She was known as the Adath (meaning Lady as the female counterpart of Adon meaning "Lord"). The Goddess in this area was known as Anath, which may be much the same word. The texts of Ugarit (present-day Ras Shamra in Syria), where legend of Anath were unearthed, revealed that this "Important Lady" took an active part in political affairs.

Claude Schaeffer, co-director of the first excavation at Ugarit, wrote in 1939, "The social status of women, and particularly the mother of the family, thus appears to have been a high one in Ugarit." Ugaritan documents of this same period reveal that upon divorce or widowhood a woman kept her own property. Legal records read much like those of Elam, stating that husbands let their possessions to their wives rather than their children; these children are told not to quarrel but to respect and obey their mother. As I shall explain in the following two chapters, at Ugarit there was a curious combination of the southern and northern cultures, reflected in their religious myths. There are accounts of many Indo-Europeans living in that city by the fourteenth century, yet the status of women does not appear to have been greatly affected by it at that time.

Among the Ammonites of Canaan, a people with whom the Hebrews were in repeated conflict, women acted in official capacities. In 1961 archaeologists G. Landes wrote of "the superior position of women being in agreement with nomadic practise." He stated that queens, such as the Queen of Sheba (about 950), at the times led Arab states or tribes and that this was also attested in the eight and seventh centuries BC.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

---------------------------------------------------

In contrast to the economic, legal and social position of women all about them, the position of the Israelite women exhibits the effects of the almost total acceptance of the male deity Yahweh, and the patriarchal society that accompanied it. According to the Bible, though no archaeological evidence has yet been found to confirm this, the Israelite laws date from the time of Moses (about 1300 – 1250 BC). They continue as the law of the Hebrews of Canaan until the fall of the northern kingdom known as Israel in 722 BC and the fall of the southern kingdom known as Judah in 583 BC. These same laws still appear in the Old Testament of the Judeo-Christian Bible to this day.

Through an intensive study of the Bible, archaeologist and priest Roland de Vaux made these observations about Hebrew women in his study of 1965, published as Ancient Israel:

The social and legal position of an Israelite wife was inferior to the position of a wife occupied in the great countries round about…all the texts show that Israelites wanted mainly sons, to perpetuate the family line and fortune, and to preserve the ancestral inheritance…A husband could divorce his wife…women on the other hand could not ask for divorce…the wife called her husband Ba'al or master; she also called him adon or lord; she addressed him in fact as a slave addressing he master or a subject, his king. The Decalogue includes a man's wife among his possessions…all her life she remains a minor. The wife does not inherit from her husband, nor daughters from their father, except when there is no male heir. A vow made by a girl or married woman needs, to be valid, the consent of the father or husband and if this consent is withheld, the vow is null and void. A man had the right to sell his daughter. A women were excluded from the succession.

De Vaux asserted that, unlike all the other cultures of the Near East, there were no priestesses allowed in the Israelite faith. He explained that:

…the suggestion that there were women among the clergy of the temple clashes with an important linguistic fact: there were priestesses in Assyria, priestesses and high priestesses in Phoenicia, where they are shown by the feminine of kohen; in the Minaean inscriptions there was a feminine form of lw' (priest) which some scholars would link with the Hebrew lewy, but Hebrew has no corresponding noun to kohen or lewy, no women ever held a place among the Israelite clergy.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

--------------------------------------------------------------------

I might add that according to Hebrew law a woman had no right to money or property upon divorce and since her vow was invalid, presumably she could not engage in business. Perhaps the most shocking laws of all were those that declared that a woman was to be stoned or burned to death for losing her virginity before marriage, a factor never mentioned in other law codes of the Near East, and that, upon being the victim of rape, a single woman was forced to marry the rapist; if she was already betrothed or married she was to be stoned to death for having been raped.

Perhaps the clearest explanation of the status of early Hebrew women was revealed by archaeologist D. Ussishkin in 1970. He described an ancient Hebrew tomb recently unearthed in Israel in this way: "Thus it seems that one body, almost certainly that of the husband, was placed higher that the body of the wife, so that the women's inferior status was also demonstrated after her death."

Despite the lowly position of women decreed by the Hebrew laws and customs, there were two incidents that reveal a possible revival of the ancient Goddess religion, even within the royal house of Israel. Their association with the ancient beliefs suggests that two queens may have gained power through the ancient matrilineal customs, which had perhaps slipped back into Israel along with other "pagan" patterns. Both incidents involved women who were listed as Hebrew queens, on in Israel and the other in Judah.

The first concerns a woman known as Queen Maach, possibly a descendant of an Aramaean princess of the same name who was in the harem of Hebrew king David. The second Maacah was listed in the Bible as the queen of Rehoboam, king of Israel from about 922 to 913 BC. His mother was not Hebrew, but Ammonite princesses. This king is recorded as having erected "pagan" golden calves. Murray suggests that this name Queen Maacah was later the wife of the succeeding king, Abijam, who is listed as the son of Maacah and Reboboam. Her suggestion is based upon the fact that some versions of the Bible list Maacah as the mother of Abijam's son Asa. Other versions list Maacah as his grandmother, but place her name where the name of the mother would ordinary be listed and never mention who his mother was, a pattern quite unlike all other descriptions of a royal Hebrew sons. Murray wrote, "They only say that Abijam and Asa could have had the same mother, was by marriage of Abijam with his own mother."

It was Asa who brought about many Hebrew reforms, suppressing the then very prevalent "heathen" practices, and who finally had Maacah dethroned. In light of the curious discrepancies in Asa's genealogy, the reason given in the Bible for the dethronement is all the more interesting. In I Kings 15:2-14 we read that Maacah had made a asherah, that is, a statue of the Goddess Asherah. Considering the repeated evidence of "paganism" during this period, it seems quite likely that Israel had taken up the religious customs of old, at the time accepting the female religion and the female kinship succession to the throne. If this was so, then Maacah would have been the royal heiress and held this position until Asa, possibly under the influence of Hebrew priests, once again established the religion of Yahweh.

The second incident is dated about 842 BC, when Athaliah, daughter of Queen Jezebel, claimed the throne of Judah as her own. According to Hebrew law, women were not allowed to reign alone. Yet it required a violent revolution to dethrone her. Jezebel herself was closely identified with the ancient religion. Jezebel's parents, Athaliah's grandparents , where the high priestess and priest of Ashtoreth and Baal in the Canaanite city of Sidon, reigning there as queen and king. The murder of Jezebel, who had reigned alongside Ahab as queen in the northern kingdom of Israel, was actually a political assault upon the religion of the Goddess. This is made clear in the events that followed her murder in the biblical account in Kings I and II. So it is worth noting that it was Jezebel's daughter who ascended to the royal throne of Judah, the only women ever to rule the Hebrew nation alone. Most significant is the fact that, once Athaliah secured her rights to the throne, she reigned for about six years, re-establishing the ancient "pagan" religion throughout the nation, must to the distress of the Hebrew priests.

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful

-----------------------------------------------------------------

SUMMARY

Through cause and effect between matrilineal decent, high female status and the veneration of the Goddess are often confused, we cannot avoid the fact that repeated evidence attests that the religion of the Goddess and a female kinship system were closely intertwined in many parts of the Near East. Though much of the material pertains to royalty, there is enough to suggest that matrilineal customs were practiced in many areas by the general population as well. In examining the transition from the Goddess religion to the worship of the male deity as supreme and the subsequent effects upon the status of women, we find certain patterns emerging.

From the beginning of the second millennium, the Assyrians were in close political and commercial contact with the Indo-European Hittites. Indo-European Hurrian princes appeared in various cities of northern Syria from that same time on. By 1600 BC Babylon was controlled by the Indo-European-led Kassites. By 1500 BC Assyria was completely under the control of the Hurrians who had formed the kingdom of Mitanni.

Accompanying these conquests was the introduction of the myth of Marduk, who, we are told, murdered the Goddess to gain his supreme position in Babylon. In Assyria the same myth was told, the name of Ashur simply substituted for the name Marduk. Throughout the second millennium, the Indo-Europeans made further inroads into the lands of Canaan and Mesopotamia and, as I Shall explain in the next two chapters, may have played an important role in the formation of the Hebrew religion and laws.

It may be helpful at this point to summarize the changes in the laws as they affected various aspects of the lives of women. In Eshnunna (in Sumer) at about 2000 BC, if a man raped a woman he was put to death. In the Old Babylonian period of Hammurabi, before the major incursions of the Indo-Europeans, though many of the northerners were in Babyonia even at that time, the same punishment was given. In the laws of Assyria, which are dated between 1450 and 1250 BC (when Assyra was under Indo-European control), we read that if a man rapes a woman the husband of father of that woman should then rape the rapist's wife or daughter and/or marry his own daughter to the rapist. The last part of the law was also the law of the Hebrews, who added that a raped woman must be put to death if she was already married or betrothed. Assyrian laws appear to be the first to mention abortion, assigning the penalty of death.

The reforms of Urukagina (about 2300BC) refer to the fact that women used to take two husbands, though at the time of his reign that was no longer allowed. In the laws of Eshnunna a man who took a second wife, after his wife had given birth to a child, was to be expelled from the house without any possessions. In Eshnunna, if a woman had a child by another man while her husband was away at war, her husband was expected to take her back as his wife. No punishment for adultery was mentioned. In Hammurabi's laws, if a woman related to another man sexually she was expected to take an oath at the temple and return home to her husband. The Assyrian and Hebrew laws give the husband the right to murder both the wife and lover.

It is somewhat difficult to make comparisons between the various places and periods since the laws seem to have been included to codify very specific incidents and refer to varying situations. The major changes in the law concerning women affected their right to engage in economic activities, what they might or might not inherit, what they in turn were allowed to pass on to their children, the attitude towards rape, abortion, infidelity on the part of the husband or wife and, among the Hebrews only, the penalty of death – for women – for the loss of virginity before marriage. These laws, since they primarily affected the economic and sexual activities of women, point to the likelihood that they were aimed at the matrilineal descent customs. The very fact that so many of the laws concerned women suggests that both the economic and sexual position of women was continually changing all the time of the first attested northern invasions (about 2300 BC) until the laws of the Hebrews, probably written down between 1250 and 1000 BC – though, as I mentioned, none of the original Hebrew text have yet been discovered.

In questioning to what extent the female kinship customs and the reverence of the female deity affected the status of women, we may perhaps best judge by our observations of the women of the Hebrew tribes who had accepted the worship of the new male deity alone and the subsequent laws controlling their position and rights in the society in which they lived.

We might also want to consider the possibility that, in an even more personal way, just as the Hebrews prayed for sons and rejoiced when male heirs were born to carry on the family line (not so far removed from the attitudes of many families even today), in matrilineal societies the birth of daughters was likely to have been considered a special blessing. Female children may have been especially cherished for the same reasons. According to the curators of the Archaeological Museum of University of Cambridge in England, even today, "Among the matrilineal Asanti in Africa, female children are especially valued because of their power to transmit blood (mogya), to continue the matriline (abusua)." In ancient times the Sun Goddess of Arinna in Anatolia was worshiped along with Her two daughters and a granddaughter. The Khasis of Assam worshiped their Goddess along with Her three daughters and a wayward son. What emotional effects this may have had upon the self-esteem and development of young girl at that time we can only guess.

A consciousness of the relationship of the veneration of the Goddess to the matrilineal descent of name, property and the rights to the throne is vital in understanding the suppression of the Goddess religion. As I shall explain, it was probably the underlying reason for the resentment of the worship of the Goddess (and all this it represented) by the patriarchal invaders who arrived from the north.

Judged by the continued presence of the Goddess as supreme deity in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic societies of the Near and Middle East, Goddess worship, probably accompanied by the matrilineal customs, appears to have existed without challenge for thousands of years. It is upon the appearance of the invading northerners, who from all accounts had established patrilineal, patriarchal customs and the worship of a supreme male deity sometimes before their arrival in the Goddess worshiping areas, that the greatest changes in religious beliefs and social customs appear to have taken place. Who were these northern people? And how were they able to gradually suppress and eventually destroy the ancient Goddess religions that had existed for so many thousands of years?

Rasa Von Werder is now building a major website, a continuation of the sensationally successful