The Sacred Sex Revolution
How Rome Erased the Divine Feminine and Rewrote Human Sexuality
The Vatican's greatest achievement was making the most successful empire in human history invisible by calling it a church—and convincing us that sacred sexuality was always a sin.
The History That Was Written Out
Picture this: You're a Roman woman in 50 AD walking through the bustling Campus Martius. Towering before you stands the magnificent Iseum Campense—the Temple of Isis—its Egyptian-style pillars gleaming in the Mediterranean sun. Inside, priestesses conduct sacred rituals that honor the divine feminine. This isn't some fringe cult—Isis has over 600 temples throughout the Roman Empire, making her worship more widespread than any other foreign religion.
But here's what will blow your mind: By 400 AD, all of this will be systematically erased. Not just forgotten—actively destroyed and rewritten. The most successful religious revolution in human history wasn't about salvation. It was about power. And sex.
Rome Never Actually Fell—It Just Changed Costumes
Let's start with the magic trick nobody talks about:
Political Rome (27 BC - 1453 AD): Peak population of 65 million people, confined to specific territories.
Spiritual Rome (476 AD - present): Peak population of 1.3+ billion people worldwide—twenty times larger.
Rome didn't fall. It discovered something more powerful than legions: spiritual empire. By abandoning territorial conquest for ideological control, Rome achieved permanent global dominance that no military could match.
But to understand the full scope of this transformation, we need to examine what—and whom—they systematically erased from history.
The World Before: When Sacred Sex Built Civilizations
The Mediterranean's Best-Kept Secret
When Christianity emerged, the ancient world was absolutely saturated with sacred sexuality. This wasn't some perverse aberration—it was the foundation of civilization itself. Let me show you just how widespread this was:
Mesopotamia (3000+ BC): The world's first cities were built around temples where sacred sex ceremonies ensured cosmic balance. In Uruk, Babylon, and Mari, temple priestesses called qadeshtu ("holy women") performed sacred unions that legitimized rulers and guaranteed agricultural fertility.
Egypt (3000+ years): Isis, the ultimate divine mother, loses her husband Osiris, embarks on an epic quest to resurrect him, then conceives the divine child Horus through magical union. Every pharaoh was considered the reincarnation of this sun god. Sacred sexuality wasn't shameful—it was literally how gods were born.
Canaan (pre-Jewish): The Ras Shamra tablets reveal Anat, the fierce virgin goddess of love and war, and her lover Baal, whose death and resurrection controlled the seasons. Sacred prostitutes (qedeshah) served in temples throughout the region—the Hebrew scriptures reference them repeatedly.
Greece: Corinth's Aphrodite temple was famous across the Mediterranean for sacred sexuality. Zeus fathers dozens of divine children through sacred unions. The Adonis mysteries celebrated dying-and-rising gods through ritual sexuality.
Rome itself: The Vestal Virgins—Rome's most sacred priestesses—supposedly birthed the city's founders through union with the god of fire. The holiest room in their temple was literally called "the Penis room." Odd name for a place where no men were supposedly allowed, right?
The Universal Pattern They Erased
Every ancient civilization had the same basic spiritual framework:
Divine Family Trinity: Father god, mother goddess, divine child
Sacred Sexuality: Divine conception through ritual union (hieros gamos)
Feminine Power: Goddesses who created, saved, and resurrected
Royal Legitimacy: Sacred sex produced divine rulers
Cosmic Balance: Male and female forces equally necessary
This pattern dominated human spirituality for over 3,000 years across dozens of civilizations.
The Isis Revolution: How Popular Was She Really?
Let me give you numbers that will shock you. Isis wasn't just popular in Rome—she was a legitimate threat to imperial power:
Geographic Reach: Isis temples stretched from Britain to Afghanistan. The River Thames was originally called the River Isis. Temples dotted Spain, Gaul, Syria, Arabia, and Petra.
Social Penetration: Unlike Mithra (restricted to upper-class men), Isis worship was truly universal. Poor and rich, men and women, slaves and senators—all worshipped the divine mother.
Political Integration: Julius Caesar and Marc Antony both allied with Isis through Cleopatra. Queen Cleopatra called herself "The New Isis" and lived in Rome for years. Roman emperors had to repeatedly ban her worship—a clear sign of how popular she remained.
Archaeological Evidence: By 400 AD, there were over 600 temples to Mithra in Rome alone. Isis temples were far more numerous. For 200 years after Christianity began, archaeologists cannot distinguish between Isis and Mary on tombstones—the iconography is identical.
Timeline of Suppression:
28 BC: Augustus bans Isis worship within Rome's sacred boundary
19 AD: Tiberius destroys temples and crucifies priests
41 AD: Caligula reverses the ban—she's legal again
71 AD: Emperors Vespasian and Titus spend the night in Isis temples celebrating victory
378 AD: Isis temples still receive state funding—well into the Christian era
380-600 AD: Systematic campaign to demolish remaining temples
The government spent 200+ years issuing edicts demanding temple destruction. You don't need centuries of laws to eliminate something that wasn't massively popular.
The Sex Scandal That Changed History
Here's a story that reveals everything about the collision between sacred sexuality and Roman Christianity. It's 19 AD, and Emperor Tiberius is about to launch the harshest crackdown on Isis worship in Roman history. The trigger? A sex scandal in an Isis temple.
The Players:
Paulina: A wealthy senator's wife and devoted follower of Isis
Decius Mundus: A Roman aristocrat obsessed with her
The Priests: Temple clergy willing to be bribed
The Setup: Mundus offers Paulina 200,000 drachmae for one night—she refuses. So he bribes the priests to tell her that the god Anubis wants to "dine and sleep" with her. Both Paulina and her husband agree to this divine honor.
The Deception: Paulina has dinner alone in the temple, then is escorted to a dark sacred room. Mundus emerges from hiding and has sexual relations with her all night. She leaves pleased with her "divine experience" and boasts about it to friends.
The Revelation: Three days later, Mundus reveals the deception, mocking that she refused him as a man but accepted him as a god.
The Consequences: Furious, Paulina appeals to Emperor Tiberius. The priests are crucified, the temple demolished, the sacred statue thrown in the Tiber River. Mundus—the actual villain—is merely exiled because his actions were motivated by "passion of love."
What This Story Really Reveals
This wasn't just about one woman being deceived. This scandal shows us that sacred sexuality was so normal and accepted that even upper-class Roman couples agreed to divine unions in temples.
In Egypt, sacred sexuality was standard religious practice. Royal families were considered gods incarnate, and ritual sex in temple holy rooms was how the gods entered unions to be reborn as divine children. Cleopatra and her lovers Julius Caesar and Marc Antony all had sex in the most sacred temple rooms—this was totally appropriate and expected.
The scandal wasn't that sacred sex happened—it was that it was fraudulent. The Roman reaction reveals how foreign and threatening this practice was to Roman imperial control.
The Great Erasure: Christianity's "Innovation"
What Christianity Actually Invented
Christianity's innovation wasn't the virgin birth or divine child—those stories were everywhere. The innovation was removing women from divine power entirely and making sex the definition of sin.
Compare these narrative structures:
Traditional Pattern (everywhere for 3,000+ years):
Goddess is equal partner with god
She often saves or resurrects him
Sacred sexuality creates divine life
She names and raises the divine child
Both masculine and feminine forces necessary for creation
Multiple paths to access the divine
Christian Revision:
God acts alone, no female consort
Virgin Mary is submissive vessel, not equal partner
No sacred sexuality—conception without pleasure or agency
God names the child ("you shall call his name Jesus")
Mary remains silent and obedient
Only males can be divine or hold religious authority
One narrow path to salvation
The Systematic Destruction
Step 1: Eliminate Sacred Sexuality Every Mediterranean religion celebrated sacred sex as the force that created and sustained life. Christianity flipped this: sex became antithetical to holiness. Marriage was reluctantly permitted, but celibacy was superior.
Step 2: Erase Divine Femininity Isis was called "Mother of God," "Queen of Heaven," and "Star of the Sea"—titles later transferred to Mary, but stripped of all actual power. Goddesses who had ruled over gods became submissive human vessels.
Step 3: Claim Originality While Copying Everything When confronted with obvious similarities to earlier religions, Christian authorities claimed these older stories were "predicting" Christ. Imagine plagiarizing a paper and arguing the original authors were psychically predicting what you'd write.
The Sacred Sex Map: What We Lost
Let me show you the scope of what was systematically erased:
Mesopotamia: Uruk (3000+ BC), Babylon (2000-500 BC), Mari (1800 BC), Hierapolis Syria (300 BC-300 AD)
Egypt: Thebes (1500-30 BC), Dendur, Philae, Memphis—sacred marriage ceremonies throughout pharaonic history
Cyprus: Paphos (1200 BC-400 AD), Amathus, Idalium—major Aphrodite sanctuaries
Asia Minor: Çatalhöyük (6500 BC), Pessinus, Comana Pontica, Ephesus—goddess sexuality traditions
Greece: Corinth (650 BC-400 AD), Aegina, Locri—Aphrodite temples and mystery religions
Phoenician/Carthaginian: Carthage, Motya, Kition—Tanit/Astarte worship
Rome: Iseum Campense, Pompeii Temple of Isis, various foreign temples throughout the empire
Beyond Mediterranean: India's Devadasi traditions, Yemen's pre-Islamic goddess religions, continuous practices from Iraq to Afghanistan
This represents over 4,000 years of human spiritual tradition systematically destroyed and rewritten.
The Real Political Revolution
What Sacred Sexuality Actually Represented
This wasn't just about religion—it was about power structures. Consider what the divine feminine traditionally meant:
Before Christianity:
Women could be divine
Goddesses often ruled over or saved gods
Queens could inherit and wield absolute power
Priestesses held supreme religious authority
Sacred sexuality empowered women as creators of divine life
Collaborative cosmic model—both forces necessary
After Christianity:
No female divinity permitted
Women cannot hold religious office
Wives must be "submissive"
Sex is sin unless for male-controlled reproduction
Women become property to ensure patrilineal inheritance
Hierarchical model—one male god rules alone
The Numbers Tell the Story
Before: Thousands of temples across dozens of civilizations honoring divine feminine power After: Zero. Not one major Christian denomination allows female divinity or equal religious authority
Before: Sacred sexuality celebrated as life-creating force After: Sex redefined as humanity's greatest weakness and source of sin
Before: Seasonal cycles honored, death and rebirth as natural After: Linear time toward judgment, death as punishment
This wasn't evolution—it was systematic erasure and replacement.
Why This Matters Right Now
We're Still Living Inside the Magic Trick
When most people today think of "religion," they automatically assume:
Male authority figures
Guilt about sexuality
Separation from nature
Hierarchical power structures
Sin and judgment
But these aren't universal religious concepts—they're specifically Roman innovations designed to concentrate power.
The Suppressed Alternative Is Still Accessible
The archaeological evidence still exists:
Egyptian temple walls with their sacred sexuality inscriptions
Ras Shamra tablets revealing divine partnerships
Museum collections worldwide filled with goddess statuary
Linguistic evidence in Hebrew scriptures referencing sacred prostitutes
Architectural evidence in Rome itself—those pillars from Isis temples are in the Capitoline Museum right now
The only thing that's invisible is our willingness to see the pattern.
Modern Consequences of Ancient Erasure
The same suppression technique continues today:
Women's contributions to history consistently minimized
Traditional ecological knowledge dismissed as "primitive"
Indigenous spiritual practices labeled "paganism"
Collaborative approaches devalued in favor of hierarchical control
Sexual shame used to control behavior and limit personal power
Breaking the Spell
The Choice We Didn't Know We Had
For nearly 2,000 years, we've been told Christianity represents humanity's highest spiritual achievement. But the archaeological record reveals something different: a rich, diverse, life-affirming spiritual landscape that was systematically destroyed and replaced with a narrow, control-focused alternative.
Understanding this history doesn't require abandoning all spiritual practice. It means recognizing that what we've been told is "normal" or "traditional" is actually the result of a specific political project.
What We Could Reclaim
Imagine if we'd preserved the earlier traditions:
Religious leadership shared between genders
Sexuality celebrated as sacred life force
Seasonal cycles honored rather than ignored
Collaborative rather than dominating relationship with nature
Multiple paths to spiritual experience
Divine feminine as equal to divine masculine
These aren't fantasy ideals—they were humanity's dominant spiritual framework for millennia.
The Real Magic Trick
Rome's greatest magic trick wasn't making the empire disappear—it was making us forget that human spirituality ever offered anything else.
For 3,000+ years, humans celebrated sacred sexuality as the force that created gods, legitimized rulers, and sustained civilizations. Goddesses saved gods. Women held supreme religious authority. The divine feminine was considered equal to—or even superior to—the divine masculine.
All of this was systematically erased and replaced with a system where:
Sex is shameful
Women are spiritually inferior
One male god rules alone
Natural cycles are ignored
Collaboration is weakness
The Iseum Campense—that magnificent temple to Isis in Rome—is buried beneath a church and modern streets. The Roman church did a very good job of deconstructing the pagan sacred places that preceded their own.
But the pillars are still in the Capitoline Museum. The evidence fills archaeological sites worldwide. The linguistic traces survive in ancient texts.
The only thing that was successfully erased was our memory that these alternatives ever existed.
What Would Our World Look Like If We Remembered?
The sacred sex revolution isn't about returning to ancient practices wholesale. It's about recognizing that we've been living inside a 2,000-year-old political project disguised as divine revelation.
When you understand that sexual shame, female spiritual inferiority, and hierarchical dominance aren't "natural" or "traditional"—when you realize they're specific innovations designed to concentrate power—everything changes.
The magic trick only works as long as the audience doesn't know how it's done.
Now you know.
The temples are gone, but the foundations remain. The statues are in museums, but the power they represented was never actually destroyed—only hidden.
Rome's greatest achievement was convincing us this erasure was divine will rather than imperial strategy.
But every magic trick has an expiration date.
Welcome to yours.
Original: Just how Popular was Isis in Rome? Remarkably popular.
Isis was honored in both halves of the broken Roman empire. She was even accepted in places that were barely Roman: even among the rebellious “Germanic” peoples of later Britain and throughout Gaul (Much of France and central Europe).
We see other foreign sun gods important in Rome, like Mithra, but this was restricted to the upper class Romans. The religion of Isis was truly universal. In egypt, she was the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God, and the Venus (Star) of the morning sun (the brightest star in the sky as the dawn broke). Her energy was that of the rising sun, the seat of creation, and a sense of virginity that renewed itself and resurrected itself every single day. (A recurring virginity, as seen in women, where a mother COULD be a virgin over and over again- a perfect example of a mistranslation in Roman times).
Isis temples were found all the way into Afghanistan, Arabia, and Syria.
Petra, Palmyra
Italica in Spain
Londinium in Britain (the River Thames used to be called the River Isis in London)
By the fall of the Roman Empire in the 400’s AD, there were thought to be over 600 temples to Mithra (sun god) just in Rome alone- but this was for (Mithras). Isis temples were far more numerous.
Her biggest problem seemed to be her popularity. She was a little TOO well liked by the people. Her numbers and appeal began to mount a serious threat to Christianity.
Rome did not seem to know what to do with this foreign queen. While Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, the first two Emperors or Rome allied with Isis as the living queen in Cleopatra, their 3 sons were murdered. The next Emperor, Augustus won power specifically saying Marc Antony was under the spell of a foreign Egyptian woman, and had to make it a point of banning the Egyptian Isis worship within city limits. THe next Emperor Tiberius took even harsher measures to try to make people like her less (obviously failing).
Due to the scarcity of written evidence, nothing is completely certain about when the worship of Isis came to Rome. That said, scholars think that Her religion was introduced sometime during the early Republican period (261-30 BC)
An early Temple of Isis and Serapis, dating to about 200 BC, has been found along the coast of Sicily, Italy.
300 BC to 300 AD: Scholars think that this largest branch of Isis worship may have come to Rome from the Greek holy island of Delos for there were some similarities between the Delian and Roman religions. Interestingly, the temple of Isis later became associated with freedom for slaves. Slaves were liberated through a sale to the Goddess and God. No longer owned by their masters, the newly purchased slaves were now owned by the Deities and thus free.
The first Temple of Isis in Pompeii may have been built sometime around 100 BC, destroyed in the earthquake of 62 AD, rebuilt, then destroyed by the final earthquake in 79 AD, where the whole city was buried forever.
44 BC: Queen Cleopatra was seen as a living embodiment of the goddess Isis (like Jesus would be considered the son of God- gods inhabiting humans, especially rulers), and had children with both first and second Roman Emperors.
During the Second Triumvirate, the Triumvirs voted to build a temple of Isis and Serapis. Queen Cleopatra, who had been living in Rome at that time and called herself The New Isis.
Her temple was raised in the Campus Martius and many archeological finds there confirm the location. Nothing can be seen of it today. Yet, because of its location outside the pomerium, the sacred, ancient boundary of the city of Rome, it did not suffer as much when certain emperors banned the worship of the Egyptian Gods inside the pomerium in 28 and again in 21 BC.
In 28 BC, Augustus banned Isis worship within the pomerium, the sacred inner boundary of the city of Rome.
This act marked the Egyptian goddess as non-Roman, but still acceptable outside their most sacred space. Augustus also suspended the building of a temple in honor of Isis and Julius Caesar.
The fact that the emperors had to ban the worship of the Goddess inside the pomerium in 28 BCE—even after the destruction of the Iseum Capitolinum—must have meant that She was still being worshipped there. It argues for the survival of either the Iseum Metellinum or perhaps even some part of the Iseum Capitolinum.
In 19 AD, Tiberius, Augustus' successor, took harsher measures against the religion of Isis in Rome.
He banned the religions, destroyed shrines, and even crucified some priests
He also ordered her main statue thrown into the Tiber River (she represented water, as in the Nile River). But the man involved in the specific incident that triggered the crackdown was banished.
The Iseum (temple of Isis) was subsequently rebuilt and enhanced by later emperors.
While banned within the pomerium, Isis worship continued outside this boundary, with Augustus even arranging for the restoration of some shrines in these areas. This suggests that the ban aimed to reinforce Roman identity
There seems to have been a juicy sex scandal that set Tiberius off, who ordered the Iseum Campense destroyed and everything in it thrown into the Tiber river. Some statuary and sistra (a musical instrument used in ancient Egypt and later by the Romans, a type of rattle.) have been pulled from the river and are thought to have been from this event.
Just to note, the earlier name of the Tiber River may have been Thebris, an Etruscan (or possibly Celtic) name, which means it does potentially still have a tie to the name Isis, just like the god Serap-is was a joining of her IS sound in the name.
What was the sex scandal?
According to historians Josephus (94 AD) and Tacitus (117 AD), a Roman matron named Paulina was deceived into having sexual relations with a man who impersonated the god Anubis in the temple. The priests of Isis were allegedly complicit in this deception.
Let’s break this down: a "matrona" was a high-class Roman woman. This term specifically referred to married women of the upper social orders, typically from senatorial families and those from cavalry officers (ie those guys that rode horses in battle). These families had special privileges, like front-row seats at theaters and considerable wealth.
Apparently there was a Roman named Decius Mundus, a Roman aristocrat, who fell in love with Paulina, a beautiful, and rich, senator’s wife. He tried many different ways to sleep with her, even offering her 200,000 drachmae for one night with her- and she kept refusing. She was a devoted follower of Isis. Apparently one of the priests was paid to try to convince her that the God Anubis asked to “dine and sleep” with her. To this, both Paulina and her husband AGREED. Paulina then had a dinner, alone, in the Isis temple, then escorted to a dark room. Decius emerged from hiding and had sexual relations with her all night in the darkness. She left pleased with her "divine experience" and boasted about it to her husband and friends. Three days later, Decius revealed the deception to Paulina, mocking her that she had refused him as Mundus but accepted him as Anubis. Furious and humiliated, Paulina and her husband appealed for justice. The priests were crucified, the temple razed to the ground, and epic statue thrown into the river. Decius Mundus, the main villain in the story, was only exiled. Emperor Tiberius said his actions were motivated by "passion of love."
Tacitus (116 AD) provides a a broader historical framework, writing that "there was a debate too about expelling the Egyptian and Jewish worship, and a resolution of the Senate was passed that four thousand of the freedmen class who were infected with those superstitions and were of military age should be transported to the island of Sardinia, to quell the brigandage of the place"
The religion of Isis had become extremely popular in Rome, particularly among women and the lower classes. This story tells us it was obviously not just the poor.
In Egypt, which held significant importance in Rome, sacred sexuality was a normal part of religious traditions. The concept of divine conception in temples was real - members of the royal families were considered gods incarnate (gods made flesh) and ritual sexual in the holiest rooms of the temples was a way for the gods to enter the union, particularly to be reborn as their child (female or male). Sex in temples was believed to bring cosmic balance, and give legitimacy for the child who would one day rule a very religions people.
It was believed that Cleopatra and her lovers (baby daddies) of Julius and Marc Antony all had sex in the most sacred rooms of the temples of the gods, which would have been totally appropriate - and expected- at the time. The holiest room in the temple of the Vestal Virgins in rome- the room no person could ever enter, was literally called- wait for it: “The Penis” room.
The fact that these women were not supposed to touch a man gives us evidence that there was in fact something sexual about sacred temples- especially in Rome’s reaction AGAINST it. What we can gather is that these women would have held the sacred blood line (as in fact the Vestals did), and their children would be the next ruler. It was of the utmost importance that these women had sex very mindfully and intentionally. Which would later be mistranslated to meaning no sex at all. Go figure.
Sacred sex (later called prostitution) was much less common in Roman religion, which is partly why the Isis incident was so scandalous. But this scandal shows how it did happen, even in the upper classes. Other foreign religions that entered Rome did also include sacred sex. Many of these foreign religions and in Rome and across Judea also employed priestesses, important roles open only to women, not men. Jesus would have been familiar with these institutions, even in Judea. Traditional Roman religion also had important female religious roles - the Vestal Virgins being the most famous example.
Foreign Religions with Sacred Sexuality in Rome:
Cybele/Magna Mater: The Great Mother goddess from Turkey had ecstatic rituals and her priests (galli) practiced ritual castration
Greece: Corinth's Aphrodite temple was famous for being a site of sacred sex
Dionysus/Bacchus: Mystery religions with sexual elements (though heavily suppressed after the Bacchanalia scandal of 186 BC)
Syrian goddess Atargatis: Had sacred sexual elements
Various Mesopotamian fertility deities had sexual religious practices going back to 3,000 BC and earlier!
Cyprus, Syria, Asia Minor: Widespread sexual rights in various forms
Egypt’s sacred sex in temples went back at least a few thousand years before Rome existed.
Judea around Jesus’ time was culturally diverse with Greco-Roman cities like Caesarea Maritima and Sepphoris nearby, with known sacred sexual rights. We also would expect to see the same in influences from Syria and Phoenicians, as well as the Canaanites.
Let’s now continue with our timeline:
Emperor Caligula (41 AD) reversed the ban against Isis (from 20 years prior), and made her worship legal again.
Isis was often merged with Roman goddesses in this time period
Caligula is also known for attempting to establish himself as a living god, (An Egyptian tradition much hated by Romans, but we see 40 to 60 Roman Emperors doing it), which included demanding worship and planning to place a statue of himself in the Jewish Temple of Jerusalem. This action was met with strong resistance from the Jewish community.
The last Roman Emperor who was deified after his death was possibly Emperor Anastasius I (518 AD). The whole idea of calling an Emperor a God in Rome started with Julius Caesar (under obvious Egyptian influence with an Egyptian/Roman royal heir), even officially accepted by Roman vote after his death.
69 AD: The Flavian emperors treated Isis with the same regard as traditional Roman gods like Jupiter and Minerva. (You can learn about these guys on Peacock’s incredible series called “Those About to Die”)
While statues of Isis were initially prohibited within the pomerium, it's possible that they were introduced into the area later as the religion became more integrated into Roman culture.The Iseum Campense, a prominent temple dedicated to Isis and Serapis, was located on the Campus Martius, directly east of the Saepta Julia. The Campus Martius was situated just outside the pomerium, but its proximity suggests that objects related to the religion were present very close to the sacred boundary. Some sources suggest the existence of an "Iseum Capitolinum" on the Capitoline Hill, which was inside the pomerium.
In Rome’s Capitoline Museum, there are two large pillars, a sphinx, a Thoth baboon, and a crocodile from the famous Iseum Campense, the Temple of Isis in the Campus Martius. The carving on the pillars is unlike the Egyptian stonework we’re used to seeing—the images are less precise, softer—but the other statues look exactly like their Egyptian counterparts. Likely, the pillars were locally made and the statuary imported from Egypt. Anything left of the temple itself is buried beneath a church and the streets of modern Rome. The Roman church did a very good job of deconsecrating the Pagan sacred places that preceded their own.
Vespasian and his son, Titus, encouraged Isis’ worship, even making her a state deity. Emperor Titus was known for taking the Israeli Queen for his lover, after he demolished her Jewish people, but was not able to marry her due to her foreign status.
Vespasian and his son Titus are recorded as having spent the night before their triumph (a celebration of victory) in the Temple of Isis in Rome, in 71 AD. They were celebrating the Roman victory over the Jews in Judea. (8 years later would be a total Jewish massacre- removing them from their homeland, changing its name to Palestine, meaning invader due to their ancient enemy, and making the Hebrew language illegal to be spoken). Rome was pissed that the Jewish people would not assimilate, and were rebelling against oppression. This is also why Jesus was killed, by ROmans, under Roman punishment and authority, via crucifiction which is a Roman punishment. Not killed by jews- by Romans. And a few hundred years he would be their martyr. But that is a whole other story. The point was- This roman emperor celebrated Isis for this “victory”. Coins minted during their reigns even featured the Temple of Isis.
118 AD: Emperor Hadrian built Egyptian-style structures at Villa Adriana
The villa was built as a retreat from Rome and is considered an "ideal city" combining architectural styles from Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
150 AD: “Isis in Rome is worshipped with supreme devotion and, for the place where her temple rises up, she is called Isis Campensis.” (Apuleius, M., XI 26, written around 150 AD)
The remains of the Iseum Metellinum can be seen near the modern Piazza Iside in Rome.
While initially embraced, then persecuted, then made state religion, Isis was officially welcomed in Rome, with statues of the Egyptian goddess placed within the sacred boundaries of Rome.
Sacred Sex Map
This makes me interested in making a map of sacred sexual rights. This helps us understand the goal and architecture of our holiest spaces, as passed down to us even today in unexpected, and never fully explained to us. This would include:
Mesopotamia (earliest documented)
Uruk (c. 3000+ BC): Temple prostitution associated with Inanna/Ishtar
Babylon (c. 2000-500 BC): Ishtar temples with sacred sexuality
Mari (c. 1800 BC): Texts mentioning temple sexual rites
Hierapolis (Syria, c. 300 BC-300 AD): Atargatis temple practices
Egypt
Thebes (c. 1500-30 BC): Sacred marriage ceremonies for pharaohs
Dendur, Philae (Ptolemaic-Roman periods): Isis sites
Memphis (throughout pharaonic period): Ptah temple rituals
Cyprus
Paphos (c. 1200 BC-400 AD): Major Aphrodite sanctuary
Amathus (c. 800 BC-300 AD): Aphrodite-Ariadne religion
Idalium (c. 600-300 BC): Aphrodite worship
Asia Minor
Çatalhöyük (c. 6500 BC): Possible goddess sexuality
Pessinus (c. 300 BC-400 AD): Cybele/Magna Mater
Comana Pontica (c. 300 BC-300 AD): Ma-Bellona temple
Ephesus (c. 550 BC-400 AD): Artemis (debated)
Greece
Corinth (c. 650 BC-400 AD): Aphrodite temple on Acrocorinth
Aegina (c. 500-100 BC): Aphrodite
Locri (southern Italy, c. 500-200 BC): Persephone rites
Phoenician/Carthaginian
Carthage (c. 800-146 BC): Tanit/Astarte temples
Motya (Sicily, c. 700-400 BC): Phoenician religious practices
Kition (Cyprus, c. 800-300 BC): Astarte worship
Rome and Roman Empire
Rome: Iseum Campense (destroyed 19 AD), other foreign temples
Pompeii: Temple of Isis (until the volcano of 79 AD)
Various Roman colonies: Foreign temples
Beyond Mediterranean
Somnath (India, c. 1000+ AD): Devadasi temple traditions
Erech (Iraq): Continuation of Mesopotamian practices
Yemen: Pre-Islamic goddess religions