King Jesus (Penguin Modern Classics) (70 page)

In iconotropy the icons are not defaced or altered, but merely interpreted in a sense hostile to the original cult. The reverse process, of reinterpreting Olympian or Jahvistic patriarchal myths in terms of the mother-right myths which they have displaced, leads to unexpected results. The unpleasant story of the seduction of Lot by his two daughters, which reflects Israelite hostility to Moab and Ammon—tribes reputedly born of these incestuous unions—becomes harmless when restored to its original iconic form : it is the well-known scene in which Isis and Nephthys mourn at the bier of the ithyphallic recumbent Osiris, in an
arbour festooned with grapes, each with a son crouched at her feet. The story of Lot and the Sodomites suggests the same ancient icon from which Herodotus derived his iconotropic account of the sacking of the Temple of the Love-goddess Astarte at Ascalon by the Scythians. He records that “upon these Scythians and upon all their posterity the Goddess visited a fatal punishment : they were afflicted with the female disease”—that is to say with homosexuality. But the icon probably represents a legitimate Dog-priest orgy, against a background of swirling sacrificial smoke. It was to suppress sodomitic orgies at Jerusalem that Good King Josiah of Judah (637-608
B.C.
)—or Hilkiah, or Shaphan, or whoever the reformer was—inserted into
Deuteronomy
xxii. a prohibition against the wearing of women’s clothes by men. The pillar of salt into which Lot’s wife was turned is presumably represented in the icon by a white obelisk, the familiar altar of Astarte ; and Lot’s daughter who was abused by the mob is presumably a sacred prostitute of the sort that made Josiah forbid the bringing into the house of the Lord of “the hire of a whore”. “The price of a dog”, which goes with this prohibition in the same text (
Deuteronomy
xxiii. 18), evidently means the hire of a Dog-priest or Sodomite : both fees were devoted to Temple funds in related Syrian cults.

It should be noted that many of the historic assumptions made by characters in this story are not necessarily valid : for example, the theory of millennia and phoenix-ages propounded by Simon son of Boethus, or Manetho’s view of the founding of Jerusalem by the expelled Hyksos kings, or the general ascription of the Canticles to King Solomon. All that matters is the influence on events exercised by these assumptions ; I have hesitated to credit Agabus with archaeological knowledge sufficient to correct them.

I must express deep gratitude to my friend and neighbour Joshua Podro, who has helped me from the start with critical comment from the Hebrew-Aramaic side of the story, and to my niece Sally Graves, who has done the same from the Graeco-Roman side. I could have made no headway without either of them. Also to Dr. George Simon for his illuminating physiological comments on the Passion narrative.

R. G.

G
ALMPTON
-B
RIXHAM
,

   S. D
EVON
.

THE END

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First published by Cassell 1946
Published in Penguin Classics 2011

Copyright © Robert Graves, 1946
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ISBN: 978-0-14-197090-5