Shamhat’s role has been variously translated as “temple harlot”, “cultic prostitute”, and “priestly courtesan”. None of these quite convey the sacred power and holy awe of a women such as her. She engaged in ritual sex in sacred spaces with droves of people, giving them ecstatic glimpses of the divine. A respected and feared locus of the sacred and erotic.
This poem tries to articulate some of this grandeur in describing her role as gathering the young men of the city’s potent first seed by taking their virginity on their twentieth birthday. The ritual aims to ensure the hungry fertility goddess, Ishtar, the One that keeps the world fertile, gets the young men’s primary insemination herself.
three years now
she has counted
each bobbing sack
emptied
drained into her palms
burst upon her breasts
splashed across her cheek
all seed gathered
to feed the desparate
gaping mouth above
these virgin men
popped like blueberries
or bust open like grapes
they would spurt and cry
in the temple hall
the clay-faced elders
watching erect and awed
would softly applaud
from the shadows
all remembered
when she
took their first seed too
stood now in candle light
the Elders lowly humming
looking down at the golden chalice
letting his offering drip down her thighs
to seep into Ishtar’s cup
she recalled her first as priestess
the young shepherd
whose stiffness showed
through his robe
even as he entered
her high-ceilinged cauldron of lust
his whole mouth hung
upon her left nipple
when he came
when he lost himself at the finish
young buttocks rabbit pumping
sweat bathed and moaning like death
his groin tipping everything into her
he cried into her chest
afterwards the Elders led him away
and he lay outside the temple
chest heaving in the sun
cock twitching back soft
crying
“she is god she is god she is god she is god”
(which she is not)
and never forgot
that first time
he lost control
while latched
upon her golden orb
eyelids pressed
against her endless flesh
never wanting to leave
that shipwrecked bliss
but she had sixteen more
to drain that day
a goddess to feed
with endless seed
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/izlqi7/the_passion_of_shamhat_or_draining_the