therefore was the most important and beneficent operation in nature, and
correct knowledge of it was the prime condition of getting an abundant
food supply. Man followed the operation with all the interest of the
food supply and all the awe of religion. It is certain that his interest
in it was "innocent." He began to mythologize about it on account of the
grand elements of welfare, risk, and skill which were in it. A parallel
case is furnished by the treatment accorded to rice by the Javanese. It
is to them the great article of food supply. They endow it with a soul
and ascribe to it sex passion. They have ceremonies by which to awaken
this passion in the rice as a means of increasing their own food supply.
The ceremonies consist in sympathetic magic by men and women at
night.[1891]

+589. The Gilgamesh epic.+ The Gilgamesh epic which originated in the
Euphrates valley more than 2000 years B.C.[1892] consists of a number of
episodes which were later collected and coordinated into a single work
like other great epics. Jastrow[1893] construes it as a variation of the
story of Adam and Eve. Gilgamesh is a hero admired by all women. The
elders of Uruk beg his mother, the mother-goddess Aruru (a form of
Ishtar), to restrain him. In order to comply she makes of clay Eabani, a
satyr-like, hairy wild man, with a tail and horns, who lives with the
beasts. Jastrow thinks that this means that he consorted with female
beasts, having as yet no female of his own species. No one could capture
him, so the god Shamash assailed him by lust, sending to him a priestess
of Ishtar who won him to herself (woman) away from beasts. She said to
him: "Thou shalt be like a god. Why dost thou lie with beasts?" "She
revealed his soul to Eabani." She was, therefore, a culture heroine, and
the myth means that, with the knowledge of sex, awoke consciousness,
intelligence, and civilization. Eabani followed the priestess to Uruk,
where he and Gilgamesh became comrades,--heroes of war and slayers of
monsters. Ishtar fell in love with Gilgamesh, but he refused her because
all men and beasts whom she loved she reduced to misery. Her vengeance
for this rejection brings woe and death on the two friends. The Mexicans
had a similar myth that the sun god and the maize goddess produced life
in vegetation by their sex activity. The sun god contracted venereal
disease so that they probably connected syphilis with sexual
excess.[1894] In the worship of Ishtar at Uru