es, many and of various sorts, have been performed by women
desiring offspring--imitations and simulations.[1962] But the giving up
of the body is not imitation or simulation--it is the procreative act
itself.

Organized official sacred prostitution must be regarded as the outcome
of a long period of development. License, starting at a time when sexual
passion was strong and continence was not recognized as a duty or as
desirable, found entrance into various social and religious customs and
institutions, accommodating itself in different places and periods to
current ideas of propriety. Appropriated by organized religion, it
discarded here and there its more bestial features, adopted more refined
religious conceptions, its scope was gradually reduced, and finally it
vanished from religious usage. The objections urged to such a process of
growth are not conclusive.[1963] Explanations of communities of
temple-courtesans and male prostitutes and of customs affecting
individual women are suggested above.[1964] Many influences, doubtless,
contributed to the final shaping of the institution, and we can hardly
hope to account satisfactorily for all details; but the known facts
point to an emergence from savage conditions and a gradual modification
under the influence of ideas of morality and refinement.

+1067+. _Organization and influence of the priesthood._ In accordance
with the law of natural human growth the priests in most of the greater
religions came to form an organized body, hierarchical grades were
established, many privileges were granted them, and they exercised great
influence over the people and in the government. In Egypt they were
exempt from taxes and had a public allowance of food; the temples at the
capitals, Memphis and Thebes, became enormously wealthy; the priests
exercised judicial functions (but under the control of the king); they
cultivated astronomy and arithmetic, and controlled the general
religious life of the people; as early as the thirteenth century B.C.
they had attained a political power with which the kings had to reckon,
and still earlier (ca. 1400 B.C.) the Theban priests were able to
overthrow the religious reformation introduced by Amenhotep IV; the
departments of sacerdotal functions were multiplied, and the high priest
of the Theban Amon, whose office became hereditary, controlled the
religious organization of the whole land, set himself up as a rival of
the Pharaoh in dignity, and f