Chapter 12. The Sacred Marriage : Section 2. The Marriage of the
Gods Chapter 12. The Sacred Marriage. Section 2. The Marriage of
the Gods. AT BABYLON the imposing sanctuary of Bel rose like a
pyramid above the city in a series of eight towers or stories,
planted one on the top of the other. On the highest tower,
reached by an ascent which wound about all the rest, there stood
a spacious temple, and in the temple a great bed, magnificently
draped and cushioned, with a golden table beside it. In the
temple no image was to be seen, and no human being passed the
night there, save a single woman, whom, according to the
Chaldean priests, the god chose from among all the women of
Babylon. They said that the deity himself came into the temple
at night and slept in the great bed; and the woman, as a consort
of the god, might have no intercourse with mortal man. 1 At
Thebes in Egypt a woman slept in the temple of Ammon as the
consort of the god, and, like the human wife of Bel at Babylon,
she was said to have no comme