QEDESHA

also spelled kedesha or kedeshah, Akkadian qadishtu one of a class of sacred prostitutes found throughout the ancient Middle East, especially in the worship of the fertility goddess Astarte (Ashtoreth). Prostitutes, who often played an important part in official temple worship, could be either male or female. In Egypt, a goddess named Qedeshu, Lady of Kadesh (Syria), was worshiped in the 19th and 20th dynasties (1292c. 1075 BC). Her representation is found on private stelae of middle-class workers. She is shown nude, posed frontally on a lioness (or a leopard), holding arrows in her hands. Although Israelite prophets and reformers repeatedly denounced sacred prostitution, the early Israelites seem to have adopted the local Canaanite rites, which they apparently practiced publicly until the reform of King Josiah about 621 BC.