As the saying goes...
There's a Sumerian proverb cited as evidence that the gala-priest was a "sacred catamite", which goes like this:"When the kalûm-priest wiped his anus, (he said) 'I must not excite that which belongs to my lady Inanna!'"
Now the thing about Sumerian is that it's notoriously tricky to translate. That's Gordon's interpretation of the proverb, but the same volume gives Jacobsen's translation of exactly the same Sumerian phrases:"As the saying goes: If the kalû-priest slips as he is sitting down, (he will immediately say): 'It is a visitation from (lit. 'a thing of') my mistress Inanna; far be it from me that I rise!"
Jacobsen interprets this as meaning that the gala turns "even the most trivial things" into "divine portents so that he can make a thing of them". Flipping heck, could this version of the proverb be any more different?!
Having barely dipped my toe in the ocean of Sumerian, I have no way of judging between the two scholars, but I can say two things: (a) Jacobsen's interpretation is at least intelligible, and (b) I can't help wondering if Gordon's interpretation might be a self-fulfilling prophecy - that if you already think of the gala as a homosexual sacred prostitute, you'll use that belief to help you interpret proverbs about him. This does seem to be what has happened with the female "sacred prostitute" of Mesopotamia in many cases.
__
Gordon, Edmund I. Sumerian proverbs: glimpses of everyday life in ancient Mesopotamia. New York : Greenwood Press, 1968.
Now the thing about Sumerian is that it's notoriously tricky to translate. That's Gordon's interpretation of the proverb, but the same volume gives Jacobsen's translation of exactly the same Sumerian phrases:"As the saying goes: If the kalû-priest slips as he is sitting down, (he will immediately say): 'It is a visitation from (lit. 'a thing of') my mistress Inanna; far be it from me that I rise!"
Jacobsen interprets this as meaning that the gala turns "even the most trivial things" into "divine portents so that he can make a thing of them". Flipping heck, could this version of the proverb be any more different?!
Having barely dipped my toe in the ocean of Sumerian, I have no way of judging between the two scholars, but I can say two things: (a) Jacobsen's interpretation is at least intelligible, and (b) I can't help wondering if Gordon's interpretation might be a self-fulfilling prophecy - that if you already think of the gala as a homosexual sacred prostitute, you'll use that belief to help you interpret proverbs about him. This does seem to be what has happened with the female "sacred prostitute" of Mesopotamia in many cases.
__
Gordon, Edmund I. Sumerian proverbs: glimpses of everyday life in ancient Mesopotamia. New York : Greenwood Press, 1968.