El-Hani - A Story from Ancient Anatolia - part 2

El-Hani, parts 3 and 4:  Religion and Culture in ancient Anatolia; 
the Law and the Penis - the brutal facts of life with (or without) 
a penis, in Anatolia.

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El-Hani - Religion and Culture – Part 3

He had heard his older friends talking about it in years past.  A 
few had been requested (as usual with things about the Temple, the 
process of selection was mysterious, maybe arbitrary) to present 
themselves at the Temple on the stated day, at sunrise.  There was 
no secret as to its purpose.  One young man, from all those of age 
in the city, would be chosen.  He would become the special one, 
symbolically representing the consort, Attis, of the Goddess.  
According to theology, Attis was a handsome young shephard, fully 
human, taken as a lover by the goddess Cybele.

She loved him deeply, but love between a Goddess and a human is 
fraught with complications.  The god-like essence she shared with 
him when they made love could be shared with no mortal woman, lest 
he transfer the powers of the Goddess to her.  For the rest of his 
life, he could have no sexual relations with ordinary women.  

Attis, being in all other respects a normal young man, was subject 
to all the temptations and impulses a normal hormonally- and 
physically-endowed man faces.  So strong were his fears and doubts 
about being able to resist committing what would be, for him, the 
ultimate human sin, that he finally took the one drastic, 
irreversible step that would assure his faithfulness to the 
Goddess.  Sitting under a tree, he took knife in hand and severed 
his own genitals.  The loss of blood was too great, and he died 
there.  Where his blood splashed onto the ground, flowers were said 
to have bloomed forever afterwards.

Worship of the Goddess was by El-Hani’s time a very old, 
established religion, analagous to the Catholic Church today.  Like 
all religions, it was not static but evolved over time.  A thousand 
years before, the chosen man was given considerable, but not 
unlimited, authority.  He was, in fact, a temporary king.  But he 
was also doomed to live only one year in that role and then die, in 
an unvarying sequence of rituals, just like his mythological 
predecessor.

His relation with the High Priestess lasted one year.  She might be 
impregnated in that time, and her sons and daughters would be 
raised in the Temple by the religious order that resided there – 
priestesses and eunuchs.  At the end of his time, the temporary 
king went obediantly – even happily – to his death.

Great honor and attention befell him and his family, in the weeks 
before his final sacrifice.  Doing it right, and reverently, was 
the means to assure good crops the following year – vital to the 
survival of the entire community.

As lovingly and carefully as a group of deeply religious women 
could, they ritually performed these seemingly brutal acts – 
cutting off a man’s penis, and then taking his life.  His blood and 
semen were collected and sprinkled on the fields under a full moon, 
and his severed member was reverently presented on the altar to the 
Goddess.

Two months later, a new youth was chosen to be consort to the High 
Priestess, as she emerged from official mourning.

But even religions, which seem static and changeless in the short 
course of a lifetime, evolve.  Human sacrifice became associated 
with the more primitive, pagan religions of the less civilized 
peoples beyond the boundaries of El-Hani’s country.  The temporary 
king and consort no longer had to die.  His authority was  reduced 
to presiding over rituals, and then to nothing more than consort – 
the sexual partner to the High Priestess.  

The magnitude of his sacrifice also diminished.  Former consorts to 
the High Priestess underwent training to become eunuch priests at 
the Temple or in other cities, or they went on to high government 
positions after an appropriate period of education and mentoring 
under experienced officials.  His status, and that of his family, 
was automatically elevated several levels in rank in the religious 
and social strata of the community.

Five hundred years before El-Hani, the last consort-king had died 
at the hands of his lover and other priestesses.  Since that time, 
his sacrifice was reduced to a single ritual, the culmination of 10 
months of conditioning and training.  He kept his life, but a 
millenia-old ritual of castration removed his penis – and later, if 
he chose, his testicles. 


El-Hani – Religious Law and the Penis – Part 4

The woman in the market was not joking about the fate of indiscreet 
penises.  The reigning religion established the laws, and the laws 
were made by a congress of High Priestesses representing the major 
cities.  With laws made by women, offenses against women were taken 
seriously.

The culture tolerated a wide latitude of sexual behaviors, but non-
consensual sex was high on the list of anti-social crimes.  The 
burden of proof fell normally on the (overwhelmingly male) 
aggressor; if it was his word against hers, she legally had the 
upper hand, and only a well-documented alibi or compelling 
testimony could clear his name.  But men and women alike understood 
the seriousness of an accusation, and the brutality of the 
penalty.  False accusations were rare, but not unheard of.

Well aware that a woman wronged in love might exact her revenge on 
her one-time lover’s genitals using the legal system, a panel of 
three Temple judges expertly interrogated both parties in the 
dispute.  Only when there was a consensus that a crime had been 
committed did they declare guilt, and pass sentence.

Normally priestesses-in-training, or the High Priestess herself, 
would carry out the sentence.  For some crimes, the victim herself 
was given the option of exacting justice on her offender.  

In either case, religious law required that the criminal make a 
final offering of his seed to the Goddess.  Theoretically, the two 
requirements – collection of his seed, and sacrifice of his penis – 
could be entirely separate events.  By custom, established through 
centuries of enactment of the religious laws, they were, in fact, 
virtually simultaneous.  

El-Hani’s religion viewed human fortune, good or bad, as gifts or 
punishment from the Goddess. Gifts from the Goddess were to be 
treated reverently and respectfully.  Pleasure was a gift.  The 
greatest gift of all was the pleasure of passion, of procreation, 
of lust, of libido – love, in all its forms, between humans.

In their theology, the gift took the form of an animating spirit, 
or force, that resides in all humans and begins to express itself 
during adolescence. The gift was not literally their genitals, but 
the animating force that enabled them to take pleasure in them – 
the basis of erections, the almost trance-like state of intense 
arousal, and the deepest mystery and pleasure, orgasm.

When a man or woman is sexually aroused, that spirit literally 
moves into the genitals.  To observe the process of a man’s 
erection was to see that spiritual essence moving into, possessing, 
and changing his penis. 

A man who misused that gift – by forcing himself on a woman, by 
bringing pain and unhappiness instead of pleasure – was deemed 
unfit to possess it.  Not only was he irrevocably denied use of his 
penis – by the simple expediency of removing it – but he was made 
to surrender that intangible gift from the Goddess, the animating 
spirit that possessed his genitals at the highest moment of 
arousal.  To take from him that spirit, the law demanded that the 
penalty be enacted with the man at full erection, at the instant he 
released his seed.  This fulfilled two requirements: the final 
offering of his seed (mixed, of course, with blood), and the 
enactment of the penalty, the removal of his most precious member 
and source of pleasure. 

One might imagine that bringing the offender to erection and 
ejaculation, especially when he was anticipating the imminent 
removal of his penis, would present a challenge to those 
responsible for carrying out the full measure of the law.  In the 
practiced hands of trained priestesses, however, few penises failed 
to respond to their attention. 

The offender typically spent at least two weeks in a holding cell. 
His seed was to be saved for his final offering to the Goddess, so 
he was watched closely and not permitted to masturbate.  At night 
he would be restrained loosely so he could not touch himself. When 
his time came, the prisoner would be in a rare state of sexual 
deprivation, exquitely sensitive to any attention focused on his 
genitals.  Many penises rose, quite against the wills of their 
owners, under the expert ministrations of trainee priestesses, or 
in the knowledgable hands of former lovers. Priestesses were 
trained to bring the offender to a rigid erection, to anticipate 
the precise onset of ejaculation, and then capture his first spurts 
of semen in a collection bowl.  At that instant they performed the 
amputation, either manually with a ritual knife, or by activating 
the blade in a mechanism around the base of his erect penis.   

Still, there was the occasional offender, so frantic with fear or 
remorse, that would not respond as needed to even the most devoted 
attention of the priestesses. Generations of experimenting, 
sometimes with “folk medicine” remedies, sometimes with prolonged 
and frustrating research, had found solutions to even this problem. 

These most reluctant members were wrapped in cloths saturated with 
penetrating salves that diffused through the skin into erectile 
tissue, rapidly increasing blood flow into the organ.  A thin tube 
was introduced into the urethra and more of the solution was 
injected, promoting the same response internally.

These were not benign potions; intense burning and prickling 
sensations accompanied their application, both on the skin and deep 
into the interior of the organ.  But they inevitably triumphed over 
all fear, icy panic, or resolute abstract thought; in minutes, the 
man’s penis would be at full mast, threatening to burst with a 
throbbing pressure he’d never felt before, penile shaft as rigid as 
an oak rod and burning with heat.

Once erect, bringing him to ejaculation was straightforward.  No 
man could hold back for long, with as many as four or six hands 
manipulating his penis, pulling on his testicles, massaging his 
perineum.  The occasional vengeful lover might arrange to leave him 
in this state for most of a day, bound to a post in the Temple 
courtyard, the last and hardest erection of his life a prominent 
warning to all who passed.  The tumescent effect of the salves 
could last a day or more, a chemically-induced priapism that slowly 
destroyed a penis from the inside, if left in that state.  With his 
penis feeling like fire burned throughout its length, many a man 
cried out the words he never dreamed he’d say:  “Please ... take 
this pain from me... cut it off!”

Eventually, obligingly, they always did.  Hands were applied to the 
oiled, inflamed shaft, their strong pressure bringing more pain, 
but promising relief.

As they sensed his approaching climax, any of several devices might 
be rolled up to his bound, straining body, and its cutting 
mechanism positioned around the base of his rigid penis.  The major 
portion of his penis projected out past the blades, accessible to 
the hands bringing him to his last ejaculation.  The ceremonial 
bowl was offered up, lip just under his swollen glans.  As his 
first spurt splashed into the bowl, the priestess (or offended 
woman) released a catch.  A scalpel-sharp blade slashed in an 
instant through skin, erectile tissue, and urethra; cleanly 
severed, his swollen penis dropped abruptly into the bowl.

A gush of blood from the short projecting stump spewed over the 
member in the bowl, while semen continued to spurt intermittently 
through the outpouring, splashing against the far side of the bowl.

Alternatively, a priestess-in-training would apply the blade of the 
ritual knife to his rigid shaft, a centimeter from its intersection 
with his body.  She worked toward an elusive perfection: an 
amputation so quick and clean that, in the throes of his final 
ejaculation – in contrast to the seemingly unending pressure and 
pain of his forced, over-extended erection – the victim’s 
overwhelming sensation was the sudden lack of sensation from the 
just-severed organ.  

They sought to emulate what they’d seen the High Priestess do again 
and again, with practices smoothness and rapidity.  She brought the 
man over the edge, with her left hand sliding the length of the 
oiled shaft.  She permitted the first two spurts to be launched, 
then tightened her grip with an extended out-stroke, pulling hard 
on his penis.  The ritual blade, almost 30 centimeters long, rested 
on the thin skin of the top of the shaft, a finger’s width from his 
body.  Wth her right hand she abruptly pulled the blade toward her, 
all the strength of her right arm and shoulder simultaneously 
driving it downward, through the rigid cylinder of hot flesh.  With 
a fluid slicing motion, the razor-sharp blade was through in a 
fraction of a second.  Her left hand, still pulling hard, separated 
the suddenly-free penis from its former owner.  Another priestess 
held the collecting bowl in position, capturing every drop of semen 
and blood.

When the female victim of the offender carried out the sentence, 
she usually chose one of the simple, nearly foolproof amputation 
devices.  Yet more than a few had chosen the knife for exacting 
their allotment of justice.  In spite of the best efforts of the 
priestesses to convey the ideal technique, these women – usually 
proud of their skills with kitchen implements – displayed a 
suddenly–acquired ineptness, prolonging the amputation into a 
minutes-long session of sawing, slashing, and slicing, while her 
one-time assailant howled his pain and remorse through his gag.