02x21 - Babes, Brothels and Baths

[bunniefuu]

What does it all mean?

This is where the archeology has been found.

Oh, hi how are you?

Look at that.

I need a planter.

A shrine to a bellybutton.

Is this a rock of salt?

Look at that!

No one gets into this place?

Whoa, don't take me too far!

Now that's naked archeology.

[theme music]

We're in Ashkelon, a port city

with , years of history.

Canaanites lived here,

Philistines came across the Aegean.

You know David and Goliath? They lived here.

And recently what they found here

is something quite shocking:

they found the remains of some hundred infants,

stuffed in a gutter. Infanticide.

[SIMCHA] We're going to find out

what happened at Ashkelon

and why the infants were massacred.

I'm on my way to the gutter at the scene of the crime.

Dr. Avi Sasson is going to tell me

about the shocking discovery.

And we are actually under the bathhouse.

Yeah.

You can feel it, the steam.

But now we are in the Philistine area.

So this is the Philistine level.

Right.

We're standing in the Philistines?

Yeah.

Delilah's people.

Maybe.

They liked baths.

Yeah.

They liked steam, Philistine massages.

But above them, there was a bathhouse

of the late Roman period

Yeah.

And what's significant about what you found there?

Under the floor of the bathhouse, it was a sewer.

Is that the sewer?

This is the sewer, yeah.

In the sewer we found, like,

hundred skeletons of newborn babies.

How did they die?

Suffocation.

[SIMCHA] Archaeologists sent the bones

to a forensics lab for further testing.

I'm meeting up with Dr. Pat Smith

to find out the results of the tests.

We've got a lot of dead people here.

Yes.

What do they represent?

Infants that we found in Ashkelon.

Babies, right?

That's the babies, yeah.

A lot of babies. -A lot of babies.

It's a bit grizzly don't you think?

It is grizzly. Because of that,

we spent a lot of time and effort

in trying to find out the why's and wherefore's.

I don't have to tell you about the Biblical story

of Herod slaughtering the infants.

[SIMCHA] Finding the remains of a hundred babies

in Israel, the first thing you think of

is the "Slaughter of the Innocents",

A grisly report about the k*lling of baby Jewish boys

told in the Christian Bible.

According to Matthew when King Herod heard

that the King of the Jews had been born,

he ordered the m*rder of all boys under the age of two,

so as to eradicate the thr*at to his throne.

Although there's no evidence of the slaughter,

History records many cruel acts committed by Herod,

including the m*rder of his own wife and sons.

Could the bones of these infants be proof

of King Herod's most infamous atrocity?

If we look at Ashkelon,

all the skeletal remains were all of infants the same size.

They all seemed to have d*ed within a week of birth.

In order to check this,

I did some other tests which are much more conclusive.

And these are dental.

Yeah, the dental development is very much

tied in to the chronological age of a child.

If I look at a tooth under the microscope,

you can see a difference between the enamel

that's formed before birth and that that's formed after birth.

That line that distinguishes between the enamel

that's formed before birth and after birth

is called a neonatal line.

So you've got the child basically k*lled

immediately after birth.

Yeah, you won't see the line.

So that takes us back to the Ashkelon find,

no neonatal line.

Yeah. So none of them survived

more than a week after birth.

Are we seeing the Slaughter of the Innocents?

Slaughter, you don't select a particular age group,

usually. I mean, you might select young males.

We found that they were boys as well as girls.

It's not the Slaughter of the Innocents.

No, no, absolutely not.

[SIMCHA] With the Slaughter of the Innocents ruled out,

archaeologists went back to the site,

and they found a clue.

They were digging some remains

from the Roman Byzantine period,

and they found remains of the bathhouse

with an inscription, "enter and enjoy,"

the classical inscription that is found in brothels

throughout the Roman world.

Enter and enjoy.

Yeah. And alongside the brothel,

they found a gutter, which had served as a drain,

and it was full of bones of infants.

When you put it all together, a hundred infants

k*lled at birth, a brothel next door,

what do we conclude from this?

Well, I think we conclude from this

that the babies were unwanted,

and that they were disposed of,

so that the mothers could get back to work

as quickly as possible.

[SIMCHA] To understand why babies were

"collateral damage" in a house of prostitution,

I need to figure out the role of sex, prostitution,

and procreation in biblical times.

[SIMCHA] When Archaeologists discovered

the bones of babies at the bottom of a sewer

in the ancient city of Ashkelon

Scientists determined that they belonged

to the unwanted children of prostitutes.

I 'm going to investigate ancient attitudes

towards prostitution, sex and procreation

so I can unravel the mystery

of the m*rder*d babies.

A biblical account of prostitution

occurs in the book of Genesis.

Here we're told the story of Judah and Tamar.

Judah has a son who dies shortly after marrying Tamar.

According to levirate law,

Judah's second son must now marry Tamar,

the widow of his brother,

but he too dies shortly after marriage.

Judah thinks Tamar is cursed and sends her away.

But Tamar wants an heir and hatches a plan:

she veils herself like a pagan temple prost*tute,

and tricks Judah, he newly widowed father-in-law,

into having sex with her.

The bible says:

Judah's not sh**ting blanks,

so Tamar immediately conceives becoming

the ancestress of King David and Jesus.

In the Hebrew bible,

there are two words for prost*tute:

"kadesha" and "zonah".

"Kadesha" means holy woman

and is thought to be a pagan temple prost*tute.

"Zonah" is your basic street hooker.

I'm hoping Professor Yair Zakovitch

can throw light on prostitution in the Bible.

First of all, let me ask you a Judah and Tamar question.

When he first sees Tamar, she's called a kadesha.

It's related to Kadosh, related to holy, holiness.

Yes, there was this different type of prostitution,

holy prostitution, prostitutes who were in the service

of a certain temple that...

I guess that people used to sleep with them,

and the money earned by the prostitutes

was given to the temple.

That's another way of making some money

for the temple. But of course...

It beats passing a hat around. And zonah?

Zonah is just a plain old prost*tute

who does it for her own sake to make money,

a nice way to make a living, and that's it.

[SIMCHA] This story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis

comes before Moses receives the Ten Commandments,

when pagans and Jews like Judah

used the services of temple prostitutes

and had clay fertility gods at home.

But all of that soon changed for the Jews.

I'm trying to understand

whether the pagan approach was ritualized sex,

because of fertility or whatever, in the temple,

and whether part of what the Judaic revolution

was moving sex from the temple to the bedroom.

The Bible moves the sex out of the temple.

And into the bedroom.

Yes. And the Bible objects anyway to idol worship.

[SIMCHA] But what does the archaeology say?

I'm going to visit an ancient sex enthusiast

and famous collector of antiquities

who's assembled the world's largest collection

of biblical artifacts.

Shalom. Oh!

The legendary Shlomo Moussaieff.

[SIMCHA] Maybe he has something in his collection

that shows the movement away from temple prostitutes

and fertility idols.

You can spend, you know,

we could spend a week just in this-

A week is not enough for you.

Look at this stuff.

This is Astarte temples, Astarte holding her breast.

Take love, take comfort.

She's calling you back to the womb.

This is a Canaanite.

Jewish Astarte.

No. -Yeah.

How do you know it's Jewish?

Big tits.

You think 'cause she's got big breasts she's a Jewish girl?

I don't think that's science.

It's been published as such.

How do you know it's not Canaanite?

Canaanite flat.

The Canaanites are flat? It's magnificent.

It's Jewish typical those temples.

They're playing a drum: "Please come to me." See?

Oh my gosh. It's an ancient temple,

they're playing the drums,

and they're calling you into the holy of holies.

Yeah.

[SIMCHA] These artifacts represent a time

when Jews, like their pagan neighbours,

kept clay ritual objects.

Here was a clever Jew. He made three tits.

You say this one has three breasts?

Three breasts.

No, she doesn't have three breasts.

Oh, yes, she does. She has three breasts.

Look at this. This is the goddess.

She is suckling a baby.

This is an ancient Michelangelo.

I'm not joking. Look at the expression on her face.

How old is this, Shlomo?

B.C.

Twenty-nine hundred years old.

[SIMCHA] But some , years ago,

around BCE, the Biblical book of Joshua States:

So if you want to be a Jew,

you have to let go of the pagan idols.

So the Jewish priests broke off the heads

of as many fertility dolls as they could find.

And there's plenty of archaeology to back this up .

Priest broke her head.

Look at this. The Israelites come along,

and what do they do? They destroy idols.

In the book of Joshua, they literally cut off the head.

I have many destroyed.

This destroyed. This destroyed.

So this is the beginning of the Israelites.

Right, right.

This little cr*ck preserves the boundary

between Canaanite and Israelite religion,

because the Canaanites have the holy prost*tute

into the temple, and the Jews break this.

This is amazing.

You get inspired by these pieces do you?

Not at all. I think I inspire them.

[SIMCHA] Shlomo's archaeological artifacts

tell me that the ancients had sex on the brain.

Jews shifted away from pagan worship

around , years ago.

But just over , years ago,

the Romans colonized Israel,

and they had a different approach to sex.

[SIMCHA] I'm on a quest to find out

about ancient attitudes towards sex.

I'm trying to figure out why the bones

of a hundred m*rder*d children of prostitutes

turned up in Ashkelon at the bottom of a bathhouse drain.

Ashkelon is the oldest and largest seaport

of ancient Israel.

The Canaanites, the Philistines,

the Babylonians all had dibs on Ashkelon.

But there was another group of people

who colonized Ashkelon just over , years ago,

and they were the most notorious sex maniacs

of the ancient world.

They also had a thing for baths.

So I'm going to check out one of the

biggest bathhouses in ancient Israel.

I'm all gassed up and ready to go.

Where? To a ,-year-old Roman bathhouse.

And why? Because I'm thinking about sex.

If it's true that the pre-Israelite pagans had sex

in the temple, you know, they put it in their church,

and the Israelites, their big innovation

was taking it out of the temple

and putting it in the bedroom,

where did the Greco Romans put sex?

I'm on my way to a -year-old Roman bathhouse to find out.

[SIMCHA] The Romans conquered Beit She'an

in BCE and built one of the biggest public bathhouses

in ancient Israel. In this huge,

ancient bathhouse, there was no distinction

between public and private activities.

That was the Roman-Greco way.

Gabi Mazor excavated here,

and he can tell me all about it.

So this is, like, ,-year-old site.

Yes.

What would what house over there be?

It's not a house; this is part of a huge bathhouse.

This is the bathhouse? The famous bathhouse?

This whole fence, about metres long,

eighty-five metres wide.

Thousands of people-

Came into these-

-washed themselves over there,

did whatever else they did.

This is a pubic gathering place.

All classes mingled in the bathhouse.

Everyone was naked.

So you could meet the governor of the city,

and he looks exactly like you

probably worse because he had a belly and he was old.

You can compare your belly.

You can compare everything.

I mean, most of the social activity in the city

was done in the bathhouses. Lectures, singing.

Stooping.

Even prostitution.

You could live your life in the bathhouse.

In the bathhouse.

[SIMCHA] In Roman-Greco times,

there seems to be no distinction between

public and private, not just in the bathhouse,

but in the bathroom as well.

You're telling me this is a toilet?

Yup. At the centre you have an open courtyard poles

all around it, the toilet seats which are along the wall.

The important thing about toilet seats is the space.

The spaces in between the stones. You sit like that.

Wow. I've never sat on a marble toilet seat before.

But actually it's quite efficient, and also you can talk.

Look at the fun we're having.

You can sit with a friend and you can talk.

You can share a newspaper.

They enjoyed everything.

It was very nice.

I want to ask a couple of serious questions

in this public toilet as we're sitting on this latrine.

This is where archaeology teaches us

about how people think, no?

Doesn't it tell us the things that we consider private,

you know, like pooping, like sex, like bathing,

they considered public?

They didn't have any problems with doing it in public.

This is archaeology at its best:

sitting in a public latrine , years old,

just sitting on the stalls where so many people

in the ancient world pooped.

Suddenly I'm connected to real human beings.

People who sit with their toga pulled up.

Exactly!

[SIMCHA] This latrine at Beit She'an tells me

that the Romans weren't uptight about what they did

with their bodies.

So now that I've seen where they did their toilet business,

I want to find out where they did their monkey business.

[SIMCHA] In my quest to solve the mystery

of why babies were found m*rder*d

at the bottom of a sewer under a Byzantine-era brothel,

I've discovered that early pagans

practiced fertility worship,

in which sex played a big part.

The Jews who came after them rejected sex

in the temple, but they definitely

hung onto sex in the bedroom;

although the Bible imposed a few new rules,

like have it with your mate in the privacy of your tent.

"She's engaged"

[SIMCHA] Greco-Romans then came along and said

forget the sacred sex, forget sex in private;

sex is for fun, and we're doing it in the bathhouse.

So I'm in Beit She'an with archaeologist Gabi Mazor

to find out just what those Romans were doing

in the bathhouse.

Beautiful mosaic, perfectly preserved.

And what does it say here?

The inscriptions actually welcome people,

like, "come in and enjoy."

The classic inscription of "come in and enjoy"

is practically a red light.

This may have been , year-old red light district-

at least that's what some academics think.

And they think that on this bench,

people did... well, they did what they do

in houses of prostitution.

And, also, some of these rooms have back doors.

You know, for some big sh*t politicians,

they may not have wanted anybody to see them.

So after they did what they did,

they may have done this.

[SIMCHA] Archaeology can't tell us

if prostitution was endorsed by the Roman wives

of Beit She'an,

but it does tell us that it went on in a big way

in public places in the civic centre.

So how do we go from the laissez-faire sexual mores

of the Romans to Byzantine-era prostitutes

practicing infanticide at Ashkelon?

At Beit She'an, we may be able to see evidence

of the change. This is an ancient Roman hot tub.

Looks like there's room for a party.

This is pretty big.

So that means that more than one person would fit.

Oh my goodness what were they doing in those tubs?

This is like the ancient world's answer to the Jacuzzi.

Look how well preserved it is.

You could see fresco that decorated this tub.

And, technically,

you could actually see the heating system,

and I guess you could actually regulate the heat.

Of course you could-

Turn up the heat.

-between hot water and cold water.

Wow. I've never been in an ancient tub before.

This is exciting.

But nearby, a different kind of bath

indicating a new attitude towards sex.

That's a one-person tub.

Of course. Look at this!

And it has a cross on top of it.

This is very funny.

This could be a coincidence,

but you've got a Roman tub over there,

there's room for a party inside the tub,

you've got a single person tub over here,

and what has it got? It's got a cross,

a Byzantine cross.

[SIMCHA] This Christian cross may be hard evidence

of a changing attitude towards sex

in third-century Beit She'an.

In the Roman world, big baths meant

lots of room for lots of people to have lots of sex.

But Christianity put a stop to sex in public,

so bathing became a solo act.

Here you really see the two cultures next to each other.

The monk is sitting here having a bath,

and meanwhile over there they-

They're having fun.

They're having... the pagans are...

[SIMCHA] So why did early Christians think

the fun had to come out of the sex?

It might have something to do with a passage

in Paul's Letter to the Corinthians:

I'm going to talk to Barrie Wilson,

professor of religious studies at York University,

to find out what's in that letter

and what it meant to early Christians.

Christianity began primarily as an ascetic religion.

And we can look at Jesus, we can look at Paul,

and so on, but the founders of various forms

of early Christianity really downplayed sexuality,

downplayed marriage, downplayed family values.

I often challenge my students,

if they can find a healthy endorsement of marriage

within the New Testament,

I'd give them a free trip to Florida.

For twenty years, that challenge has gone unclaimed.

If you were at a marketing meeting with Paul early on,

you might say, "This isn't going to fly."

What happens that this model of sexuality

becomes so popular?

It was a kind of a claim to superiority.

I have self-control.

I am seeking first the kingdom of God.

I am not pleasuring myself with

all of the affairs of this world,

because I'm living for the reality that is to come,

whether it's the kingdom of God on Earth

or conceived of as of an afterlife in Heaven.

Paul was viewed as primarily preaching

sexual renunciation for the sake of immortality.

Is it fair to say that it's moved sex out of the bedroom,

in a sense?

Not stopped it, but drove it underground?

It certainly repressed sexuality,

and I think in the fourth, fifth, six centuries,

the Byzantine period, for example,

there would have been a lot of repressed Christian males,

probably Christian women as well,

trying to find other kinds of sexual outlets.

Did brothels thrive as a result of this?

Brothels have thrived, because

sexuality doesn't go away

just because Jesus and Paul said it should.

So is it fair to say that sexuality moved from,

you know, the temple to the bedroom to the gutter?

It certainly moved into the area of guilt and repression.

What does this have to do with the dead babies

found at Ashkelon?

The early Christian taboo against sex, even in marriage,

created sexual repression at home,

which led to an expl*si*n of Byzantine brothels.

Add this to the fact that Ashkelon was a

bustling seaport bursting at the seams with sailors,

merchants and pirates, all looking for a good time.

And like every other business,

prostitution was about supply and demand,

and when it wasn't okay for Christian men

to do what they had been doing, the brothels of Ashkelon

went into overdrive. And Unwanted babies of prostitutes

had to be dispatched of

so their mothers could go back to earn their keep.

What we find right here in Ashkelon

are remains of dead babies who fell victim

to changing attitudes towards sex.