Babylonian Woman # 5 (illustrated by Kai Martin)

In Brief Lives, while discussing prostitution and the sex industry, Nancy tells Ishtar and Tiffany about the Babylonian women she learned about in a class.

Every Babylonian woman went into the Temple Of Ishtar and waited for a man to come to them. They would give them a coin and the women would go into one of the temple rooms and make love to them. Once these women had made love, they were free to leave the temple and begin their lives.

Ishtar commented that that over time this ritual began to fall to the wayside. She, however, considered this ritual to be extremely important and one of the most terrifying rituals of the civilization, for both men and women, because they were to give themselves up to lust and previously unknown pleasures.

This woman is one of the Babylonian women waiting in the temple courtyard.

This Babylonian Woman appears in Sandman # 44, page 12, panel 6.

Kai did a fantastic job with this portrait. I love the texture used to create her clothing. The brush pen he used created amazing line work adding an interesting look and detail to the folds of her clothing.