The Ancient Egyptians venerated masturbation. It formed the crux of their creation myth: the god Atum created the world by wanking it into existence.Â
Atumâs act was re-enacted every year to ensure a good crop. Thereâs probably never been a more potent metaphor for male hubris.
âOne of the Pharaohsâ most onerous ceremonial duties in Egypt was to bring fertility to the Nile by masturbating annually into its waters,â writes Jonathan Margolis in his history of s$xuality âO: The Intimate History of the Orgasm.âÂ
Women werenât left out of the game. Queen Cleopatra is said to have enjoyed a hollow gourd filled with bees, who pleasured her with their angry buzzing. However, most references in Egyptian history are to male masturbation.Â
Most historical accounts are written by men, and accord greater importance to the habits of men than women. In Judaism, society forbids male masturbation based on a passage in the Torah (the Old Testament for Christians).Â
In Genesis 38, God commands Onan (the son of a powerful man named Judah) to marry his dead brotherâs widow, âand raise up seed to thy brother.âÂ
The scripture says that instead Onan âwasted his seed on the ground to avoid contributing offspring to his brother. God killed him for his wastefulness. Margolis and the sexologist/UC Berkeley historian Thomas W.Â
Laqueur believes many scholars misread this passage. They say it wasnât about the sacredness of every sperm, but instruction on Jewish inheritance law, which mandated that Onan provide his dead brother with a son.Â
Onan hadnât even masturbated; heâd merely employed coitus interruptus (which today is called âpulling outâ). At any rate, Margolis says Jews masturbated despite the ban.Â
Geographic location also helped determine the Jewish view of male masturbation, according to âThe Cambridge History of Judaismâ by historians Davies, Finkelstein, and Katz.Â
During the Rabbinic Period (70 CE â 1000 CE) scholars in Palestine believed that both male and female âseedâ contributed to the conception of a baby, and were relatively tolerant of masturbation.Â
Babylonian and Zoroastrian sages had a different view of how an embryo was formed. âThat leads them to condemn masturbation âas deserving of deathâ on the grounds that the wasting of semen, per se, represents the potential destruction of life,â Davies writes.Â
The Ancient Greeks thought male masturbation was a natural remedy to frustration when women were unavailable, Margolis writes. Men were depicted masturbating on vases and frescoes and it was widely featured in comedy.Â
In one play by Aristophanes, a slave complains that he indulged to such a degree that his foreskin would soon look like the back of a whipped slave.Â
To prove its value as a free pleasure, philosopher Diogenes once masturbated before an audience, lamenting, âWould to Heaven that by rubbing my stomach in the same fashion, I could satisfy my hunger.âÂ
This liberalism did not extend to women, who were thought of as modest and unable to attain s$xual pleasure without the introduction of semen to their bodies.Â
This was belied by the fact that Greek women were fond of taking spa days, where â behind closed doors â they indulged with an olisbos, a word left decorously untranslated by many historians.Â
(It meant, more or less, a detailed, p$nis-shaped dildo.) Ancient Romans also accepted masturbation, writes Margolis.Â
While the poet Marcus Valerius Martialis, or âMartialâ for short, once warned a young patron, âWhat you are losing between your fingers, Ponticus, is a human being.â He also said, âVeneri servit amica manus â Thy hand serves as the mistress of thy pleasure.âÂ
S$xual mores across Asia had their root in Tantra, a s$xual philosophy we can trace back 6,000 years to ancient India. Margolis writes that most forms of sexuality were accepted, or even venerated by one religious sect or another â masturbation included.Â
A handbook to life in and out of bed, the âKamasutraâ was compiled in its present form somewhere around 200 CE. Aimed at Indiaâs Brahmin elite â the highest caste in the Hindu caste system in India â it encouraged rough s$x, slapping, and biting, among other erotic pursuits.Â
One of the precepts of Tantra, however, is that a man should refrain from ejaculation in order to provide a better experience for a woman during lovemaking.Â
This stigma surrounding ejaculation may explain, in part anyway, why masturbation eventually became a forbidden act that required atonement â at least for men.Â
In his study of the Indian s$xual culture of 500 CE, Swiss historian Johann Jakob Meyer writes that even voluntary nocturnal emissions (aka wet dreams) had to be atoned for.Â
S$xually frustrated males were given the following advice: âIf he is in great erotic straits, then let him put himself in water. If he is overwhelmed in sleep, then let him whisper in his soul thrice the prayer that cleanses sin away.â (Thatâs from Meyerâs book, âS$xual Life in Ancient India.â)