World's greatest orgy (BUBASTIS, Egypt)

As an Egyptian I never heard of a temple called BUBASTIS until today. It could have never occurred to me that the biggest Orgy in the entire world had occurred in Egypt?!!! If it did, I would have guessed that it took place in a costal city or so. In our modern world if it occurred here in Egypt it might be in a place like Dahab?! But in Zagazig?! Never ever?! How could it possibly be?! Zagazig one of the most conservative cities in modern Egypt?! You must be kidding me.

The main temple area of Bubastis is a part of modern-day city of Zagazig it is strange to think, or even imagine what went on in Bubastis! BUBASTIS was for centuries the centre of the largest annual orgy of all of the eastern Mediterranean, perhaps the entire world. In the 5th century BCE, Herodotus reported that 700,000 people participated, drinking wine without limits and having sex with whoever and wherever.




Herodotus gave a lively account of the annual festival -- believed to have been a bean feast. He described how large numbers of men, women and children were conveyed to the sacred complex by boat and that, throughout the journey, they sang, clapped hands, shouted and teased one another. "The women," he added, "danced in a bawdy and unseemly manner." (Al Ahram Weekly)

Bubastis was the center of the worship of the lion-headed (or cat-headed) goddess Bast. In the time of Herodotus it had an annual Saturnalia, an orgiastic festival (The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2006)

The Festival of Bast in April or May was one of the greatest in Egypt and
Herodotus describes this well in his Histories Book II Chap 60:
"When the Egyptians travel to Bubastis they do so in the following manner. Men and women sail together, and in each boat there are many persons of both sexes. Some of the women make a noise with rattles, and some of the men play flutes during the whole journey, while the other men and women sing and clap their hands. When they come to a town on the way, they lay to, and some of the women land and shout and mock the women of the place, ,others stand up and lift their skirts, while others dance and get up to mischief. They do this at every town lying on the Nile; But when they have reached Bubastis, they make a festival with great offerings and sacrifices, and more wine is drunk at this feast than in the whole year besides. It is customary for men and women (but not children) to assemble there to the number of
seven hundred thousand, as the people of the place say"

The site was excavated by Edouard Naville between 1887 and 1889. Though the site was so ruined that it was impossible to reconstruct any more then the basic layout of the Temple of Bastet, he confirmed much of what Herodotus originally wrote about the site


One of the few surviving sphinxes of Bubastis, put up in a little park with a handful of statues