The lascivious mores of the Egyptians under the guise of veneration of the priapic bull Apis, and their obscene dances, rituals, and similar performances are described and commented on in great detail by Herodotus in his History of the Persian Wars.
The genitalia and all references to the phallic image were in very ancient times held in such sacred esteem and reverence that in Biblical literature the inviolable sanctity of an oath was ratified by touching the area of the genitalia, or the thigh, to use the Biblical euphemism. The Hebrews especially held the generative organs in the greatest respect, socially, ethnically, and religiously: and nudity as a consequence was a matter of shameful stigma and opprobrium.
Among the Moslems too the most binding oath was taken with respect to the sanctity of the genitalia.
In Egypt, in the temple of Isis, sacred prostitution was a regular religious practice. Reference to this circumstance is made by the Roman satirist, Juvenal, who calls Isis a procuress and her shrine a rendez-vous for adulterous and libidinous practices.
Among symbolic emblems that represented, in combination, the male and female principles of generation and fecundity, were the Egyptian crux ansata and the seal of Solomon.
The phallic symbol was so pervasive, so potent, in the lives of the ancients, that the priapic function and the erotic variations of the generative performance were pictorially represented in every conceivable form of reproduction: scenes on vases representing perverted consummations: baskets filled with phalli that were offered for sale to yearning women: ithyphallic figures: monuments, lamps and other objects depicting orgiastic lubricities.
In Ezekiel 16.17 there is a reference to the phallic figure: Fecisti tibi imagines masculinas et fornicata es in eis.
In one of the bucolic Idyls of the Greek poet Theocritus (c. 310–c. 250 B.C.) the maiden Simaetha, in love with Delphis, who has abandoned her, attempts to regain his love by performing certain magic rites and making invocations to Selene, Aphrodite, and the horrendous Hecate.
She fashions a wax image of Delphis and by sympathetic magic anticipates the melting of his heart in correspondence with the melting of the image.