A History of Oral Sex Part 1: The Western World
Times have changed, insults haven't.
In modern times, oral sex has become a commonplace practice between couples, and it’s regularly enjoyed during threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes. With the normalization of sexual freedom and expression, people have started accepting and exploring their sexual desires, increasing their understanding and appreciation of oral sex.
Things weren’t so simple in the ancient world.
We tend to think of ancient history as a time of sexual lubricity and orgiastic free-for-alls. But the truth is much more nuanced than our intuition.
Unbeknownst to many, oral sex was deeply unpopular in ancient cultures across the globe. From the Ancient Jews to the Greeks and Romans, in most societies we’ve got records for, oral sex is highly taboo.
It’s an insult of the highest order to accuse someone of giving oral sex. It was like accusing someone of pedophilia today, only it wasn’t often illegal, just entirely ruinous for your reputation.
Throughout the Greek and Roman worlds, entire political careers were destroyed over oral sex, much like the Bill Clinton scandal with Monica Lewinsky.
In modern times, we focus on the fact that Clinton cheated on his wife, but in ancient times, they would have focused on the fact that he committed acts of oral sex in the first place.
While Clinton wouldn’t have been too severely shamed because he received, rather than gave oral sex, it’s not unthinkable that rumors and gossip would’ve cropped up, slander that accused him of the most grievous sexual sin of the ancient world: cunnilingus.
Though the world's cultures were as diverse as they are today in many respects, there were still a few constants, especially regarding oral sex. It’s safe to say that women were miserable. We don’t find a single Western culture in the ancient world that embraces cunnilingus as a practice.
The ancients were much less focused on the composition of the participants involved, they were obsessed with different sexual actions. Only in the Bible does a word like “homosexual” exist, though it wasn’t conceived as an identity by the people who practiced same-sex acts.
Oral sex is generally frowned upon, so much so that fellatio is met with only ambivalent appreciation.
Thank the gods, times have changed!
Let’s explore some ancient cultures and their perceptions of oral sex, taking a trip to the distant past to see how people lived before in the faraway lands of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
Oral Sex in Ancient Egypt
The story of ancient sex begins 26,000 years ago with the world’s first documented blowjob. The Egyptians didn’t waste any time getting to the good stuff. According to the Ancient Egyptian creation myth, the world began as the result of a godly blowjob—the story of Isis and Osiris.
The story of Isis and Osiris is a prominent myth from ancient Egyptian mythology that encompasses themes of love, betrayal, death, and resurrection.
Osiris was the King of Egypt and the god of fertility and agriculture, two things they conceived of as tightly intertwined. They depended on the Nile to flood to provide water for the crops that sustained their society, and they knew it. Osiris is often pictured with a mighty erect penis.
The problem? His brother Set, driven by envy and ambition, conspired against him. Set tricked Osiris into lying inside a beautifully adorned coffin and yeeted the thing into the Nile, where he drowned.
The grief-stricken Isis, Osiris' wife, and sister, embarked on a quest to find his body and give him a proper burial. Isis recovered Osiris' body and brought it back to Egypt, concealing it in the reeds. But Set’s jealous ass discovered the body and tore it into fourteen pieces, scattering them across the land. This punk ass took Osiris’ penis and tossed it in the Nile, a symbol of the fertility of the Nile.
Thankfully, Isis was Osiris’ ride-or-die. Determined and resourceful, Isis searched tirelessly, gathering each part of Osiris' body, except for one detail—his dick. A fish devoured that.
Isis reassembled Osiris’ body after hand-carving a golden phallus to replace his lost penis. That’s love right there. She dropped to her knees and gave the reconstructed corpse a blowjob for the record books, the first blowjob in literary history, and literally blew him back to life.
Those are some magic powers, my friends.
Unfortunately, the magic blowjob was only powerful enough to resurrect Osiris for one last sex session. Hopefully it lasted longer than the 2005 average of 5.4 minutes, or gods forbid, the low of 44 seconds.
Here comes Set’s punk ass again, driven by jealousy again, and he discovered the resurrected Osiris and tore his body apart once more. This time, the pieces were scattered to the four corners of Egypt, making it impossible for Isis to restore him.
However, the divine union between Isis and Osiris had already borne fruit, and she gave birth to their son, Horus, who would become the avenger of his father's death and the rightful ruler of Egypt, ensuring justice and order in the world.
The story of Isis and Osiris represents the eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It symbolizes the triumph of love, devotion, and the pursuit of justice over darkness and chaos.
It’s also the world’s first documented beej.