“As a culture, the men were in a position to change things. They’re big; they’re strong, but society’s religious beliefs were too strong for them to just take the land and the property owned by women. I don’t think it was a conscious decision… not like some vast conscious conspiracy, but over the millennia, marital and sexual laws were introduced that had the effect of establishing paternity. Monogamy and the prohibitions against sex outside of marriage were ways of guaranteeing that a man knew whose children were his so that property could be split up according to the new laws. At first, men shared in the property little by little, and eventually of course they took it all and reduced women to the level of just another piece of property. But to enforce the laws, they needed to call on the authority of God to scare everybody into compliance.”

“So you’re saying people create the god they need,” Zoe said uneasily as the sounds of the previous night, her first prayer in years, echoed clearly in her mind. “According to that theory, God is a human creation devised for the expediency of explaining the unknown, and they change him—her—to suit their needs.”

Thalia turned her head toward the frieze and pointed. “God doesn’t change,” she said. “At least that’s my belief. It’s just that our interpretation of God changes as culture changes. That’s what I think this artist is trying to tell us.”

Thalia said, “Follow this.” Her finger went to a small line of Aramaic writing near the large carving of the Great Goddess. “Look how the laws regarding rape were changed as the power of the Goddess diminished: in 2000 B.C. if a man raped a woman in Sumer, he was executed regardless of her marital status. A thousand years later, if a man rapes an unmarried woman, the husband or father of the woman gets to rape the rapist’s wife or daughter. Alternately, we see laws that require the raped woman to marry her attacker.”

“Sick.”

“Uh-huh, but it’s all there, written down in the Torah, and it gets worse. If the rape victim is married or betrothed, then she must be killed. Now remember, the fundamentalists in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam today think they ought to be abiding by the letter of these laws.”

“This is pretty depressing,” Zoe said. “Basically, as worship of the Great Goddess was suppressed, women lost their land, their property, the right to pass their family names along to their children, and they became pieces of meat—property for men to play with.”

“Even today,” Thalia said, “Orthodox Jewish men are taught to offer a daily prayer that goes, ‘Blessed Art Thou O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has not made me a woman.’ And Muhammad said that when Eve was created, Satan rejoiced.

“It’s all there.” Thalia tapped at the stone frieze. “And in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah. Sexual laws and punishment were aimed at women and applied to women. It’s the beginning of the old double standard. Morality and virginity are for women so that paternity of children can be established.”