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So if the Bible didn't link the death of John the Baptist
to a seductive striptease involving seven veils, where did
these notions come from? And how did they become linked to Oriental
dance?
In the late 1890's and the first part of the 20th century,
the writers and painters of the European art movement known as
Orientalism became fascinated with the Middle East. These individuals
seized on the story of John the Baptist as having all the elements
that make for good public interest: sexual overtones (the dance,
which they chose to interpret as being seductive), murder, politics,
adultery, and the Biblical tie-in that made it somehow acceptable
to tell this story in their sexually repressed society.
Some people think the concept of a dance of the seven veils
originated from the myth that tells of Ishtar's descent to the
underworld. I'm not convinced this is true. In the book Myths
from Mesopotamia by Stephanie Dalley which contains the translations
of the Akkadian version of the story, the items that Ishtar must
surrender are all pieces of jewelry: crown, earrings, bracelets,
etc. In the book Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth by
Samuel Noah Kramer and Diane Wolkstein, which contains the Sumerian
version of the story, Inanna must surrender items that symbolize
the power of kingship, such as crown, beads, measuring rod and
line, breastplate, and royal robe.
In her book Serpent of the Nile, Wendy Buonaventura
asserts that the story of Salomé is actually a Biblical
retelling of the myth of Ishtar. This doesn't make sense to me.
It's possible there's a translation of this story that indeed
tells of leaving garments behind rather than leaving jewelry
behind or symbols of power, but if so, I haven't found it yet
in my own research. The Salomé tale in the Bible doesn't
use the number seven at all, and it doesn't talk about any sort
of Ishtar-like initiation or descent. Instead, it's the tale
of someone dancing for her father which concludes with her claiming
a gruesome reward. I just don't see the parallel.
In all my reading of Near Eastern myths (a subject which fascinates
me), I have never come across any kind of document describing
a "dance of the seven veils of Ishtar". I'm wondering
if this dance came from Buonaventura's fertile imagination.
So far as I can tell, the earliest known translation into
a European language of the myth of Ishtar was created in 1872.
As I describe below, Oscar Wilde wrote his play Salomé
in 1891. It's possible Wilde may have known about the myth of
Ishtar, and maybe his creative artistic mind used the idea of
Ishtar discarding seven items as a source of inspiration for
Salomé's dance in his play. So, maybe there's a link,
but maybe that link was formed by Wilde's fertile imagination,
and not by any true historical scholarship.
All in all, comparing what I know of Near Eastern Inanna/Ishtar
myths to the Biblical tale of Salomé, I just don't see
an ancient origin for the dance of the seven veils. I find Qan-Tuppim's
analysis (see above, "The Original Text of the Bible")
which likens Salomé to Shirley Temple to be much more
convincing.
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