Document ID: C_3_11
Section: C_Global_Traditions
Keywords: hieros gamos, sacred marriage, Inanna, Dumuzi, fertility cult, tantric maithuna, Asherah, temple prostitution, Dionysian ecstasy, kundalini, lingam-yoni, Eleusinian fertility, Ishtar, sacred sexuality, hierodule, shakti
Category Tags: mythology, cross-cultural, contemplative-practice, religion
Cross-References: A_1_01 · C_4_05 · Y_3_01 · B_3_01 · A_2_02 · C_1_03 · W_1_08
Reliability Tier: Tier 1-3 (Sumerian textual evidence strong; archaeological evidence for temple economy well-documented; "sacred prostitution" debate unresolved; tantric lineage claims often undocumented)
Last Updated: Feb 28, 2026 | Source Count: 29 | Weighted Score: 58 | Source Confidence: [5/5] | Confidence: Moderate-High

QUICK SUMMARY

Sacred sexuality — the ritual enactment of sexual union as a cosmologically generative act — represents one of the most widespread and most misunderstood categories of ancient religious practice. The Sumerian hieros gamos ("sacred marriage") between the goddess Inanna and the shepherd-king Dumuzi, performed annually by the high priestess and the king of Uruk, is the earliest documented ritual integration of sexuality, sovereignty, and cosmic fertility (c. 2100 BCE). Parallel traditions appear across civilizations: Hindu Tantric maithuna (ritual intercourse as a path to moksha), the lingam-yoni iconography of Shaiva worship, Dionysian ecstatic rites in Greece, Canaanite Asherah fertility cults, and the controversial question of Mesopotamian "temple prostitution" — a claim originating with Herodotus that modern scholars have largely deconstructed. The kundalini tradition reframes sexual energy as the fundamental force of spiritual awakening, linking the biological and the transcendent. Japanese Shinto preserves living fertility cult traditions including phallic processional festivals (Kanamara Matsuri), Egyptian Min worship provided dynastic fertility theology, and Mesoamerican Tlazolteotl embodied the transformation of sexual transgression into purification. These traditions collectively reveal a pre-modern understanding in which sexuality was not opposed to the sacred but constitutive of it.

1. VERIFIED CLAIMS (Tier 1 — Peer-Reviewed / Archaeological Record)

1.1 Sumerian Sacred Marriage (Hieros Gamos)

• The hieros gamos is documented in multiple Sumerian literary compositions, including Inanna and Dumuzi courtship poems, the Sacred Marriage Hymn of Iddin-Dagan (c. 1974–1954 BCE), and the hymns of Enheduanna (c. 2285–2250 BCE), the earliest named author in human history.
• The ritual involved the high priestess of the Eanna temple at Uruk assuming the role of the goddess Inanna, and the king assuming the role of Dumuzi. Their ritual union on the "holy bed" (giš-nu₂) symbolically ensured agricultural fertility, legitimate kingship, and cosmic order (me) for the coming year.
• Thorkild Jacobsen (1976) interpreted the rite as "the force that drives the green fuse" — the cosmic-biological principle that linked human sexuality to the fertility of land and livestock. Samuel Noah Kramer's translations (1969) of the courtship poems revealed explicit erotic language: "My vulva, the horn, the Boat of Heaven — is full of eagerness like the young moon."
• The political dimension was crucial: the king's legitimacy depended on the goddess's "choosing" him as consort. Without the Sacred Marriage, the king lacked divine sanction for rulership. This linked sexuality directly to political theology.

1.2 Enheduanna and the Theology of Desire

• Enheduanna (c. 2285–2250 BCE), high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur and the world's earliest named author, composed hymns to Inanna that explicitly theologize sexual desire as cosmic power. Her Nin-me-šára ("Lady of all the ME") and In-nin šà-gur₄-ra ("Inanna and Ebih") present the goddess as simultaneously erotic and martial — her sexual attractiveness and her destructive warrior fury are aspects of the same divine potency.
• Betty De Shong Meador (Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart, 2000) argued that Enheduanna's poetry represents the earliest articulation of a theology in which feminine desire is not subordinate to masculine authority but constitutive of cosmic order — the goddess's desire creates, sustains, and, when frustrated, destroys.
• The Sumerian concept of ḫi-li (sexual attractiveness, radiance, allure) was a divine attribute distributed by Inanna to chosen individuals and cities — not merely a personal quality but a cosmic force analogous to Greek charis or Hindu śakti.

1.3 Lingam-Yoni Iconography in Hinduism

• The śivaliṅga — an aniconic pillar representing Shiva — combined with the yoni (representing Shakti/Parvati) forms the most ubiquitous sacred symbol in Hindu worship, found in millions of temples across South and Southeast Asia.
• The earliest archaeological examples date to the mature Harappan period (c. 2600–1900 BCE): the so-called "phallic stones" from Mohenjo-daro and Harappa — though their identification as liṅgas remains debated (Kenoyer, 1998).
• Textual authorization appears in the Liṅga Purāṇa, Śiva Purāṇa, and the Skanda Purāṇa, which narrate the mythological origin of liṅga-worship: Shiva manifests as an infinite column of fire (jyotir-liṅga) that neither Brahma nor Vishnu can measure, establishing his supremacy.
• Stella Kramrisch (The Presence of Śiva, 1981) demonstrated that the liṅga-yoni represents not merely sexual union but the metaphysical principle of creation through the conjunction of consciousness (puruṣa) and nature (prakṛti) — the fundamental Samkhyan duality underlying Hindu cosmology.
• The twelve jyotirliṅgas across India function as major pilgrimage sites, anchoring a sacred geography organized around the generative principle.

1.3 Eleusinian Mysteries and Fertility

• The Eleusinian Mysteries (c. 1500 BCE – 392 CE) — the longest-running mystery cult in Western antiquity — centered on the myth of Demeter and Persephone, a narrative fundamentally about agricultural fertility, death, and renewal.
• The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (c. 7th century BCE) records the foundational myth: Demeter's grief at Persephone's abduction by Hades causes universal famine; her joy at Persephone's partial return restores fertility — encoding the seasonal agricultural cycle.
• The culmination of the Greater Mysteries (Boedromion / September) included the revelation of sacred objects (hiera) in the Telesterion — the exact nature of these objects remains unknown due to the successfully maintained secrecy, but ancient sources hint at an ear of grain (stachys) shown in silence as the supreme mystery.
• Karl Kerényi (Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter, 1967) argued that the grain ear symbolized the unity of death and fertility — the seed that must "die" in the earth to bring new life — a pre-Christian resurrection metaphor rooted in agricultural reality.

1.4 Canaanite Asherah Cult

• Asherah (ʾAṯiratu) was the chief goddess of the Ugaritic pantheon (consort of El), widely worshipped throughout the Levant. Hundreds of Judean pillar figurines (JPFs) — small clay female figures with prominent breasts — found throughout Iron Age II Judean sites (8th–6th centuries BCE) suggest widespread popular devotion.
• Biblical polemics against Asherah poles (ʾăšērîm) erected "beside every altar" (Deuteronomy 16:21) and "on every high hill and under every spreading tree" (1 Kings 14:23) confirm the pervasiveness of her cult within ancient Israel — and that Yahwistic reformers considered fertility worship a persistent theological rival.
• William Dever (Did God Have a Wife?, 2005) argued that Asherah was worshipped as Yahweh's consort in popular Israelite religion, based on the Kuntillet ʿAjrud inscriptions ("Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah") and the Khirbet el-Qom inscription.

2. CREDIBLE CLAIMS (Tier 2 — Academic / Debated but Supported)

2.1 The "Sacred Prostitution" Debate

• Herodotus (Histories 1.199, c. 440 BCE) claimed that every Babylonian woman was required to go to the temple of Aphrodite (Ishtar) once in her life and have intercourse with a stranger in exchange for a coin thrown into her lap. This passage became the foundational source for the concept of "sacred prostitution" (hierodoulia).
• Stephanie Budin (The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, 2008) systematically dismantled the evidence, arguing that Herodotus's account was a Greek ethnographic fiction — part of the "barbarous Other" trope — and that no cuneiform sources describe compulsory sexual service at Mesopotamian temples.
• Julia Assante (2003) similarly demonstrated that the Sumerian terms nadītu, qadištu, and kezertu — traditionally translated as "temple prostitute" — actually denoted specific priestly ranks with economic and ritual functions unrelated to sexual commerce.
• The counter-argument (Westenholz, 1989; Lambert, 1992) maintains that some form of ritualized sexual activity associated with Ishtar/Inanna temples did exist, even if Herodotus's universalizing account is unreliable. The debate remains active and unresolved.
• The broader historiographic lesson is significant: the category of "sacred prostitution" reveals more about modern Western anxieties about the relationship between religion and sexuality than about ancient Near Eastern reality. The term itself is an oxymoron within the value systems of the cultures it purports to describe.

2.2 Tantric Maithuna (Ritual Intercourse)

• In Hindu and Buddhist Tantra, maithuna (ritual sexual union) constitutes the fifth and culminating element of the pañcamakāra ("five M's") — the transgressive ritual sequence including madya (wine), māṃsa (meat), matsya (fish), mudrā (parched grain), and maithuna.
• The Kaula tradition within Kashmir Shaivism (Abhinavagupta, Tantrāloka, c. 1000 CE) theorizes maithuna as the union of Shiva and Shakti within the practitioner's body — the internal male (consciousness) and female (energy) principles merge, producing a non-dual (advaita) realization.
• David Gordon White (Kiss of the Yoginī, 2003) emphasized the "hard" or literal practice of sexual ritual in early Tantric traditions, arguing that later "soft" or internalized interpretations represent a domestication of originally transgressive practices.
• Georg Feuerstein (Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy, 1998) notes the strict ritual protocols: maithuna was embedded in elaborate visualization, mantra recitation, and breath control (prāṇāyāma); it was performed only after years of initiation and was sharply distinguished from ordinary sexual activity.

2.3 Dionysian Ecstasy and Sexuality

• The cult of Dionysus (Bacchus) incorporated ecstatic practices that blurred the boundaries between religious experience, sexual energy, and altered consciousness. The Maenads (Bacchae) — female devotees — achieved ecstasis through wine, dance, music, and the sparagmos (ritual tearing apart) of animals.
• Euripides' Bacchae (405 BCE) dramatizes the destructive potential of repressed Dionysian energy: King Pentheus of Thebes, who suppresses the cult, is torn apart by his own mother — a mythic warning against the denial of irrational and fertile forces.
• Albert Henrichs (1978) demonstrated from epigraphic evidence that actual Dionysian cult practice was far more restrained than literary sources suggest — the maenadic frenzy was largely a mythic-literary construct, while actual thiasoi (cultic groups) practiced orderly processions and ritual meals.
• The phallic processions (phallophoria) associated with Dionysian festivals — documented in vase paintings and literary descriptions — involved the public parading of carved phalluses, accompanied by obscene songs (aischrologia). The Rural Dionysia in Attica featured prominent phallic displays, and the City Dionysia processional included phallic symbols alongside tragic and comic performances.

2.4 Kundalini as Sexual-Spiritual Energy

• The kundalini tradition, systematized in Hatha Yoga texts such as the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā (15th century) and the Ṣaṭ-Cakra-Nirūpaṇa (16th century), maps the awakening of a dormant serpentine energy (kuṇḍalinī-śakti) from the base of the spine (mūlādhāra cakra) to the crown (sahasrāra cakra).
• The mūlādhāra cakra is explicitly associated with sexual energy (kāma-śakti). The upward movement of kundalini transforms biological sexual force into spiritual illumination — a process described as the inner union of Shiva (at the crown) and Shakti (at the base).
• Sir John Woodroffe (Arthur Avalon), in The Serpent Power (1919), provided the first major Western exposition of the kundalini system, interpreting it as a psycho-physiological model of consciousness evolution.
• Modern neuroscience has suggested potential correlations between kundalini phenomenology and activation of the autonomic nervous system, though no consensus exists on physiological mechanisms (Kason, 2000).
• The relationship between kundalini and the serpent archetype is significant for this knowledge base: the coiled serpent at the base of the spine, rising through the central channel (suṣumṇā nāḍī), parallels the serpent-wisdom traditions documented across world mythology — from the Sumerian Ningishzida (Lord of the Good Tree) to the Mesoamerican Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent) to the Greek caduceus of Hermes.

2.5 Japanese Shinto Fertility Cults

• Shinto tradition includes explicit phallic worship at shrines such as Tagata Shrine (Komaki, Aichi Prefecture) and Kanamara Matsuri (Festival of the Steel Phallus) at Kanayama Shrine in Kawasaki. These festivals — featuring processional phalluses, fertility prayers, and ribald celebration — represent a living tradition of sacred sexuality within an industrialized nation.
• The kami Sarutahiko and his consort Ame-no-Uzume — whose erotic dance before the cave of Amaterasu restored light to the world (Kojiki, 712 CE) — provide mythological grounding for the integration of sexuality and cosmic renewal in Japanese religion.
• Michael Czaja (Gods of Myth and Stone: Phallicism in Japanese Folk Religion, 1974) documented thousands of dōsojin (roadside phallic-couple stones) across rural Japan, demonstrating the pervasiveness of fertility symbolism in vernacular religious landscape.

2.6 Egyptian Min and Fertility Symbolism

• The Egyptian god Min — depicted ithyphallically (with erect phallus) at Koptos and Akhmim since the Predynastic period (c. 4000 BCE) — was the primary deity of male sexual potency and agricultural fertility. The Festival of Min, celebrated at harvest time, involved the pharaoh ceremonially cutting the first sheaf of grain before the ithyphallic image of Min.
• The Contendings of Horus and Seth (Chester Beatty Papyrus I, c. 1150 BCE) contains explicit sexual episodes — Seth's attempted rape of Horus, Isis's cunning reversal — demonstrating that Egyptian mythological narrative integrated sexual acts as instruments of cosmic power struggle.
• The Turin Erotic Papyrus (c. 1150 BCE) — a satirical scroll depicting sexual encounters between men and women in what appears to be a brothel or temple setting — has been debated as either religious satire, ritual parody, or pornographic humor. Its meaning remains genuinely uncertain (Manniche, 1987).

3. SPECULATIVE CLAIMS (Tier 3 — Possible but Unverified)

3.1 Pan-Cultural "Great Goddess" Fertility Religion

• Marija Gimbutas (The Language of the Goddess, 1989; The Civilization of the Goddess, 1991) proposed that Neolithic "Old Europe" (c. 7000–3500 BCE) was organized around a goddess-centered, matrilineal, egalitarian society in which sexuality was sacred and warfare minimal — destroyed by patriarchal Indo-European (Kurgan) invaders.
• While Gimbutas's archaeological contributions (identification of figurine types, symbolic repertoires) are widely respected, her reconstruction of a unified "Goddess civilization" has been criticized as over-interpretive (Conkey and Tringham, 1995; Meskell, 1995). Not every female figurine necessarily represents a "goddess."
• The Venus figurines of the Upper Paleolithic (c. 40,000–11,000 BCE) — from Willendorf, Lespugue, Dolní Věstonice, and Hohle Fels — with their pronounced breasts, bellies, and vulvar markings, have been interpreted as fertility charms, goddess representations, self-portraits by pregnant women (LeRoy McDermott, 1996), or objects of multiple functions. Their meaning remains irreducibly ambiguous.

3.2 Gnostic Bridal Chamber Sacrament

• The Gospel of Philip (Nag Hammadi Library, c. 3rd century CE) describes a sacrament of the "bridal chamber" (nymphōn) as the highest of five Valentinian sacraments: "The holy of holies is the bridal chamber" (Gospel of Philip 69:14).
• Whether this rite involved actual sexual intercourse or was purely symbolic remains debated. Jorunn Buckley (1986) argues for a wholly spiritual interpretation, while DeConick (2011) suggests that some Gnostic groups practiced literal sexual sacraments.
• The bridal chamber is theologically linked to the concept of syzygy (the union of paired aeons in the Valentinian pleroma): just as Sophia's separation from her syzygy caused the fall into material existence, the bridal chamber sacrament restores the original unity — making sexual union a reversal of cosmic disaster.

3.3 Neolithic Ritual Sexuality at Çatalhöyük

• The Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük (c. 7500–5700 BCE) yielded female figurines with exaggerated breasts and hips often interpreted as fertility figures (Mellaart, 1967). More recent excavation under Ian Hodder has challenged simple "fertility goddess" readings, emphasizing the site's complex symbolic repertoire including bulls, leopards, and ancestor skulls.
• The so-called "Seated Goddess" figurine (found in a grain bin, flanked by felines, apparently giving birth) remains one of the most iconic Neolithic objects, but its specific ritual function — fertility charm, ancestor figure, protective talisman, or something entirely outside modern categories — cannot be determined with certainty.

3.4 Mesoamerican Fertility Cults

• Aztec fertility deities such as Tlazolteotl (goddess of filth and purification, associated with sexual transgression and confession) and Xochiquetzal (goddess of flowers, beauty, and sexual pleasure) suggest a complex Mesoamerican theology of sexuality that integrated transgression, purification, and cosmic regeneration.
• The Aztec practice of ritual confession (neyolmelahualiztli) before Tlazolteotl — in which sexual sins were confessed once in a lifetime and absolved — parallels Christian confession in structure while differing fundamentally in theological framework. The confession purified not the soul but the social fabric.

3.5 Cross-Cultural Phallic Worship

• Phallic symbolism appears across virtually every ancient civilization: the Shiva lingam in Hindu temples; the herms (pillared busts with erect phalluses) at Athenian crossroads; the Egyptian Min with his erect member; the Japanese dōsojin roadside phalluses; and the Roman fascinum (a phallic amulet worn to ward off the evil eye).
• Catherine Johns (Sex or Symbol? Erotic Images of Greece and Rome, 1982) argued that ancient phallic imagery was primarily apotropaic (protective against evil) rather than erotic — a fundamental category error in modern interpretation.
• The mutilation of the herms in Athens (415 BCE) was treated as a catastrophic sacrilege — demonstrating that phallic images occupied the highest register of sacral protection rather than the pornographic register.
• Sheela-na-gigs — medieval stone carvings of women displaying exaggerated vulvas, found across Ireland and Britain — may represent a survival of pre-Christian fertility symbolism within Christian architecture.

3.6 Alchemical Sacred Marriage (Coniunctio)

• The alchemical tradition appropriated hieros gamos imagery in its concept of the coniunctio — the mystical marriage of opposites (Sol and Luna, sulphur and mercury, king and queen) that produces the philosopher's stone.
• Carl Jung (Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1955–56) interpreted alchemical marriage symbolism as a projection of psychological individuation — the integration of conscious and unconscious, animus and anima.
• The Rosarium Philosophorum (1550) — a famous series of alchemical woodcuts depicting the stages of the coniunctio from meeting through sexual union to death and rebirth — consciously echoes ancient hieros gamos imagery.

4. DUBIOUS CLAIMS (Tier 4 — No Credible Source)

4.1 Universal Matriarchal Golden Age

• The claim of a universal pre-patriarchal "golden age" of goddess worship and sacred sexuality, popularized by Riane Eisler (The Chalice and the Blade, 1987) and Merlin Stone (When God Was a Woman, 1976), extrapolates far beyond available evidence. While female-centered symbolism is abundant in the Neolithic, inferring social structure, gender relations, and ritual practice from figurines alone is methodologically problematic (Eller, 2000, The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory).

4.2 Modern "Temple Prostitution" Revival Claims

• Claims by some New Age groups that they are reviving authentic ancient "sacred prostitution" traditions lack any verifiable historical continuity and reflect modern projections onto the ancient past rather than genuine scholarly reconstruction.

4.3 Tantric "Sexual Magic" as Power Technique

• Popular Western interpretations of Tantra as primarily a technique for enhanced sexual performance or "sexual magic" fundamentally distort the tradition. Classical Tantric texts emphasize that maithuna is embedded in rigorous ascetic discipline, visualization, and mantra — the sexual component is subordinate to the soteriological goal. Marketing of "Tantric sex" workshops as authentic traditional practice reflects cultural appropriation rather than transmission.

4.4 Orgone Energy and Wilhelm Reich

• Wilhelm Reich's theory of "orgone energy" (1930s–1950s) — which posited a universal sexual-cosmic energy measurable by scientific instruments — has been invoked to validate ancient sacred-sexuality traditions. However, orgone theory lacks empirical support (the FDA obtained an injunction against Reich in 1954) and represents a modern pseudoscientific construct, not a rediscovery of ancient knowledge.
• The broader pattern of reinterpreting ancient sacred sexuality through modern frameworks (whether Reichian, Jungian, or New Age) consistently tells us more about modern projections than about ancient practice.

4.5 Ancient Sexual Rites as "Free Love" Precedent

• Modern claims that ancient sacred sexuality validates contemporary sexual liberation movements project anachronistic categories onto cultures with radically different understandings of personhood, gender, and the body. Ancient hieros gamos and Tantric maithuna were neither "liberating" nor "oppressive" in modern senses — they operated within cosmological frameworks incommensurable with post-Enlightenment individualism.
• The persistent desire to find ancient precedent for modern sexual ethics — whether conservative ("ancient cultures were chaste") or progressive ("ancient cultures practiced free love") — reveals the fundamentally presentist character of most popular engagement with sacred sexuality.

Counter-Arguments & Criticisms

Independent Invention vs. Diffusion Debate

• Skeptical position: Cross-cultural parallels in traditions related to Sacred Sexuality, Hieros Gamos, and Fertility Cults may reflect universal human experiences and cognitive predispositions rather than shared historical events or contact between civilizations. Critics argue that similar environments, social structures, and cognitive architectures naturally produce similar myths and rituals independently.
• Selection bias: Proponents of global connections often emphasize similarities while overlooking significant differences between cultural traditions. When examined in detail, traditions related to Sacred Sexuality, Hieros Gamos, and Fertility Cults across different cultures show substantial variations in detail, context, and meaning that undermine claims of common origin.
• Methodological concerns: Comparative mythology requires rigorous controls that are often absent from popular treatments. Without systematic analysis of both similarities and differences, confirmed transmission pathways, and chronological sequencing, cross-cultural parallels remain suggestive rather than probative.

Alternative Academic Explanations

• Cognitive universals: Research in cognitive science of religion demonstrates that certain religious and mythological concepts arise naturally from universal features of human cognition — including agent detection, teleological thinking, and minimal counterintuitiveness. These mechanisms can explain cross-cultural parallels without requiring historical contact.
• Environmental determinism: Similar ecological conditions (floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, seasonal cycles) produce similar cultural responses. Critics argue that many traditions related to Sacred Sexuality, Hieros Gamos, and Fertility Cults reflect common environmental experiences rather than extraordinary shared events.
• Critics have questioned whether the claimed parallels hold up under scrutiny, noting that superficial similarities may mask fundamental differences in meaning and function within their respective cultural contexts.

Research Gaps & Open Questions

• Dating uncertainties: Oral traditions related to Sacred Sexuality, Hieros Gamos, and Fertility Cults are notoriously difficult to date with precision. Without reliable chronological anchoring, claims about the age or sequence of cultural parallels remain speculative.
• Disputed transmission vectors: Proposed contact between distant civilizations in the deep past faces challenges from genetics, linguistics, and archaeology, which have not yet confirmed the required migration or communication routes.
• Limitations of current evidence: The existing evidence base for claims about Sacred Sexuality, Hieros Gamos, and Fertility Cults is often limited to circumstantial parallels and interpretive arguments. More systematic archaeological, genetic, and linguistic research is needed to test these hypotheses rigorously.

IMAGES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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CROSS-REFERENCE INDEX

Consolidated from 22 sources. Last Updated: Feb 28, 2026

Corrections

• 1 truncated DOI in the bibliography reassembled — Elsevier identifiers of the form 10.1016/0004-6981(72)90076-5 contain a parenthesised year, and an upstream parse treated the opening bracket as a field break: each DOI was cut short and its tail ()90076-5) left stranded in a neighbouring column. The two halves were rejoined from this same line — it was then confirmed to resolve against Crossref before being written, so no identifier was reconstructed on faith. Repaired: 10.1016/0048-721x(75)90020-2. Corpus hygiene campaign, Phase 4, 2026-07-29.

• Document header date — restored to Feb 28, 2026. The header read 2026-03-13 28, 2026: an ISO date had been written over the month name, leaving the day and year. Recovered from this document's own footer line, which preserves Feb 28, 2026 and whose day and year already agreed with the header remnant. No date was guessed. Corpus hygiene campaign, Phase 4, 2026-07-29.