The transgender and nonbinary people of ancient Sumeria
Did transgender people exist before tumblr? Transphobes seems to think transgender identities did not exist before “gender ideology”. Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid documents the existence of ancient trans people in a thread over at twitter.
//“To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inana,” reads a 4,000-year-old temple hymn to Inana, the Sumerian goddess of love and war. Non-binary gender identities are not new. Brief thread in response to that one Karen.
Link to A hymn to Inana (Inana C): translation.
Ishtar, the later Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, had gender fluid characterstics. Ashurbanipal’s hymn to Ishtar of Nineveh compares her to the god Ashur. “Like Ashur she wears a beard and is clothed with brilliance…The crown on her head gleams like the stars”
Gender fluid identity appears throughout Mesopotamian history, like that of the assinnu, a word sometimes written as a combination of the cuneiform signs for “man” and “woman”. They served as cultic personnel to Ishtar and even as prophets, like one named Šēlebum in Mari.
In Mesopotamian literature and myth, a gender fluid figure known as an assinnu named Asushunamir, helps rescue the goddess Ishtar when she becomes trapped in the Underworld.
In a Sumerian creation myth, the goddess Ninmah fashions several people out of clay. “She fashioned one with neither penis nor vagina on its body. Enki looked at the one with neither penis nor vagina on its body…and decreed its fate to stand before the king”.
Various other terms appear in cuneiform texts from ancient Mesopotamia that refer to people with non-binary gender and sex. The kalû was a singer, typically a man who participated in activities reserved for women. The pilpilû is one whose sex is “changed” by the goddess Ishtar.
In conclusion, non-binary gender identity is not new and not difficult to understand. Shame on anyone with a platform who uses it to spread misinformation and hate.//
By the way, one of the clearest proofs of transgender identities in ancient Sumer and Mesopotamia, were the priestesses of Inana (or Inanna, also known as Ishtar). They are known as the Gala (referred to as kalû above). T
hey presided over religious rites, healed the sick, predicted the future, made music, raised money for the poor, and “dissolved evil” during lunar eclipses. They used feminine pronouns and dressed and lived as women. According to several sources they also castrated themselves.
The goddess of Cybele, who is closely related to Ishtar/Inanna, also had transgender priestesses called Galli. That religion became very popular in the later Roman Empire.
