Male Homoerotic Practices in Achaemenid Persia: An Overview (original) (raw)
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Gender and Sex (in Achaemenid Persia)
will be published in: B. Jacobs / R. Rollinger (eds.), A companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, 2 vols., (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World), Malden, MA; Oxford; Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014
Following the theoretical thoughts of Joan W. Scott the ancient literary sources are studied with regard to ideas about gender and sexual differences in Achaemenid society. Therefore the Classical sources are confronted with indigenous Achaemenid evidence to set off the ‘occidental’ literary discourse and its impression of ‘oriental’ women and men. The question on lived gender relations is discussed by examining conceptions of manliness and femininity. Based on the extant tradition the focus is put on the Achaemenid elite and the king, who can be spotted as embodiment of hegemonic manliness.
Are There Homosexuals in Mesopotamian Literature?
Are There Homosexuals in Mesopotamian Literature?
Same-sex interaction is not a frequent topic in Mesopotamian literature, but neither is it unknown: the Epic of Gilgameš, the Middle Assyrian Laws, excerpts from omen literature, and texts referring to people with ambiguous sexuality are regularly mentioned when the issue of homosexuality is raised with regard to cuneiform sources. These sources suggest that love between male persons, as well as some kind of intimate interaction between males (much less often between females), was quite as thinkable in the world of the audience of Mesopotamian texts as it is worldwide in different times and cultures. The question is rather how this interaction was interpreted by the ancient readerships and by modern scholarship; in other words, what conception of gender is implied in the understanding of relationships between people of same sex? The title of this paper indicates that in the language of modern scholarship there is a category of "homosexuals," that is, a definable class of human beings whose common denominator is that they are sexually oriented towards their own rather than the opposite sex. The underlying assumption here is that of an individual sexual orientation, whether due to "nature" or "nurture," that has a fundamental effect on the sexual behavior of the person in question. This, again, rests on the idea of an individual "sexuality," a deep-seated domain in human body and mind that presides over the person's life from her cradle to her grave and is only partially controlled by the person herself. It is well known that the idea of "sexuality" is based on sexological research since the last part of the ninteenth century c.e. (I use the term "sexology" as a shorthand for the psychiatric, psychological, and social-scientific studies on human sexual conduct and its causes; cf. Crozier 2008). The modern categories of homo-and heterosexuality, as well as the fully developed differentiation implied by the acronym LGBTQ, make perfect sense today when sexological categorizations of people have become self-determining classifications of their identity, lifestyle , and self-conception. It is equally well known that ancient written sources were not composed with the above-described idea of "sexuality" in mind and do not categorize human gender and its manifestations accordingly. Hence the title of this essay is a conscious anachronism. In my Homoeroticism in the Biblical World (Nissinen 1998), published more than a decade ago, I attempted to investigate the "cases" of same-sex intimate interaction in biblical and other ancient literature from a perspective that challenged the anachronistic imposition of sexological categories onto ancient texts. Greatly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault (1978) and David Halperin (1990), I interpreted the construction of gender in the ancient sources as based on a distinction between the active and passive roles in sexual relationships, which produced a hierarchical structure, rather than seeing the persons involved in the available "cases" as homosexuals or heterosexuals. In the wake of the growing body of studies on gender in ancient sources since the 1990s, the traditional sexological categories have been reassessed in many other studies of same-sex eroticism in biblical and other ancient literature, either from an ancient Near Eastern (e.g.
Achaemenid court eunuchs in their Near Eastern context: images in the longue durée
Anais Do Museu Paulista: História E Cultura Material, 2023
This study aims to compare some images of beardless attendants in monumental reliefs from the Achaemenid (c. 550-330 BCE) and Neo-Assyrian (c. 911-612 BCE) empires, which we consider relevant sources for the study of court eunuchs and cultural conceptions about castrati. We argue that such comparisons are possible since eunuchism was a long-standing institution in the Ancient Near East, as shown by several analogies with the Assyrian evidence. We also argue that scholars have downplayed the importance of court eunuchs due to gender/sex assumptions based on Western and modern perspectives that consider eunuchism incompatible with high-ranking social standing. With these theoretical considerations in mind, we finally sketch some possible analytical proposals to explore the images of beardless attendants in Persia and Assyria.
FEMALE HOMOSEXUALITY IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME
Routledge, 2021
This groundbreaking study, among the earliest syntheses on female homosexuality throughout Antiquity, explores the topic with careful reference to ancient concepts and views, drawing fully on the existing visual and written record including literary, philosophical, and scienti c documents. Even today, ancient female homosexuals are still too often seen in terms of a mythical, ethereal Sapphic love, or stereotyped as "Amazons" or courtesans. Boehringer's scholarly book replaces these clichés with rigorous, precise analysis of iconography and texts by Sappho, Plato, Ovid, Juvenal, and many other lyric poets, satirists, and astrological writers, in search of the prevailing norms, constraints, and possibilities for erotic desire. The portrait emerges of an ancient society to which today's sexual categories do not apply-a society "before sexuality"-where female homosexuality looks very di erent, but is nonetheless very real. Now available in English for the rst time, Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome includes a preface by David Halperin. This book will be of value to students and scholars of ancient sexuality and gender, and to anyone interested in histories and theories of sexuality.
HISTORY OF SEXUALITY IN CLASSICAL CIVILIZATIONS: An analysis from the perspective of Peter Stearns (Atena Editora), 2023
Sexuality is a human dimension whose study makes it possible to understand the civilizing process and the direction of social conduct. The historical bias of sexuality brings multiple possibilities, in this work we prioritized a bibliographical research of an exploratory nature to detect patterns of sexuality in classical civilizations: China, Greece, Rome, Persia and India, in the book History of Sexuality by Peter Stearns. The analysis aimed to focus on specific aspects of sexuality such as interest in sexual pleasure, division by gender, the role and participation of women, homoerotic relationships, prostitution, culture and art. Sex for procreative purposes was a constant in all the civilizations analyzed. Interest in sexual pleasure varied according to cultural conditions. Interest in female pleasure showed greater and lesser emphasis in India and Greece respectively. Sex outside of marriage was frowned upon when practiced by women. Female prostitution socially accepts the distinction between respectable and non-respectable women. Homoerotic sexuality was more freely practiced in Greece than in other places and at the same time it was the place that most devalued female sexuality. Among the Greeks, passivity was frowned upon, but sex between men was a matter of parity. In terms of sex and art, China produced little in this regard, whereas the Greeks explicitly produced sex as an artistic expression. The sexual artistic themes of the Romans were influenced by Greeks but were less obscene and more apotropaic. In India, erotic art presented itself as a form of intersection between sexuality and religiosity, showing a mixture of sex, deities, anatomical details and sexual positions. The societies analyzed were more open to fantasies and wanton sexual conduct in art and culture than in everyday life.