Astarte Boy Priest by Elveo on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

My original character, Shamin, the youngest brother of eunuch saris of Armenia ©Elveo

This young boy is a priest of deity Astarte (Ishtar or Inana). He’s born eunuch, natural, not castrated but naturally looking like a hermaphrodite and he’s inclined to men.

The goddess Inanna-Ishtar was a hermaphrodite and transvestite deity, considered as both male and female, and in a prayer of lamentation she is addressed as ‘My god and my goddess’.

Among the arguments put forth for Ishtar’s hermaphroditic or bigendered character is the practice of transvestism in religious rites associated with her. As to the hermaphrodite sexuality (gender) of Ishtar, there is a Moabite Stone speaking of Ishtar-Kemosh, (Kemosh is a male deity) thus uniting the sexes. It is curious, too, that a Phoenician inscription of Tyre unites the horned Baal and Astarte into a kind of hermaphrodite. In Hittite texts Ishtar-Shaushga is described as feminine and masculine together.

The priests of Ishtar or Astarte were called assinu or kurgarru who wereeunuchs, or feminine men, hermaphrodites, androgynous and passive homosexuals_._ Therefore in assyrian “assinutu“ - homosexuality.

Besides that my character Shamin is also the ex-beloved of Azraf. What can I tell about homosexuality in Assyria and Mesopotamia?

“Homosexuality in itself is thus nowhere condemned as licentiousness, as immorality, as social disorder, or as transgressing any human or divine law… That there was nothing religiously amiss with homosexual love between men is seen by the fact that they prayed for divine blessing on it.” (Reallexicon der Assyriologie)

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