Now for the 14th.
Some of you may know the name from a video game or something, because those do tend to like pulling on ancient mythology for things. For those that don't know her much, she's an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, among a lot of other things. She was one of the big names in their mythology, like how everyone knows Artemis but I doubt more than a few of you could tell me who Rhea is.
We're talking around 5 thousand years ago, so it's not new. The choices and culture that I'm talking about here is basic and bedrock--it's where we came from, it's the most human any culture is because this is a culture that formed from the humans and hasn't been shaped by centuries of wars and politics and scorned men/women who ordered a change of culture just to suit their needs for whatever reason. Yeah, this is one of my theories on how culture shifted to not allow humans to be humans. It's the same stupidity that said that women are less than men, that dark skin makes someone less valuable, and so on. I am not fond of hating people for things like this, but baseless bigotry is something that I don't understand and can't accept. That's the reason for this entire month of posting, to help teach someone out there that just because it's the way it is now, doesn't mean it's the way it always was or should be.
Rant over, moving on back to Ishtar.
So, she's a really awesome. She's sometimes seen as the Queen Goddess. Her symbol is worn to bring luck and fertility and protection from bad things. It could be said that she continued into other mythologies, but I think it's more of a case of humans taking ideas from previous generations to avoid having to reinvent the wheel.
One of the interesting things about Ishtar though, is that she is a goddess of contradictions. She was war and love, good and bad, and both sides of a lot of coins. As with a lot of the deities of the time, what she was goddess of changed depending on the time or the place, as her mythology grew and changed, or as her duties were shared with others. She showed up in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and several poems and carvings in history.
Either way, she earned her place in Pride Month for a reason.
While she is primarily considered a female, she is sometimes worshipped as a 'bearded goddess' and has traits from both masculine and feminine genders, leaving her somewhere in the middle.
Enheduanna, who I am definitely going to write an entire post on later because she's considered a great poet and possibly one of the first astrologists, but that's for later. She wrote a poem that said that Ishtar, also known as Inana, had the power to turn a man to a woman and reverse. Considering the times, there are a couple things that it could mean, such as a change of jobs, making someone a warrior/not, or something like that. We also have to consider how much we don't know about the language of Mesopotamia, and that most of what we do get comes in tiny fragments.
The following is a quote from her poem, taken from the Noches Blog link below but also on the Dirty, Sexy, History link.
Without your consent, no destiny is determined, the most ingenious solution finds no favour.
To run fast, to slip away, to calm, to pacify are yours, Inanna,
To dart aimlessly, to go too fast, to fall, to get up, to sustain a comrade are yours, Inanna.
To open high road and byroad, safe lodging on the way, helping the worn-out along are yours, Inanna.
To make footpath and trail go in the right direction, to make the going good are yours, Inanna.
To destroy, to create, to tear out, to establish are yours, Inanna.
To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna.
According to another source though, there were a 'significant portion' of trans/non-binary people in service to Ishtar, because of her androgynous/gender-fluid/non-binary nature. There were also a lot of 'cross-dressers', who were mentioned in poetry about her. One poem mentioned of one of those cross-dressers that her power turned their masculinity into femininity.
One of the groups of people that worshipped Ishtar are the 'Pilipili', which are those born female who are given spears and male work because of Ishtar. It's unknown how much they were changed, but there are questions because of the phallic connotations of them being given spears.
Another group are the Gala, who are priestesses that worked for Ishtar and sang songs for her. Some were male until they joined her order and were then considered female in all ways, though others were actually female.
There are a lot of fragments that helped support these, but there still isn't a lot known, and historians tend to write history how they want it to go, biases included. They also tend to apply things to what they know, like applying the gender terms we know to their culture. But, I wanted to tell you about this anyway because no matter how to view it, it's proof that people were awesome a few millennia ago.
See you again later today, I guess.
Sources:
The Conversations-- An Essay on Ishtar
Andrea Mariana-- Ishtar: A Genderfluid Goddess
Acadamus Education-- Ancient Mesopotamian Transgender and Non-binary Identities
Dirty, Sexy, History-- Trans and non-binary identities in history
Enheduana.org-- the Hymn to Inana
Classical Association.Org-- A Slideshow on Non-Binary Gender Identity in Ancient Mesopotamia
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