Old World Egypt Inscribed pottery shards from the
Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2000–1800 BCE) found near ancient
Thebes (now
Luxor,
Egypt), list three human genders:
tai (male),
sḫt ("sekhet") and
hmt (female).
Sḫt is often translated as "eunuch", although there is little evidence that such individuals were castrated.
Mesopotamia In
Mesopotamian mythology, among the earliest written records of humanity, there are references to types of people who are not men and not women. In a
Sumerian
creation myth found on a stone tablet from the
second millennium BC, the goddess
Ninmah fashions a being "with no male organ and no female organ", for whom
Enki finds a position in society: "to stand before the king". In the
Akkadian myth of
Atra-Hasis (ca. 1700 BC), Enki instructs
Nintu, the goddess of birth, to establish a "third category among the people" in addition to men and women, that includes demons who steal infants, women who are unable to give birth, and priestesses who are prohibited from bearing children. In
Babylonia,
Sumer and
Assyria,
certain types of individuals who performed religious duties in the service of
Inanna/
Ishtar have been described as a third gender. They worked as
sacred prostitutes or
Hierodules, performed ecstatic dance, music and plays, wore masks and had gender characteristics of both women and men. In Sumer, they were given the
cuneiform names of ur.sal ("dog/man-woman") and kur.gar.ra (also described as a man-woman). Modern scholars, struggling to describe them using contemporary sex/gender categories, have variously described them as "living as women", or used descriptors such as hermaphrodites, eunuchs, homosexuals, transvestites, effeminate males and a range of other terms and phrases.
Indic culture is often represented as
Ardhanarisvara, with a dual male and female nature. Typically, Ardhanarisvara's right side is male and left side female. This sculpture is from the
Elephanta Caves near
Mumbai. References to a third sex can be found throughout the texts of India's religious traditions like
Jainism and
Buddhism – and it can be inferred that
Vedic culture recognised three genders. The
Vedas (c. 1500 BC–500 BC) describe individuals as belonging to one of three categories, according to one's nature or
prakrti. These are also spelled out in the
Kama Sutra (c. 4th century AD) and elsewhere as
pums-prakrti (male-nature),
stri-prakrti (female-nature), and
tritiya-prakrti (third-nature). Texts suggest that third sex individuals were well known in premodern India and included male-bodied or female-bodied people as well as
intersex people, and that they can often be recognised from childhood. A third sex is discussed in ancient
Hindu law, medicine,
linguistics and
astrology. The foundational work of Hindu law, the
Manu Smriti (c. 200 BC–200 AD) explains the biological origins of the three sexes: A male child is produced by a greater quantity of male seed, a female child by the prevalence of the female; if both are equal, a third-sex child or boy and girl twins are produced; if either are weak or deficient in quantity, a failure of conception results. Indian linguist
Patañjali's work on
Sanskrit grammar, the
Mahābhāṣya (c. 200 BC), states that Sanskrit's three
grammatical genders are derived from three natural genders. The earliest
Tamil grammar, the
Tolkappiyam (3rd century BC) refers to hermaphrodites as a third "neuter" gender (in addition to a feminine category of unmasculine males). In
Vedic astrology, the nine planets are each assigned to one of the three genders; the third gender,
tritiya-prakrti, is associated with
Mercury,
Saturn and (in particular)
Ketu. In the
Puranas, there are references to three kinds of
devas of music and dance:
apsaras (female),
gandharvas (male) and
kinnars (neuter). The two great
Sanskrit epic poems, the
Ramayana and the
Mahabharata, indicates the existence of a third gender in ancient Indic society. Some versions of
Ramayana tell that in one part of the story, the hero
Rama heads into exile in the forest. Halfway there, he discovers that most of the people of his hometown
Ayodhya were following him. He told them, "Men and women, turn back", and with that, those who were "neither men nor women" did not know what to do, so they stayed there. When Rama returned from exile years later, he discovered them still there and blessed them, saying that there will be a day when they, too, will have a share in ruling the world.
Greco-Roman Classical Antiquity , from which the word
hermaphrodite is derived. In Plato's
Symposium, written around the 4th century BC, Aristophanes relates a creation myth involving three original sexes: female, male and androgynous. They are split in half by Zeus, producing four different contemporary sex/gender types which seek to be reunited with their lost other half; in this account, the modern heterosexual man and woman descend from the original androgynous sex. The myth of
Hermaphroditus involves heterosexual lovers merging into their primordial androgynous sex. Other
creation myths around the world share a belief in three original sexes, such as those from northern Thailand. Many have interpreted the "
eunuchs" of the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean world as a third gender that inhabited a
liminal space between women and men, understood in their societies as somehow neither or both. In the
Historia Augusta, the eunuch body is described as a
tertium genus hominum (a third human gender). In 77 BC, a eunuch named Genucius was prevented from claiming goods left to him in a
will, on the grounds that he had voluntarily mutilated himself (
amputatis sui ipsius) and was neither a woman or a man (
neque virorum neque mulierum numero) according to
Valerius Maximus. Several scholars have argued that the eunuchs in the
Hebrew Bible and the
New Testament were understood in their time to belong to a third gender, rather than the more recent interpretations of a kind of emasculated man, or a metaphor for
chastity. The early Christian theologian,
Tertullian, wrote that Jesus himself was a eunuch (c. 200 AD). Tertullian also noted the existence of a third sex (
tertium sexus) among heathens: "a third race in sex... made of male and female in one." He may have been referring to the
Galli, "eunuch" devotees of the
Phrygian goddess
Cybele, who were described as belonging to a third sex by several
Roman writers.
Early modern Europe The so-called "Balkan Sworn Virgins", which have been documented as early as the 19th century, are sometimes considered a separate gender category. Breaking the vow was once punishable by death; though this is no longer the case today, breaking one's vow can result in social ostracization.
Jewish Diaspora In
Rabbinical Jewish traditions there were 6 terms used to describe gender identity: •
Androgynos: both male and female genitalia (eternal doubt of legal gender) • ''
Ay'lonit'': Barren female. Female genitalia, barren. •
Nekeva: female •
Saris: castrated or naturally infertile male (often translated as "eunuch") •
Tumtum: genitalia concealed by skin (unknown gender, unless skin removed) •
Zachar: male
Early Islamic world Mukhannathun ( "effeminate ones", "ones who resemble women", singular
mukhannath) was a term used in Classical Arabic to refer to
effeminate men or people of ambiguous sex characteristics who appeared feminine or functioned socially in roles typically carried out by women. According to the Iranian scholar Mehrdad Alipour, "in the
premodern period, Muslim societies were aware of five manifestations of gender ambiguity: This can be seen through figures such as the
khasi (eunuch), the
hijra, the
mukhannath, the
mamsuh and the
khuntha (hermaphrodite/intersex)." Western scholars Aisya Aymanee M. Zaharin and Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli give the following explanation of the meaning of the term
mukhannath and its derivate Arabic forms in the hadith literature:
Mukhannathun, especially those in the city of
Medina, are mentioned throughout the
hadith and in the works of many
early Arabic and
Islamic writers. During the
Rashidun era and first half of the
Umayyad era, they were strongly associated with music and entertainment. Mukhannathun existed in
pre-Islamic Arabia, during the time of the
Islamic prophet Muhammad, and
early Islamic eras. A number of
hadith indicate that
mukhannathun were used as male servants for wealthy women in the early days of Islam, due to the belief that they were not sexually interested in the female body. These sources do not state that the
mukhannathun were homosexual, only that they "lack desire". One particularly prominent
mukhannath with the
laqab Ṭuways ("little peacock") was born in Medina on the day Muhammad died. There are few sources that describe why Tuways was labeled a
mukhannath, or what behavior of his was considered effeminate. No sources describe his sexuality as immoral or imply that he was attracted to men, and he is reported to have married a woman and fathered several children in his later life.
Pre-Colonial Americas and Oceania Mesoamerica The ancient
Maya civilization may have recognised a third gender, according to historian Matthew Looper. Looper notes the androgynous Maize Deity and masculine
Moon goddess of
Maya mythology, and iconography and inscriptions where rulers embody or impersonate these deities. He suggests that a Mayan third gender might also have included individuals with special roles such as healers or
diviners. Anthropologist and archaeologist Miranda Stockett notes that several writers have felt the need to move beyond a two-gender framework when discussing prehispanic cultures across
mesoamerica, and concludes that the
Olmec,
Aztec and
Maya peoples understood "more than two kinds of bodies and more than two kinds of gender." Anthropologist Rosemary Joyce agrees, writing that "gender was a fluid potential, not a fixed category before the Spaniards came to Mesoamerica. Childhood training and ritual shaped, but did not set, adult gender, which could encompass third genders and alternative sexualities as well as "male" and "female." At the height of the Classic period, Maya rulers presented themselves as embodying the entire range of gender possibilities, from the male through the female, by wearing blended costumes and playing male and female roles in state ceremonies." Joyce notes that many figures of Mesoamerican art are depicted with male genitalia and female breasts, while she suggests that other figures in which chests and waists are exposed but no sexual characteristics (primary or secondary) are marked may represent a third sex, ambiguous gender, or androgyny.
Inca Andean Studies scholar Michael Horswell writes that third-gendered ritual attendants to
chuqui chinchay, a
jaguar deity in
Incan mythology, were "vital actors in Andean ceremonies" prior to
Spanish colonisation. Horswell elaborates: "These
quariwarmi (men-women)
shamans mediated between the symmetrically dualistic spheres of Andean cosmology and daily life by performing rituals that at times required same-sex erotic practices. Their transvested attire served as a visible sign of a third space that negotiated between the masculine and the feminine, the present and the past, the living and the dead. Their shamanic presence invoked the androgynous creative force often represented in Andean mythology."
Richard Trexler gives an early Spanish account of religious 'third gender' figures from the
Inca empire in his 1995 book "Sex and Conquest":
Indigenous North Americans With over 500 surviving
Indigenous North American cultures, attitudes about sex and gender are diverse. Historically, some communities have had social or spiritual roles for
people who in some way may manifest a third-gender, or another gender-variant way of being, at least some of the time, by their particular culture's standards. Some of these ways continue today, while others have died out due to colonialism. Some communities and individuals have adopted the pan-Indian neologism
Two-spirit as a way of honoring contemporary figures and organizing intertribally. Historically,
Inuit in areas of the
Canadian Arctic, such as
Igloolik and
Nunavik, had a third gender concept called
sipiniq (). A
sipiniq infant was believed to have changed their physical sex from male to female at the moment of birth.
Sipiniq children were regarded as socially male, and would be named after a male relative, perform a male's tasks, and would wear
traditional clothing tailored for men's tasks. This generally lasted until puberty, but in some cases continued into adulthood and even after the
sipiniq person married a man. The
Netsilik Inuit used the word
kipijuituq for a similar concept.
Melanesia The
Simbari people, indigenous to what is now Papua New Guinea, traditionally recognized a third sex, which included people born with
a genetic condition common in the island's native population. The condition causes atypical genitalia at birth, which midwives could typically recognize, and classify them as
kwolu-aatmwol (meaning "turning into a man"). Members of this third sex are typically socialized similarly to males, but are not seen as men. They take on masculine gender roles, and may be war leaders and shamans -- but they do not complete male initiation rites. Kwolu-aatmwol who were not properly identified at birth were socialized as women, and later were "discovered", often upon marriage. Many would move to distant towns where they could "pass" in society as men. ==Art, literature, and media==