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eunuchs, religious  

Richard Gordon

In the Classical period, religious eunuchs are a feature of several Anatolian cults of female deities, extending across to Scythia (Hdt. 4. 67: not shamans) and to the southern foothills of the Taurus mountains, but independent of Babylonian and Phoenician (Euseb. Vit. Const. 3. 55. 2 f.) practices (see anatolian deities). As a whole the institution created a class of pure servants of a god (Matt. 19: 12). Its significance derives from a double contrast, with the involuntary castration of children for court use and the normal obligation to marry. The adult self-castrate expressed in his body both world-rejection and -superiority.Two forms may be distinguished. (1) A senior, or even high, priest in a temple, e.g. the eunuchs of *Hecate at Lagina in *Caria (Sokolowski, LSAM no. 69. 19, etc.); the Megabyz(x)us of *Artemis at *Ephesus (Strabo 14. 1. 23; Vett. Val., 2. 21. 47); the *Attis and Battaces, the high priests of Cybele at *Pessinus.

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Hypsicratia  

Simon Hornblower

Hypsicratia, mistress of *Mithradates VI Eupator, who admiringly called her by the male form of the name, Hypsicrates (Plut. Pomp. 32. 8). Her commemorative funerary statue has been found at Phanagoreia on the Cimmerian *Bosporus (2); it calls her Hypsikrates, but makes clear she was female. The inscription perhaps (Bowersock) formed part of the restoration of Mithradates’ prestige in the time of his grand-daughter Dynamis.

Article

Ishtar  

Mary Frazer

Ishtar/Inanna is the most important Mesopotamian goddess, attested in southern Babylonia from the late 4th millennium bce until the end of cuneiform culture, and in the wider Near East from the end of the 3rd millennium on. Depending on time, place and context she was associated with sexual love, violence, legitimate kingship, fertility, the underworld, prophecy, and medicine. The cults of Ishtar-like goddesses in the Levant influenced cults of Aphrodite.Ishtar is the Akkadian name of the most important Mesopotamian goddess, the daughter of the sky god Anu or the moon god Sîn (depending on the tradition), and sister of the sun god Šamaš and the queen of the underworld, Ereshkigal. Her cult is first attested c.3300–3000bce at the Eanna temple in the southern Babylonian city of Uruk (see Figure 1),1 where it continued to be practised until the late Achaemenid period (c.400bce.