INTRODUCTION

In 465/4 BCE, Xerxes (486-465 BCE) and the crown prince, Darius, were allegedly killed by a plot devised by a certain Artapanus and his eunuch ally and relative, Aspamitres.² Sometime later, the powerful eunuch Artoxares³ reportedly helped king Artaxerxes I (465-424 BCE) to negotiate a truce with his rebellious brother-in-law, Megabyzus. This same Artoxares would later crown Darius II (423-405 BCE) as king during a succession crisis. According to Ctesias, the Paphlagonian eventually died after staging an unsuccessful coup d’état.⁴ Artaxerxes III (359-338 BCE) and Artaxerxes IV (338-336 BCE) were both allegedly murdered by an able military commander and eunuch named Bagoas.⁵ More well-known, however, is another Bagoas, the eunuch lover of Alexander the Great, who had originally been the favourite of Darius III (336-330 BCE).

Mysterious, bold and influential, court eunuchs are at the core of Greek and Roman tales about Ancient Persia. But were they nothing more than tales?

In a recent discussion of “effeminates” and court eunuchs in the Achaemenid Empire, Madreiter and Schnegg cautiously advise that “as long as Old Persian evidence does not support the importance of eunuchs, the Western sources have to be interpreted cautiously”.⁶ While not denying that Classical sources must be critically assessed, this study shall argue that modern historians have downplayed part of the evidence (including iconography) for court eunuchs in the Ancient Near East (ANE) due to gender preconceptions and Orientalist misrepresentations. Especially concerning the issue of gender, this study will show how castration per se has no self-evident meaning in every context. I shall apply the argument put forward by Omar N’Shea regarding the Neo-Assyrian Empire to the Achaemenid case, concluding that one should avoid taking for granted that Achaemenid eunuchs were “effeminate”, “gender ambiguous”, or subsumed under the category of “subordinate masculinity”⁷ - which actually amounts to uncritically accepting Greek evidence.

Two further sections of this study show that, despite the scholarly reluctance to accept the reality of Achaemenid castrati, eunuchism was a long-standing institution in the ANE (and beyond) and, accordingly, that we should study Achaemenid eunuchs (and their images) against their Mesopotamian historical background, particularly their Neo-Assyrian predecessors. Finally, the last section of this study provides a brief overview of possible analogies between “eunuchs” in Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid monumental reliefs, defining and applying the aesthetic category of “uncanny” and the idea of “performative image” to the interpretation of ANE monumental art.

TRAUMNOVELLE: EUNUCHS, SERAGLIO AND ORIENTALISM

Dictionaries and handbooks usually define court eunuchs as Eastern castrated officials who oversaw royal women and “harems”.⁸ This conception, strongly inspired by Orientalist and Eurocentric descriptions of the Safavid and Ottoman courts in the Modern and Contemporary Eras, was often uncritically projected into Achaemenid Persia at the scholarly and artistic levels.⁹

However, the applicability of this notion to the realities of Ancient Persia is highly debatable. Eunuch is a word coming from the Ancient Greek eunoûkhos, which classical sources widely used to describe pre-pubertal castrated courtiers¹⁰ that may not have served exclusively as guardians of women¹¹ or even as overseers of a “harem” (whose existence in the ANE is in itself controversial).¹² We also know that, at least from a historical point of view, castrated officials¹³ were present in civilizations usually associated with the Western tradition, such as the Roman Empire¹⁴ and the Hellenistic kingdoms,¹⁵ not to mention Classical Greece itself.¹⁶ Finally, male castration was closely related to several spheres of the “high culture” and Christian religion in Western History, including, for example, the figure of the modern castrati (emasculated men acting as soprani or mezzosoprani).¹⁷ It is clear, then, that the idea of eunuchs as an exclusively or typically Eastern institution, often used to reinforce the idea of Asian despotic rulers,¹⁸ is a myth.

The fact that this myth remains widespread in contemporary artistic and scholarly works bears testimony to the far-reaching consequences of Western Orientalism. In fact, one of the characteristics of “Orientalism” in the 19^th century was precisely to presume a certain stagnation and immutability of Eastern civilizations,¹⁹ which enabled the simple projection of contemporaneous European representations of the East into the past. The assumption that Western fantasies about “princesses”, “harems” and “eunuchs” could be a transhistorical reality in the “Orient” is therefore one expression of Orientalist thinking.²⁰

Gender, sex and castration

Unfortunately, these are not the only still widespread myths about ancient eunuchs. Historians take for granted, for instance, the eunuch’s “effeminate” nature, his “homoerotic” behaviour,²¹ and other aspects supposedly related to castration, reproducing views that are strongly contaminated by Classical and modern Western Orientalist descriptions of the institution. Several authors are also reluctant to accept that eunuchs could have extensively served in the military or in the administration or that they were ascribed attributes of masculinity in Near Eastern societies.²² All such sex and gender preconceptions make it even harder to attain genuine knowledge on eunuchs in the ANE in general and in Achaemenid Persia in particular.

As already extensively discussed by gender theorists such as Judith Butler, Thomas Laqueur and Anne Fausto-Sterling, “sex” is constructed within a web of selective operations of categorization, grouping and intervention over the anatomic sphere. In our Western society,²³ it is a construct born within an already gendered reality and framed by gender normative binarism, asymmetrical gender relations and compulsory heterosexuality, which is continuously produced by the reiterated performance of normative gender acts.²⁴ Modern Western discourses create and sustain the binary gender as springing naturally from sex, whose essential appearance is discursively produced. There is no subject and no essence prior to the gendered discourse.²⁵

When historians strive to find categories to describe “eunuchs”, they often reproduce stereotypes emanating from their own binary gender ideals, presuming, for example, that the lack of testicles amounts to a sex/gender category different than the male/masculine one.²⁶ This happens, for instance, with the use of the category of “third gender”,²⁷ which would necessarily presuppose a naturally binary gender system over which a third “layer” would be artificially added. However, sex and gender²⁸ are contingent and historically variable notions, and castration has no self-evident meaning in every context. In Classical and Late Antiquity, for instance, court eunuchs were often associated with feminine attributes and their lack of testicles was indeed taken as proof of their “imperfect” sex.²⁹ In the ANE, on the other hand, while ideal masculinity may have been characterized by sexual vigour and progeny,³⁰ it seems that ša rēši/LÚ.SAG were normally understood as one of the many possible manifestations of male sex and masculinity.³¹

Connell’s model of masculinities³² is helpful in understanding the situation of Near Eastern court eunuchs since it assumes that plural masculinities may arise inside the binary gender organization and entertain different power relations among themselves.³³ In this system, masculinity is not monolithic and exhibits several varieties: hegemonic, subordinate, complicit, etc. “Hegemonic” masculinity is defined by Connell and Messerschmidt as “the pattern of practice (i.e., things done, not just a set of role expectations or identity) that allowed men’s dominance over women to continue”. The authors also emphasize that “men who received the benefits of patriarchy without enacting a strong version of masculine dominance could be regarded as showing a complicit masculinity”.³⁴

It must be stressed that Achaemenid and Neo-Assyrian court eunuchs, while not belonging to the hegemonic masculinity epitomized by the king, were certainly not outside of their respective normative sex/gender systems since they were institutionalized and actively produced by the standing social and political order.³⁵ The idea that they were “deviant” in terms of sex or gender comes mainly from a Greco-Roman bias, but Near Eastern sources seem to indicate they could occupy a category of non-hegemonic masculinity, possibly a “complicit” one, as suggested by N’Shea.³⁶

Kastrationsangst: historiography and the terminology for “eunuchs”

In his ground-breaking assessment of court eunuchs in Assyria, Grayson regretted that Assyriologists had either ignored or dismissed the subject of eunuchism altogether as a despicable and trivial institution.³⁷ In fact, in the rare cases in which ancient eunuchs were deemed worthy of comment, they have been associated with “effeminacy” and “eastern decadence” in Western representations of the “Orient”.³⁸ For this reason, few studies have helped us understand the institution in depth in its respective historical contexts. Even if studies on eunuchs are now increasingly relevant due mainly to a growing interest in gender and sex in Antiquity and beyond following what we call the “Third Wave” of (post)feminist studies,³⁹ it is true that the “uncanny” feeling provoked by the image of male castration among Western audiences still hinders advances. This posture has had some consequences on the study of the sources and the terminology related to castrati in the ANE.

In both Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid historiography, for instance, studies on ša rēši/eunoûkhos have been marked by a strong reluctance to accept the possibility that the high administration could have employed numerous castrated men. Leo Oppenheim, one of the first authors to deny the automatic identification of ša rēši with castration, thought it was “inconceivable” that a eunuch could have been selected to act as the king of Assyria in a ritual of substitution.⁴⁰ In the case of Achaemenid Persia, both Pierre Briant and Reinhard Pirngruber, following a remark by Paul Garelli, argued that the castration of numerous officials would be illogical and unnecessary.⁴¹ These authors argue that noble Iranian and high-ranking dignitaries of the court that were called eunoûkhoi constituted a category of non-castrated courtiers, whereas only slave eunuchs would have been castrated.⁴² In brief, they believe that castration and high-ranking positions were mutually exclusive.⁴³

These arguments, however, must be critically approached. They come from modern and Western perspectives on sex and gender that consider the lack of a penis or testicles as an automatic sign of effeminacy and therefore of a lower hierarchical position in power relations.⁴⁴ To question the “necessity” of having numerous castrated officials in the palace is (i) to ignore the comparative evidence that proves that this was at least possible - such as the attestation of hundreds of eunuchs in the Ottoman court⁴⁵ or the existence of eleven thousand court eunuchs in the Abbasid caliphate of Al-Muqtadir (908-932 CE),⁴⁶ to mention only a few notable cases - and (ii) to search for essential and/or practical explanations for culturally oriented power relations. Comparative evidence also proves that court eunuchs could marry, adopt children,⁴⁷ and serve in the military and high positions,⁴⁸ being distinguished as a category from other non-castrated officials in the palace.⁴⁹

Greek eunoûkhos etymologically means “he who has the bed”,⁵⁰ a title linked to the function of watching over the king when he was most vulnerable at his sleep, but it was almost certainly used by Classical authors to specifically designate castrated officials.⁵¹ In Herodotus, the link is made absolutely clear in his story of Hermotimus, a Carian eunuch (eunoûkhos) at the Persian court who is explicitly described as having being castrated (the verb is ektémnō) and sold out by Painonios of Chios.⁵² Herodotus also says that “beautiful boys” were selected to become eunuchs, the same criterion used when he describes the punitive castration of Ionian boys by the Persians.⁵³ The beauty of the eunuchs is a traditional topic of classical sources⁵⁴ and may have parallels in the eastern sources as well: an Ugaritic letter, for instance, describes the delivery of a prepubescent and “fair” (damqu) boy for castration.⁵⁵

Akkadian ša rēši literally means “he of the head”.⁵⁶ The expression is more commonly rendered with the Sumerograms LÚ.SAG in the Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions.⁵⁷ Etymologically, Frazer has recently supported that the expression could have referred to the “head of the bed” of the king, probably designating an official who watched over the king in his chambers, exactly as the Greek eunoûkhos and similarly to the Byzantine title parakoimṓmenos (“chamberlain”), a position usually reserved for castrati.⁵⁸

The translation of ša rēši as “eunuch” in the sense of castrated official was established early in the history of Assyriology and accepted by many specialists.⁵⁹ Brinkman endorsed this view in his discussion of the Middle-Assyrian evidence, particularly the Middle Assyrian Laws (MAL)⁶⁰ and Middle Assyrian Palace Decrees (MAPD),⁶¹ even though he believed that the equivalence was weaker in the Babylonian dialect,⁶² a position he retained in a later article authored with Dalley.⁶³

Authors who deny the identity of ša rēši and eunuchs even in the Assyrian context are mainly von Soden,⁶⁴ Oppenheim,⁶⁵ Dalley,⁶⁶ Pirngruber,⁶⁷ Siddall⁶⁸ and Budin.⁶⁹ Their arguments include some ša rēši family ties and doubts regarding the important evidence from the MAL and MAPD.⁷⁰ Most scholars, however, accept that the evidence relating ša rēši to lack of progeny and castration is much more significant, especially in the Middle and Neo-Assyrian (NA) context.⁷¹ The evidence includes omen texts relating ša rēši to barrenness,⁷² different treatments regarding ša rēši’s successors,⁷³ and their systematic distinction from ša ziqni.⁷⁴

Biblical sārîs (a loanword from the Akkadian expression ša rēši) and its usual Greek translation as eunoûkhos in the Septuagint have been subjected to the same scrutiny, and some authors seem to believe that these expressions were also ambiguous regarding castration since nothing in most passages would be as specific as to determine a castrated status.⁷⁵ This position is untenable, however, because (i) one should not expect to find information specific enough if the title was already self-evident for their audiences and (ii) the biblical texts provide extraordinary remarks linking sārîs to barrenness, such as the allegory of eunuchs as dry trees in Isa. 56:3-4 or the threat that the sons of Judah would be made into sārîsîm by the Babylonians.⁷⁶

If the arguments above are correct, we then have plenty of written evidence for eunuchs in the Greek sources, the Hebrew Bible and at least the NA sources. The Achaemenid Persian administrative, archival and royal evidence is, on the other hand, unfortunately less certain. The occurrences of ša rēši gradually decline in the Babylonian cuneiform sources from the post-Xerxes Period onwards and seem to be replaced by ustarbaru, apparently a loanword from Old Persian vaçabara (“garment bearer”), rendered in Elamite as lipte kuktir, an honorific title.⁷⁷ One important figure described as a vaçabara in the Persian sources was Aspathines, who is depicted as a bearded official in the Achaemenid reliefs.⁷⁸ Bearers of a towel/cloth (“garment bearers”?)⁷⁹ are depicted in the Persepolis reliefs but they may be bearded or beardless (see below). Unlike the Assyrian and Biblical evidence, we therefore have no unequivocal evidence that could connect these Achaemenid officials with castration. Besides, as we have seen, scholars agree that Babylonian ša rēši was a term not always implying castration and since the Achaemenid title ustarbaru replaces ša rēši mainly in a Babylonian context, it could be unspecific as well. It seems to have been basically a title granted to Iranian and non-Iranian collaborators of the king.⁸⁰ This would not, however, exclude castrati from the title of ša rēši/ustarbaru merely for these being reserved to high-ranking officials, as previously discussed.

As I have already suggested, some questions regarding Achaemenid court eunuchs could be further clarified by comparisons with other Mesopotamian traditions and, more specifically, with the Neo-Assyrian Empire. At least three main reasons arise for this: (i) the Achaemenids directly or indirectly inherited a set of Neo-Assyrian artistic and literary motives and conventions, showing an active engagement with their venerably old Mesopotamian tradition;⁸¹ (ii) the Achaemenid and the Neo-Assyrian polities are set in a longue durée continuity in terms of imperial strategies⁸² and eunuchism is often linked to power dimensions;⁸³ and, finally (iii) while Near Eastern eunuchs seem to be attested at least since the Ur III Period,⁸⁴ the institution is (as we have seen) more easily traceable in the Neo-Assyrian sources, what can help us find less ambiguous parameters of comparison.

ACHAEMENID AND NEO-ASSYRIAN COURT EUNUCHS: SOME ANALOGIES

A comparison of Assyrian and Achaemenid written sources shows a series of relevant analogies.

Regarding castration practices, for instance, we know that court eunuchs were probably unwillingly⁸⁵ castrated as boys to serve in the palatial administration. This can be shown by (i) the Akkadian expression ša rēšūtu, a grammatical abstract noun derived from ša rēši, and therefore seemingly pointing to an institution to educate eunuchs in the Neo-Assyrian Period⁸⁶ and (ii) a document from Ugarit recording the delivery of a “fair boy”⁸⁷ to become a eunuch (LÚ.SAG).⁸⁸ Herodotus mentions the same mechanism at work in the Achaemenid Empire, especially by the castration of “fair” and foreign boys acquired as slaves or taken captive in punitive campaigns.⁸⁹ In the latter case, the evidence also resonates the biblical threats that the sons of Hezekiah would be turned into sārîsîm by the Neo-Babylonians.⁹⁰ Interestingly, Elamite administrative texts from Persepolis have been associated with the Greek description of “eunuch tributes”, since they describe the transfer of foreign “boys” (puhu) who were presumably kept at “treasuries”, trained and then allocated among the royal family and the palatial elite.⁹¹

Both Neo-Assyrian ša rēši and Achaemenid ustarbaru are associated with several different functions and cannot be reduced to a specific activity. Some analogies, however, can be found, such as their prominence as overseers of royal tombs. Neo-Assyrian archives mention a class of ša rēši often associated with the overseeing of royal crypts.⁹² Interestingly, as noted by Groß, “bearers of the Elamite title lipte kutip, which is thought to correspond to the Persian title ustarbaru (Babylonian rendering) and thus to ša rēši, are attested as guarding the royal tomb”.⁹³ Ctesias apparently reflects this view in his narratives of Achaemenid eunuchs, even if some authors cautiously advise that he may have conflated different officials and wrongly interpreted his sources.⁹⁴ The fact that bearded men such as Aspathines may have held the title of vaçabara could indicate its lesser specificity in the Achaemenid Period - again not precluding the possibility of some of them being castrati.

Achaemenid and Neo-Assyrian eunuchs often seem to be attendants close to the royal households, including queens and kings. Authors have noticed, for instance, the importance of eunuch attendants (ša rēši) under the household of the famous Sargonid queen Naqi’a, as compared to the composition of the staff of other members of the royal family.⁹⁵ In the Murašû Archive, bailiffs of the Achaemenid queen’s household⁹⁶ (and specifically one servant of queen Parysatis)⁹⁷ are ustarbarū.⁹⁸ The Greek sources also somehow reflect the link between eunuchs and some royal Achaemenid women for they frequently focus on the responsibility of queens in punishing rebellious castrati.⁹⁹ Etymologically, as we have seen, ša rēši/eunoûkhos indicate that eunuchs were originally associated with the task of protecting the king in his chambers. Evidence from the Middle and Neo-Assyrian Periods and other Near Eastern palatial administrations indicates that eunuchs had access to the king’s intimacy and that “they were some of the closest officials to the king”.¹⁰⁰ In the Greek sources on Achaemenid Persia, the association of kings’ bedrooms and eunuch guards is overwhelming, as shown by Lenfant.¹⁰¹ Those carrying the Persian title ustarbaru, if they had anything to do with castrati, were also close to the royal family.¹⁰²

Neo-Assyrian court eunuchs were employed in the royal administration, including in the military, provincial government, or palatial service and liturgical activities.¹⁰³ Neo-Assyrian sources, for instance, contain relevant references of eunuchs in high military positions and we know that the so-called “chief eunuch” was mainly a military position.¹⁰⁴ Classical references to able Achaemenid eunuch commanders (sometimes designated as “chiliarchs”) could be related to the same reality.¹⁰⁵ Ctesias seems to imply that Menostanēs, Artaxerxes I’s nephew and a military commander (in the Revolt of Megabyzus), was a eunuch,¹⁰⁶ and this man has been persuasively associated with a Manuštanu from the Murašû Archives.¹⁰⁷ Manuštanu is named a mār bīti šarri (“son of the royal house” i.e., “courtier” of the king)¹⁰⁸ and had formerly held the same responsibilities as a certain Artaḫšar, linked to the eunuch Artoxares from Ctesias’ Persika. However, since the archives contain no unequivocal reference to castration, there remains some doubt regarding the eunuch status of Manuštanu and others.¹⁰⁹

The fact that eunuchs could attain high positions possibly explains why narratives concerning treacherous eunuchs gained wide currency in the ANE.¹¹⁰ Esarhaddon feared coups from eunuchs¹¹¹ and Neo-Assyrian copies of the šumma izbu mention ša rēši who threaten the king.¹¹² In the case of Achaemenid Persia, the author of the Book of Esther imagined a plot devised by eunuchs against Xerxes.¹¹³ A late Babylonian Dynastic prophecy seems to state that the troubled succession of Artaxerxes IV had something to do with a ša rēši, probably a reference to Bagoas.¹¹⁴ The Greeks report actions of both trustworthy and treacherous Achaemenid eunuchs, indicating that castrati were seen through the binary scheme of securing or failing to secure the king’s safety in his intimacy.

Biblical and Greek sources are unequivocal concerning the existence of castrati in the Achaemenid Empire and they generally agree with practices known from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Achaemenid sources are elusive, but apparently provide some parallels with previous traditions that cannot be neglected. All these overlapping aspects make it clear that castrati should be studied as a Near Eastern longue durée phenomenon, and that Achaemenid Persia cannot be examined without due attention to previous Mesopotamian models, in which eunuchs assumed prestigious roles in the palace and beyond.¹¹⁵

Beardless figures in the Achaemenid and Neo-Assyrian reliefs: some analytical possibilities

Except for some specific misidentifications,¹¹⁶ most Assyriologists accept that numerous beardless attendants in the Neo-Assyrian monumental reliefs mostly referred to eunuch figures.¹¹⁷ Achaemenid eunuchs, on the other hand, were earlier identified by Erich Schmidt in some beardless figures from the Persepolis reliefs,¹¹⁸ but authors are now generally skeptical regarding such classifications and usually avoid the label. Eunuchs that had earlier been identified in the reliefs of the Southeastern palace (the so-called “Harem of Xerxes” structure), tacara (“palace” of Darius) and the Treasury Hall, for instance, are now rather associated with shaven priests due to the archaeological context¹¹⁹ and some attributes, such as the bashlyk covering their chins and the presence of a scarf-like object (i.e., “towels”), that are compared to similar figures in the Oxus Treasure, Persepolis seals and to later Sasanian tools.¹²⁰ The argument, however, neither overcomes the strong analogies with Neo-Assyrian imagery nor precludes the possibility of castrati having acted as priests in particular positions.¹²¹

In the following sections, I offer an outline of some noteworthy similarities between Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid beardless figures.

Attendants flanking the king

In the Persepolis Southeastern Palace, which now seems to have served a cultic function,¹²² some reliefs show the king flanked by bearded and beardless attendants carrying towels and fly-whisks. Some of these attendants (who do not wear bashlyks) are clearly beardless.¹²³ As we know, eunuch attendants with fly-whisks and towels are common motives from the Neo-Assyrian relief cycles¹²⁴ and the association of eunuchs/beardless attendants with fly-whisks and fans is a widespread feature of ANE court scenes.¹²⁵

Striking similarities between Neo-Assyrian Sargonid¹²⁶ and Achaemenid conventions for depicting attendants with fly-whisks and towels can be noticed.¹²⁷ For instance, if we compare a section of Sennacherib’s Lachish throne scene in the Southwest palace at Nineveh (Figure 1)¹²⁸ with the Persian throne reliefs on the jambs of the southern doorways of the Throne Hall (Figures 2-3),¹²⁹ we can see that these kings are depicted with emblems of power such as a scepter and a bow (Sennacherib) or a lotus flower and scepter (Persian king). They sit on thrones carried by “throne bearers” in the “Atlas pose” (raised arms).¹³⁰ Right behind the Persian king stands a beardless attendant wearing a bashlyk, carrying a fly-whisk (right hand) and a “towel” (left hand), whereas the Assyrian king is flanked by two bareheaded beardless attendants with the same tools in the same positions.

Figure 1
“Gypsum wall panel relief; carved in low relief; Sennacherib watches the capture of Lachish. Production date: 700-692 BCE”.
© The Trustees of the British Museum (BM 124911).

Figure 2 and 3
“Throne Hall. Throne Relief on East Jamb of Western Doorway in the Southern Hall. (Direction of view, NEN)”. / “Enthroned king and attendant in relief shown on Pl. 104”. Schmidt (1953, pl. 104-105).
Courtesy of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago.

A comparison of a section of Ashurbanipal’s lion libation scene (North Palace, Nineveh) (Figure 4)¹³¹ with the reliefs from Xerxes’ Southeastern Palace in Persepolis (Figure 5)¹³² reinforces these structural similarities: attendants are presented in pairs, two beardless attendants in the Neo-Assyrian reliefs, and one beardless and one bearded official in the Achaemenid reliefs.¹³³ They are figured symmetrically, one slightly covering the other’s body, both wearing ordinary Assyrian or Persian clothes, carrying fly-whisks in their right hand and cloths in their left hand.¹³⁴ They flank the king with their tools. The king bears symbols of piety, prowess and majesty: lotus flowers, scepters, bows or libation bowls, according to their respective contexts.

Figure 4
“Gypsum wall relief panel. The king himself is pouring a libation, which the caption tells us is wine, over the bodies of four lions. Behind him stand attendants with fans and towels, his bodyguards and grooms with the royal horses. Production date: 645-640 BCE”.
© The Trustees of the British Museum (BM 124886).

Figure 5
“Harem of Xerxes, King, and Two Attendants on Southern Doorway of Main Hall. B. West Jamb”. Schmid (1953, pl. 193B).
Courtesy of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago. (P 60726).

These beardless figures from Assyria and Persia are shown as attributes of power and ascribed signs and performances of masculinity (albeit a non-hegemonic one).¹³⁵ Both Persian and Assyrian eunuchs are depicted as having privileged access to the king, bearing prestigious apotropaic instruments, such as “towels”, parasols and fly-whisks. They are generally able to share the same gadgets and clothes and act in the same way as their bearded counterparts, and they occupy positions that are also ascribed to other masculine (i.e., bearded) figures (Figures 6-8).

Figure 6
“Harem of Xerxes, King, and Two Attendants on Northern Doorway of Main Hall. B. East Jamb”. Schmid (1953, pl. 194B).
Courtesy of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago. (P 57861).

Figure 7
“Harem of Xerxes, King, and Two Attendants on Northern Doorway of Main Hall. A. West Jamb”. Schmid (1953, pl. 194A).
Courtesy of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago. (P 57860).

Figure 8
“Harem of Xerxes, King, and Two Attendants on Southern Doorway of Main Hall. A. East Jamb”. Schmid (1953, pl. 193A).
Courtesy of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of the University of Chicago. (P 60725).

It must be stressed that, unlike the Achaemenid eunuchs, Neo-Assyrian eunuchs can also be depicted with visible muscles, in military performances and/or performing acts of violence against other men (e.g., BM 124802). Interestingly, Margaret Cool Root has noticed that, in the case of Xerxes’ palace:

On those doorjambs which show the king between an inner chamber of a building and the main hall of that building (a situation in which the king is always represented facing into the main hall), the attendant carrying the flywhisk and towel is always represented beardless. […]. When figures are situated on doorjambs leading from the main hall to the outside of the palace, both attendants are bearded figures. This fact suggests that perhaps the beardless servants attended the king only within the palace, and that, therefore, by changing the fly-whisk carrier to a bearded figure here, an allusion has been made to the idea of the king’s imminent departure from the palace.¹³⁶

This association of beardless attendants with inner spaces and non-military activities may indicate, in the Achaemenid visual sources, some slight departure from the Neo-Assyrian conceptions of castrati.¹³⁷ Neo-Assyrian depictions of the eunuch’s male muscular body and his aggression of foes¹³⁸ overlap with some relevant traits ascribed to hegemonic masculinity in Mesopotamia¹³⁹ and Egypt.¹⁴⁰ On the other hand, Achaemenid eunuchs are relatively more present in courtly or priestly settings and apparently did not assume so many military responsibilities as their Neo-Assyrian counterparts.¹⁴¹ Thus, their relationship to other masculinities may have been shaped in different ways. We should, however, be careful not to overlook the peculiarities of Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid artistic conventions:¹⁴² unlike the Neo-Assyrian figures, Achaemenid monumental reliefs rarely depict scenes of violence or narrative scenes, the exception being the Behistun relief.¹⁴³

“Das Unheimliche”

This section endeavors to apply the category of “uncanny” to the analysis of eunuch images, proposing functional analogies in both the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid contexts. However, it must be stressed from the start that a strictly psychoanalytical definition of the “uncanny” (das Unheimliche) as developed by Sigmund Freud would be restricted mainly to Western modern experiences since Freud argued that this phenomenon was fundamentally linked to situations in which a “repressed animistic worldview” suddenly seemed to be supported by a specific event (or when “repressed infantile complexes”, including the “castration-complex”, were revived by some particular impression).¹⁴⁴ Accordingly, in Freud’s system, Assyrian and Persian reliefs would belong to the realm of “animism”, i.e., precisely the mentalities which the “modern mind” had “repressed”, and therefore they would be out of the scope of his theory.¹⁴⁵

That the category of “uncanny” can still be applied to understand ANE images is, however, demonstrated by some relevant observations. First, as Freud himself acknowledges, the “uncanny” was not a psychoanalytical tool, but an aesthetic category¹⁴⁶ that psychoanalysis sought to explain in terms of its psychic effects. Secondly, the “uncanny” is an autonomous category that had existed before psychoanalysis.¹⁴⁷ It is associated with experiences of dread or sudden fear in encounters with gruesome phenomena and has parallels in the Mesopotamian world - even if cultural reactions to it varied substantially.¹⁴⁸

In what follows, I therefore consider the “uncanny” as a broad category.¹⁴⁹ In such definition, an “uncanny experience”:

[…] involves feelings of uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being experienced. Suddenly one’s sense of oneself (of one’s so-called ‘personality’ or ‘sexuality,’ for example) seems strangely questionable. The uncanny is a crisis of the proper: it entails a critical disturbance of what is proper […]. It is a peculiar commingling of the familiar and unfamiliar. It can take the form of something familiar unexpectedly arising in a strange and unfamiliar context, or of something strange and unfamiliar unexpectedly arising in a familiar context.¹⁵⁰

Through the category of uncanny, we may try to demonstrate how some Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid images of beardless attendants could be related on a more fundamental and functional level, taking into consideration what eunuch reliefs effectively worked to do in their original contexts.¹⁵¹ An “ascribed” agency¹⁵² can be inferred, for example, from the emotional effects¹⁵³ provoked by the uncanniness of such monuments over their audiences.¹⁵⁴

Let us consider, for example, some panels in Room G of Ashurnasirpal’s II Northwest Palace in Nimrud. These show the king flanked by either beardless attendants or mythical creatures (“genii”), possibly performing purification rituals.¹⁵⁵ One scene shows the attendant with a fan/fly-whisk and a cloth on his shoulders and facing the king in an apparent ritual (Figure 9). Overall, the images from Room G (and the entire East Suite)¹⁵⁶ are associated with a supernatural set and depict the king’s relation to the gods and his role as a performer of religious rituals.¹⁵⁷ The images of the Persepolis Southeastern Palace (Figures 5-8), on the other hand, are placed on the jambs of the doorways.¹⁵⁸ They alternate images of the king flanked by bearded and beardless attendants with fly-whisks, parasols and “towels” alongside scenes of the “heroic encounter”, which shows a Persian hero or the king himself fighting a beast¹⁵⁹ and even killing lions with a dagger.¹⁶⁰

Figure 9
“Gypsum wall panel relief: showing a formal scene. Ashurnasirpal II appears holding a bow and bowl flanked by a human attendant with a fly-flapper”. Production date: 865-860 BCE”.
© The Trustees of the British Museum (BM 124569).

Through figures of genii, as well as ritual and heroic encounter scenes, the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid reliefs fill their respective environments with images of supernatural and cosmological overtones.¹⁶¹ The well-known repetition of similar motives in these settings most likely provoked a feeling of déjà vu - an uncanny experience par excellence, defined by the uncertain feeling of having lived something before.¹⁶² It should be added that ceremonial activities possibly took place in the vicinities of Room G¹⁶³ and the Southeastern Palace.¹⁶⁴ It seems therefore much likely that ritual activities and supernatural scenes were enhanced by the presence of “uncanny” bodies, such as eunuchs’ - figured and possibly organic as well. The vision of these eunuch bodies could be spontaneously felt as awe and disorientation when spectators, for example, realized unexpected or strange features on a familiar body, such as the lack of a beard or “androgynous” characteristics on a full-grown male.¹⁶⁵ This could have led them to infer the act of castration, which, in an ANE context, probably induced feelings of unease among the non-castrated male elite, especially by evoking the notion of barrenness.¹⁶⁶ This reinforces Ataç’s statements regarding mainly some scenes of royal cults from the reigns of Sennacherib and Ashurnasirpal II, saying that the eunuch figures pointed “toward an environment” that was “to a great extent removed from the mundane”.¹⁶⁷

Thus, “uncanny” eunuch figures could contribute to the royal programs’ general “unfamiliar”, awe-inspiring and mythological atmosphere. Accordingly, the reason why eunuch figures are often found among cosmological scenes of genii, sacred trees, royal hunts and mythological “heroic encounters” is because aesthetically, all these figures contributed to elicit emotions of strong estrangement.

A key for future interpretations? Reliefs, barrenness and performance.

Also, differently from an evolutionist conception of monumental images as forms of “animism”, eunuch reliefs can be better understood if examined through the theory of “performative image”.¹⁶⁸ Drawing from Bahrani’s reflections on the concept of ṣalmu in the Assyro-Babylonian tradition, one should consider monumental reliefs as more than mere “visual descriptions” of eunuchs. According to this perspective, the Mesopotamians could conceive of images as potentially enacting presences via similitude, metaphor or synecdoche, in what would be an endless chain of ontological identities inscribed in the world.¹⁶⁹ As elucidated by Bahrani:

ṣalmu is […] clearly part of a configuration that enables presence through reproduction. It is necessary for a valid representation. It is not a statue or a relief or a painting; in other words, it is not a work of art.¹⁷⁰

Therefore, I suggest that the prominence and repetition of beardless figures in Achaemenid and Neo-Assyrian palaces may be linked to a conscious effort to perpetuate eunuchs as individuals or as a group by their numerous sculptures. For, as explained by Bahrani, “representation in portraiture is a doubling or a reproduction of the represented. It can immortalize the sitter through reproduction, just as progeny does, according to Freud and Lacan”.¹⁷¹ But then, why would Persians and Assyrians want to perpetuate courtiers in their palatial programs?¹⁷²

As discussed above, eunuchs were loyal servants of the Persian and Assyrian kings, but were unable to beget children. Thus, their “multiplication” through images - whose ontological identity with living bodies was safeguarded via similitude and liturgy - would amount to a due compensation for their lack of progeny. Compensatory mechanisms for the eunuch’s lack of progeny seem to have been important for the Mesopotamian ideologies, as attested by documents recording land grants to castrati,¹⁷³ the possibility of eunuchs owning large estates,¹⁷⁴ and even literary texts promising divine compensation for castrati (as seen in Isa. 56:3-4 above).¹⁷⁵ Rock reliefs could therefore integrate part of this strategy and, accordingly, would justify the prominent presence of eunuchs in bas-reliefs. A careful consideration of this hypothesis in the future will require a thoroughly examination of the Persian evidence as well.

CONCLUSIONS

Castrati should not be outrightly seen as despised and “effeminate” attendants occupying low positions, and therefore there is nothing to dissuade us from thinking they could have been powerful courtiers in both the Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires - aside from our own modern Western preconceptions. The written and visual evidence points towards a different direction and shows that eunuchs were indeed performers of a kind of (non-hegemonic) masculinity, occupying prominent positions in the ANE.

The Akkadian texts from the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the Greek and Hebrew sources from the Achaemenid Empire show little ambiguity regarding castrated courtiers and describe these officials in very similar terms. The ambiguous Old Persian, Elamite and Late Babylonian texts are harder to interpret but seem to provide at least some clues to the important attributes and functions of castrati.

Neo-Assyrian and Achaemenid monumental depictions of castrati show several striking analogies. Accordingly, these cultures most likely shared similar notions concerning eunuchs and possibly even the same prototypes for the reliefs in specific cases.¹⁷⁶ But images give us information that the texts cannot provide. We see, for instance, that the Achaemenids slightly depart from the Assyrian conception of castrati in their visual expression. Besides, the archaeological context and the concept of “uncanny” can show how eunuch figures affected viewers with emotions of disorientation, fear and awe, evoking a supernatural and cosmological setting. Finally, given the historical context and ANE conceptions of monumental reliefs, we could propose that these images enacted the presence of individual and collective eunuchs, compensating these highly esteemed officials for their lack of progeny in a society that put extreme value in the cult of ancestors and other activities usually ascribed to one’s descendants. Thus, eunuch figures could have filled a performative function as well. I expect to explore all these theoretical possibilities in depth in the future.

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