#AncientDEI

A Greek pottery jug in the shape of a Greek woman's face on one side and a Black African woman's face on the other. The inscription reads, beauty. c. 520 BCE

The Dying Gaul, a Roman marble c. 230 BCE, depicting a man with a Western European phenotype and a Celtic torque bleeding from a side wound. Capitoline Museums, Rome.

The Fayum mummy portraits: A collection of painted portraits of Semitic or North African men and women in Roman garb, painted onto wood panels. c. 1st century CE-3rd century CE.

For the last day of February, my #AncientDEI spotlight on #AncientBluesky is... ordinary people.

We have so much evidence that ancient Greeks and Romans lived in a world where light-skinned W. Europeans, Black Africans, Near Eastern Semitic peoples all mingled in the highest and lowest classes.

A manuscript illustration of Dido, a dark-skinned woman, llying on a pyre, surrounded by mourners. Aeneid, Book IV, Death of Dido. From the Vergilius Vaticanus (Vatican Library, Cod. Vat. lat. 3225).

Oh shoot, almost missed the window for today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky! Today, let's talk about Dido, an African (Carthaginian) queen of Semitic (Phoenician) origin. She was so powerful and clever that she built her country out of refugees on a foreign shore. Dux femina facti!

A Roman marble bust of Emperor Elagabalus, an effeminate young person with curly hair and a light mustache. Capitoline Museums, Rome.

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky highlight is Elagabalus, the trans woman* who was Emperor of Rome!

*Modern categories can only be applied loosely to other cultures and times, and reports on Elagabalus in particular are fraught with posthumous distortion. But we think so.

Drawing of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor as bears over the stars of their constellations. Image from the University of Louisville Cosmic Explorer images, https://louisville.edu/planetarium/images/kid-program-images/cosmic-explorer-images/ursa-major-and-ursa-minor/view

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is Callisto. She was a devotee of Artemis, one of her dearest companions... How dear? Well, Zeus got her pregnant by impersonating Artemis, so, pretty close I'd say! Artemis turned her into a bear, but both Callisto and her cub rule the north sky.

Li Ji (Li Chi) volunteered as a sacrifice to the serpent demanding village maidens, as famine plagued her people and her parents had five other daughters. She ultimately slew the serpent with a sword, a hound, and sweet treats, retrieving the sacrificed girls' skeletons.
#AncientBluesky #AncientDEI

Red-figure vase of nude Dionysus with a feminine hairstyle embracing a female follower while a satyr provides service. Photograph by Maria Daniels, courtesy of the Tampa Museum of Art, October 1991

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is another gender-bender of a deity, Dionysus! He's usually male, but the god of boundary-crossing has no respect for your gender binary. Break women out of their roles, break crossdressing taboo, and incorporate foreign customs, too!

A daughter of King Pyeongwon of Goguryeo defied his will to marry a commoner or lower-ranked nobleman. Abandoned by her father, she educated her husband, raising him into a great general worthy of royalty. Though her name is lost, she is known as Princess Pyeonggang.
#AncientBluesky #AncientDEI

Black and white photo of a red-figure Greek vase showing Hippolytus in his four-horse chariot with the bull emerging from the sea to frighten them. Photo from the British Museum.

Let's have another #AncientDEI for #AncientBluesky: Hippolytus! My sex-repulsed ace boi, son of an Amazon and a Greek, devotee of Artemis.
His fool of a father Theseus called down Poseidon's curse on him for the suicide of Theseus' far-too-young wife, Phaedra, who had fallen in love with Hippolytus.

The story of Zhinü (CN), Jiknyeo (KR), or Orihime (JP) varies across cultures. In my favourite: The goddess falls in love with a human but is ordered to return to heaven. After overcoming given challenges, she reunites with the family she built on Earth once a year. Cont.
#AncientBluesky #AncientDEI

Ukiyo-e print by Ogata Gekko, held in the Gallery Dutta in Geneva. Inari in masculine form helping a swordsmith forge a powerful weapon.

Painting by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1798 - 1861. Inari shows herself as a beautiful woman to a samurai warrior.

In honor of my streaming game, today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is Inari, the genderfluid fox god of Shinto! Inari is one of the principle kami, ruling over such varied realms as fertility, sword-smithing, and rice. Inari is both male and female, and their foxy kin are shapeshifters!

Tiresias strikes two snakes with a stick, and is transformed into a woman by Hera. Engraving by Johann Ulrich Kraus c. 1690. Taken from Die Verwandlungen des Ovidii (The Metamorphoses of Ovid).

Oh right, time for more #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky! Ever hear of the great blind seer of the heroic age, Tiresias? Did you know that he spent years and bore children as a woman?

Genderfluid? Detransitioned? Who knows, but apparently you can transition by smacking a pair of mating snakes!

Chang'e is a mythological figure. She and her husband were each rewarded with an immortality pill after completing challenging tasks. However, Chang'e eventually chose to take both pills, leaving none for her husband. She then ascended to the Moon and became its goddess.
#AncientBluesky #AncientDEI

Love this idea! #ancientDEI!

Red-figure vase painting of Medea bringing a whole sheep out of a cauldron to demonstrate her magical prowess. c. 480 BCE. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Another day, another #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky! Today's entry is a long-time fave of mine, Medea. She was a princess of Colchis, modern-day Georgia. To the Greeks, she was dangerously foreign, from a land almost beyond imagining. And she was a powerful sorceress!

I may introduce Caer Ibormeith, a shapeshifting princess and goddess in Celtic mythology. Every Samhain, she transformed from a swan into a woman, and even her father feared her great power.
She chose her own partner, and he joined her as another swan.
#AncientBluesky #AncientDEI

A woman in a combination of ancient Greek and North African garb tied to a stake or rock. Detail of Andromeda on a 340 B.C. vase at the MArTA in Taranto, red-figure style with white accents.

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is Andromeda, princess of Ethiopia. Her mother bragged she was more beautiful than a goddess, and the Greek gods couldn't be having that.

Her skin is often depicted as white, but don't be fooled- that's kinky hair and an Ethiopian hat on this vase painting.

A round portrait of Septimius Severus and his family, showing Septimius' dark skin clearly. The Severan Tondo, c. 199, Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla and Geta, whose face is erased (Antikensammlung Berlin).

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. He was a Black man born in what is now Libya, and climbed the political ladder in the customary way under the steady hand of Marcus Aurelius.

a black and white frame from the tv show Kaos showing Caeneus, the shade of a trans man, sitting in a studio apartment.

Today's #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky is cinnamon roll Caeneus! Well, he is in Kaos, which was sadly cancelled.

Caeneus was a trans man. Thankfully, Kaos left out the part where he was able to transition only because he was granted a boon by Poseidon after the latter raped him.

Detail of a black figure vase where Herakles, a warrior in Greek armor, stands in front of Memnon, whose hair and garb are clearly more African, between two horses. Attributed to the Three Line Group, Greek, Attic, Neck-Amphora Featuring Herakles and King Memnon (detail), 530—520 BCE, terracotta, black-figure, H. 16 ½ — Diam. 12 ¼ in., North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest)

Day three of #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky, and my pick is Memnon, King of Ethiopia and son of the dawn goddess, Eos, and her lover, Tithonos. He joined the Trojans in defense against the Greeks, and was counted a hero the equal of Herakles, as you can see here with them depicted together.

Pierre-Yves Beaudouin's photo of Sleeping Hermpaphroditus, a beautiful figure turned so that you can see both breasts and a phallus while they lie on a sumptuous mattress. Sleeping Hermaphroditus. Hermaphroditus: Greek marble, Roman copy of the 2nd century CE after a Hellenistic original of the 2nd century BC, restored in 1619 by David Larique; mattress: Carrara marble, made by Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1619 on Cardinal Borghese's request.

Entry no 2 in my #AncientDEI on #AncientBluesky, Hermaphroditos. That's right, the child of Hermes (associated with phallus-themed boundary statues) and Aphrodite (the goddess of love, lust, and female beauty) was born intersex, in many ways the best of both worlds!

You know what, #AncientBluesky, why don't we take a moment to post #AncientDEI? We all know that the ancient world was just as diverse as the modern one, but we so rarely talk directly about that fact as such.

So let's all post our faves, shall we?