{"id":812,"date":"2024-12-02T21:53:52","date_gmt":"2024-12-02T21:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/?p=812"},"modified":"2025-12-04T22:24:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T22:24:39","slug":"the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/","title":{"rendered":"The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED | Ancient Transgender History\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hmKk2oZNrBA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-35cb04057b5ecc7a06c7bf37c0f5a101\">So I\u2019ve learned a thing or two about audio and video production in the last couple of years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d97edc6039393079738e9535ea16119f\">I\u2019m nowhere near an expert, I don\u2019t know how to do those fancy SWOOSH transitions between cuts the kids seem to love, but I think my stuff is at least watchable now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-39825aa5de167f7dd091a27d0bf667c0\">AND THAT\u2019S WHY THIS VIDEO IS SPONSORED BY SKILLSH-<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e1e5fddae9a20cd49b2ec6e39a18a631\">I guess that\u2019s true of my early videos too, since my original video on the enarees is still my most viewed video other than the intro one, but I think that\u2019s because the enaree priestesshood is one of the most commonly discussed bits of trans ancient history I see being passed around online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-86a57c5aed6edb4140942caa27ed2542\">But even still, as I see the topic discussed, I\u2019m sometimes reluctant to share the original video I made. The ideas are mostly intact \u2013 mostly, I did make some mistakes &#8211; but what was I doing with the lighting there? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-308825dcc2e6c0a08674ed4a95ea1e53\">It\u2019s not supposed to wash out like that. And the audio, yeesh! Girl have you heard of noise reduction or pop filters?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7177770a3891ea28b66aee2a41c56703\">No. The answer is literally no, I hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e4a1607774a78ea3a101c1dc89544693\">So it\u2019s time for a fresh take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-180175a6d0954332d1f21e9dd7dc8d32\">I got people comparing me to someone named Contrapoints in that video a bunch too. Well, not a bunch, but more than once at least. So I looked her up and I guess she\u2019s like some big popular YouTuber or something? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ca0dd15400ef433ebbd150b2d9ed5837\">And I guess we\u2019ve got some stuff in common, but she makes a lot more money than I do and has way more subscribers. So really, we\u2019re not the same thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0f5d9aae1e0be51fb3acb938cf851cff\">But look, people are also in my comments all the time telling me they think this channel should have more subscribers. Well, not all the time, because I don\u2019t have a lot of subscribers, but more than twice at least. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d9e53c02580166619963f3d0220b37f1\">If I had more subscribers, maybe I\u2019d have more people telling me I need more subscribers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f790f342b028b79b119160e351587da5\">Anyway, I agree, this channel should have more subscribers! I think the subject matter is pretty neato, and I like that I can help people to know more about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9748778ade02bac981c61a59a52d92a3\">But this Contrapoints person, whoever she is, she\u2019s got more subscribers than I do. So maybe I should do what she does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-899db147247ddbe311bf3b7ac73d5862\">So let\u2019s see. She\u2019s a leftist trans lesbian in her 30s with a vaguely witchy vibe who sporadically releases absurdly long video essays on niche topics she\u2019s currently obsessing over, plays an instrument, and has a spotty relationship history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8112c8a5f9ceb5687032219e0ea729c8\">Sounds good so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-521c7d6e11813a0959d990154ac8d827\">But I don\u2019t know, I guess the vibe could be witchier. Maybe I need more spooky stuff?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-030b9f1309b308d8795fa90bbe830081\">(grab Button, put straw broom in the background, and put up some stupid Halloween decorations)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5a14bb44f1b13c277339c1a704e79325\">Okay, we\u2019re on pace now. I can feel the algorithm panting, licking my cheek like an excited puppy. I hope it doesn\u2019t wet the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c699088d4de5e3361673e06fc18963c8\">I guess she wears a lot of silly costumes too. So all I have to do is put on a silly costume and the new subscribers will just start pouring in, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e9c186732ce7a336eb798c2701a17a23\">(print out like, comment, and subscribe button, put them on springs, stick them to those flamingo glasses I have along with some other junk, wear it in the next part)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-efb1f9dca203e02d4fb23f00655c8bf1\">Like! Comment! Subscribe! Patreon!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f3e1491425c996375759fff422d579a9\">Surely we\u2019re a successful channel now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2d4aa6debcd0ad011d98263adea6c463\">(fake phone call, answer it)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-10e56927c877a93c24d3940e8c0d9591\">Oh, what\u2019s that? You\u2019re saying I have to have actual substance as well?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-44b6b060bb0cece0f8eb33b4b265eff9\">(sigh, take off dumb glasses)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f88b0b024a9d5208e3a62557f0972f1f\">This is going to be the first in a new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@transgenderancienthistory\">transgender history<\/a> series I\u2019m going to do on the enarees. We\u2019re going to cover what we\u2019ve already looked at in the previous video, and expand on some of the previous points. No CGI Jabba though \u2013 this is some actual substance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-803a9c6abe81551c93c915789441ad60\">Think of this as sort of like the deluxe edition, the third anniversary edition, the rerelease of old material you get when someone has run out of ideas and wants to milk their greatest hits for all they\u2019re worth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-332dfdef67630e7614aec80d8a89998e\">Well, hopefully not the last part, I *do* have other ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4c617f0c9ddda35f43de6cf335614a2f\">Also \u2013 this video is sponsored! By me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-74ca38c0e82c3e4df9e35776d87ede8e\">That\u2019s right, my debut novel is either out already, or will be soon, depending on when this is released. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a04d85fdea7462409c663b53551a0a54\">It\u2019s called The Bottom Line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0bc77853989f0ed3c60c40b91a7f423b\">It\u2019s a story about identity, and how we find ways to create our identities and find meaning in the world, and what happens when that\u2019s taken away from us, and I explore that through automation. The Bottom Line focuses on a crew of construction workers in near-future Toronto whose jobs are being replaced by robots. They\u2019re still taken care of once they\u2019re replaced, a sort of UBI thing, so the conversation isn\u2019t \u201chow do I pay my bills,\u201d it\u2019s \u201cwhat do I do with my life now?\u201d And if you\u2019ve got hobbies, interests, creative pursuits, community, etc, that might be awesome. But if you\u2019re the type who draws a lot of your identity from your work, such a future might be horrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-691561f4272df59745dbe0f1338e0cf4\">I started writing this thing like ten years ago, and it\u2019s pretty surreal to have it be an actual physical thing that\u2019s in the world now, and not just a file sitting on my hard drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-66c91d1628cc0c28fab2bc2c5485e2e2\">Anyway, links in the description below to grab your copy, in ebook or physical format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c51e364b7f800f84ef0e820d24ed20d8\">But if you\u2019re a Patreon backer, you\u2019ll get a special ebook edition of The Bottom Line. Link in the description as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-457ae2e704757629c4633d76362a010a\">What does The Bottom Line have to do with trans history? Nothing at all. Not even a little bit. But hey, I\u2019m multifaceted, I guess! Maybe you are too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7d9f0b74b6f52bdcce98a9a3e17c5fb1\">Good lord how much longer is this preamble going to be???<\/p>\n\n\n\n<nav class=\"wp-block-stackable-table-of-contents stk-block-table-of-contents stk-block stk-58f18bb\" data-block-id=\"58f18bb\"><p class=\"stk-table-of-contents__title\">Table of Contents<\/p><ul class=\"stk-table-of-contents__table\"><li><a href=\"#title-screen\">(title screen)<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#who-were-the-scythians\">Who Were The Scythians?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#ancient-primary-sources\">Ancient Primary Sources<\/a><ul><li><a href=\"#herodotus\">Herodotus<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#pseudo-hippocrates\">Pseudo-Hippocrates<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#ovid\">Ovid<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><a href=\"#scythian-women\">Scythian Women<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#the-enarees\">The Enarees<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#would-it-actually-work\">Would It Actually Work?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#what-may-have-been\">What May Have Been<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#ancient-sources\">Ancient Sources:<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"#modern-sources\">Modern Sources:<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"title-screen\">(title screen)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2b03248ed6da538dff65bafc5af932f6\">They say history is written by the victors, but in ancient times that wasn\u2019t always true. In fact, history was written by the people who bothered to write it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-55de4379cae2810000ceaf0a516172ae\">When you think of the ancient Mediterranean, a few names probably come to your head \u2013 the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians. But the only reason why we know so much about them, and so little about all the others, is because they\u2019re the ones who wrote the most stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fb98a7847bd5107211b69008affaa4d4\">Take a look at this map, for example. See all that green? That\u2019s the Achaemenid Persian Empire at its greatest extent, around 500 BCE. And that little tiny bit of red? That\u2019s Athens at the same time. Clearly one is much more important than the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-664041cb4dd3f2250e6b1c8341fe2521\">Around this time, Athens itself had an estimated population of around 100,000, and another 200,000 or so living in the countryside around it (Villing). That\u2019s a pretty big city for the time. But the Persian Empire had somewhere between 17 and 35 million people (Morris &amp; Scheidel, 77). There\u2019s just no comparison, and yet, historians won\u2019t shut up about Athens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bde5dc74ae52797ae0864d5468c564e9\">Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fdd8b7dc0bb874700a1599f54ee9fa9d\">Because the Athenians wouldn\u2019t shut up about themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-23397a026101c962f089b8943c0e6ad1\">Meanwhile, the Persians didn\u2019t write a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0f4170795457f30d445f4fd27b753e27\">But they <em>did<\/em> write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-333957f6d360a6c5e38b818500f5ad12\">There are plenty of other cultures, though, that never bothered to write anything down at all. In these cases, everything we know about them comes from either archaeological evidence, or from outsiders \u2013 usually Greeks or Romans \u2013 who wrote about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f59f53fd7b63c09b29bc828f530cdcee\">One of those cultures is the Scythians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d8157c9b0a345350488a2e1fb41244d4\">Maybe this is a culture that\u2019s completely new to you, or maybe you recognize them as a playable faction from Civilization VI. But either way, we\u2019re going to take a closer look at the Scythians. We\u2019ll explore the part of the world they were from, and some details we know about daily life as a Scythian from the archaeological record. Then, we\u2019ll take a look at the pretty conclusive and rad as hell evidence of a sect of trans feminine priestesses within Scythian society, called the enarees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-067442a8815b9f6b6aa065a2b284da75\">Finally, we\u2019ll address the idea that the enarees figured out a natural form of trans feminine HRT 2500 years ago, and how true that might have been.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1df229f0e0f1baeb3c9ba9bb5f11e116\">When I first learned about the enarees, it was one of the coolest things I\u2019d ever heard, and yet it was a struggle to find any information about them. I had to do some pretty deep dives into the ancient sources, and pull out some little tidbits here and there from modern historians writing about the Scythians. But as the picture became clearer and clearer to me, I became more and more excited about what I was learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-31bf11a1ff52cfd7e028e9c6bf29c978\">It was the enarees, in fact, that made me want to put this channel together in the first place. People oughtta know this stuff, y\u2019know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5edf4791f3be1cae7cfd83193d43bfac\">Without further ado&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"who-were-the-scythians\">Who Were The Scythians?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cb0a2b24fc22a8137932f837cfe12e87\">Let\u2019s start with a brief overview of who the Scythians were. After all, they\u2019re not one of the more well known ancient cultures, they\u2019re pretty obscure, you probably haven\u2019t heard of them. But unlike the Phrygians, who we talked about in the video on the gallae where I originally made that joke, the Scythians weren\u2019t really influential on much. So unlike a band like Liliput, who\u2019s relatively unknown but who influenced Kurt Cobain and therefore had an influence that spread pretty far, the Scythians were more like, I don\u2019t know, Guitar Vader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-27f1752f90de5ec87dab0f81a7b3d811\">Do y\u2019all know Guitar Vader? Japanese band, they had a couple tunes on the Dreamcast game Jet Set Radio. Great game, don\u2019t play it, it hasn\u2019t aged well. But they\u2019ve got two songs on there \u2013 Super Brothers and Magical Girl, and both of them are great, which got me to dig into the rest of their excellent discography. They\u2019ve got five full lengths, a remix album, and some singles floating around, and every song they put out is a total banger. But other than nerds like me, nobody seems to know or care about them. Start with the album From Dusk, it\u2019s a fun mix of indie rock, pop, and even some electronic elements, really innovative stuff, I\u2019ve never heard anything like it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c3607afe349af8e01b0b36e71668164b\">So the Scythians are like Guitar Vader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c6d8e6db7b824dc5bdb4fbe8dbf7f6d8\">And like Guitar Vader, the Scythians were from Asia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9706da24708bf2fe97239b1470c6135d\">They lived mostly in a region known as the Great Steppe, a vast swath of grassland stretching from modern day Bulgaria to the north Pacific coast of China.&nbsp; It shaped Scythian culture in ways too numerable to mention, so to understand them, we need to understand the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d79bb539442634ecea23cf233efc65d4\">If you\u2019re familiar with Genghis Khan\u2019s Mongol Empire, the Great Steppe is where they first started, and it made up a large chunk of the empire. That\u2019s like 1500 years in the future from when the Scythians lived though, so if you\u2019re not familiar with the Mongol Empire, don\u2019t worry about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-900dfec151e755c84c273d3cd4cc9f9c\">The Great Steppe is really something, so let\u2019s go take a look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6f070ec453d60ffda687be90ea4495b6\"><strong><em>(stock footage of a plane taking off in fast forward, then some clouds looking out from the window of the plane, then stock footage of the plane landing but it\u2019s just the plane taking off in reverse. Then full length shoot of myself standing upright in the Steppe)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4694d693cf4b4fa33a53697a950264a9\">Here we are on the Great Steppe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3fd756d1a3cf03ba1fd377de5d50d717\">Yes, I\u2019m actually here. Take a look, here\u2019s me, there\u2019s the Great Steppe behind me. What the heck is a green screen? I don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3ece2d70720bc71a37badc5d58eca090\">The Great Steppe is considered some of the easiest territory for horseback riding in the world, and the Scythians took advantage of that. As a nomadic culture, the horse was always very important to them, and features in a lot of their art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d1f7df6603108f60b897d7db8c8d9200\">It\u2019s flat, and warm enough for things to grow, but too dry to sustain many trees. Instead, you get a whole lot of grass, and some small shrubs. That\u2019s a big reason why there\u2019s not a lot of rice in the cuisine of Mongolia, for example, compared to other south and east Asian countries. It takes up to 5000 litres of water to produce a single kilogram of rice (WWF, 6), and there\u2019s just not that much water available in the area to make that happen (World Bank).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0a85b68efde8c23ed705bacb9ecf887a\">There are <em>some<\/em> plant based foods available, but not a lot, so people of the Steppe tend to rely on livestock. But since there\u2019s so little rainfall, it\u2019s easy for your livestock to eat all the grass in the area. That means you have to be constantly looking for new ways to keep your animals, and therefore yourself, fed (Cunliffe, 62-65).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-de23ca380dd93f629940d54ee07e03d2\">Look, you can ride for an entire day and not see anything other than grass and the horizon. That, plus the factors above, meant the Scythians tended to move around a lot. So where did they go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d22b6623d352d29ad11334de65ea3f36\">North would take you into the harsh winters of Siberia, so you don\u2019t want to go too far in that direction. So you\u2019ve got three real options \u2013 move south and southeast, into China. Move southwest, into India. Or move west, toward Europe. And the Scythians did all three, depending on conditions at the time. That\u2019s why they built the Great Wall of China where they did \u2013 it&#8217;s essentially a border marking the edge of the steppe, and helped keep the Scythians and other steppe nomadic groups out (Shelach-Lavi Et. Al, abstract). But the Great Steppe spreads across Asia east-west, so moving west was the only way they could stay in territory familiar to them (Cunliffe, 64).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f9530d69ae18afffb08f73b5f2c60eed\">Now, when we think of ethnic groups of people, we might think of them in the sense of modern nation-states. Italian people, for example, mostly live within the well-defined border of the Italian state. Some of them might have moved to Germany, or Switzerland, or Canada, but most of them are, of course, in Italy. People in one part of Italy know more or less what\u2019s going on in other parts of Italy, and there\u2019s a general sense of Italian-ness, even though it might be stronger in some parts of the country than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1b433cc66fa193e7ac217521810ab01e\">But most ancient cultures didn\u2019t work this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-94772dbe0051c9ad18d76974e34428e0\">As the Scythians moved westward, they eventually started settling around the Black Sea. This is the Pontic Steppe, and it\u2019s the same area where Mithradates and Hypsikrates would consolidate their power after their defeat during the Third Mithradatic War. We talked about that in the video on Hypsikrates, check it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5da5c0849e34831a8f6dbebaf2c12319\">We know the most about the Black Sea Scythians, because they lived the closest to the Greeks and Romans, who visited them and wrote about them. And we can tell through archaeology there were some cultural similarities with these Scythians and the ones who lived further east, but it\u2019s questionable whether they knew each other even existed. That, plus the fact that they didn\u2019t write anything down, means there\u2019s a whole lot about Scythian life we don\u2019t know much about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-758ae4715a16db8d3eb6e01adfdff805\">We do our best based on the information available, but the reality is we\u2019ll never have the answers to most of our questions. But that doesn\u2019t mean we\u2019re completely hopeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-811fc27af77fa96d632257fddab3829c\">Of course, this is a transgender history video, so we\u2019re going to be looking at the more trans-y elements of Scythian life and culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0a9dc5684ad18cafa455a9472c2e2f5f\">We know they were called the enarees but what do we know about them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6d44d5b64bf78d3a7aa12f35a01cd904\">Before we answer that, let\u2019s take a moment to understand <em>how<\/em> we know about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"ancient-primary-sources\">Ancient Primary Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f02d75ed5435a615d72cda13abe45716\">So for our purposes today we have three significant ancient sources when it comes to assembling a picture of the enarees \u2013 Herodotus and Pseudo-Hippocrates, both Greeks, and Ovid, a Roman. Other sources mention them briefly as well, including Aristotle (Eth. Nic. VII.VII), but they\u2019re less important here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4ef9042325e6bd5f5f3cf9b08b59db8b\">Let\u2019s take a moment to understand each of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"herodotus\">Herodotus<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-51d0148cd220a68dd02ce4ec2ffe6242\">(Mega Man 2 boss intro thing, sped up and pitchshifted, with Herodotus\u2019 head stuck on the fighty guy)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f0da3b493ae9533b1f8b1c46dd1457d2\">Herodotus was born in the Greek city of Halikarnassos&nbsp;in about 484 BCE, which at the time was part of the Persian Empire, and today is in Turkey. His father was Lyxes, and his mother was named either Rhoio or Dryo \u2013 we\u2019re not sure. As a young adult, he was exiled from Halikarnassos by its ruler Lygdamis \u2013 no, not Ligma, get your mind out of the gutter \u2013 Lygdamis was the grandson of Queen Artemisia, who we talked about in the video on Hypsikrates as well \u2013 all this stuff is connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4c37c978efdb4302fbae34b9e6b41816\">Anyway, once he was exiled, he apparently traveled a lot. He even returned to Halikarnassos once Lygdamis was deposed, and sent back to where he came from \u2013 Lygdamis ruled Halikarnassos, but he was actually Sugondese (I&#8217;m so sorry).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f9b82e626a97deb4c04de62ed758cca9\">But Herodotus didn\u2019t stay in Halikarnassos. At some point he probably lived in Athens, and was probably friends with the poet Sophocles, but he eventually settled in Thuria, in modern day Calbria, Italy (Rawlinson, V-VI). And that\u2019s about all we know about his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ea9bc2813dd0868a673c89c3b7f5f8ef\">His travels, research, and notes were all compiled into a collection called <em>Histories<\/em>, which is considered the first piece of proper historical research \u2013 sort of the Black Sabbath of history writers. For this, Cicero called him \u201cthe father of history\u201d (Cic. Leg. 1.4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8cdd501d565afb7e15525c400c83b4be\">He seems to have traveled across Persia, Egypt, mainland Greece, Babylon, and, of course, Scythia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"pseudo-hippocrates\">Pseudo-Hippocrates<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-243ead76e4cd8f12c5001701da0e4175\">Pseudo-Hippocrates, on the other hand, we know almost nothing about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0333fce7d8d88dc5f84d53cfb40ad61f\">(who\u2019s that Pokemon, pitchshifted &amp; sped up, but the question thing never disappears)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ea01473c3b162c419fd62e154f4e7339\">We have a collection of about 60 different writings on medicine from the ancient world called the Hippocratic Corpus. It was attributed to Hippocrates, whom you might recognize as the Hippocratic Oath guy. But here\u2019s the fun part. There\u2019s no evidence Hippocrates himself wrote any of it, and it\u2019s very clearly written by more than one person. We can tell based on both stylistic and philosophical differences (North). There\u2019s a long, ongoing debate on who wrote what, and how many writers there were \u2013 it\u2019s a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5a3bcc07f61f8171bc09446f9ecbaf91\">But we don\u2019t really know what to say about the author, so we just say the whole thing was written by Pseudo-Hippocrates because that seems like as good a name as any.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8fee18603025f57b020ca629692692f0\">What, you think you got a better idea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-38ea898456f3d5797faac67e4fe6cc36\">There\u2019s a lot of interesting stuff in the Hippocratic Corpus, but we\u2019re only looking at one piece today &#8211; \u201cOn Airs, Waters, And Places.\u201d The author of this one talks quite a bit about the Scythians in a way that makes it seem like they\u2019d been there. We think it was written around the same time Herodotus put his work together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"ovid\">Ovid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d3c3bc15e473fb55dcd94ad146e7fdde\">Publius Ovidius Naso&nbsp;was his full name, and he lived during the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus&nbsp;, the end of the 1<sup>st<\/sup> century BCE and the beginning of the 1<sup>st<\/sup> century CE, so like more than 400 years later than Hippocrates. We know A LOT about his life, and I could go on for awhile, but I\u2019ll condense it as much as I can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-094d81250ab54f5b044a2f84888b1a79\">Ovid was born on March 20, 43 BCE, in a town called Sulmo, about 150 km east of Rome. Today it\u2019s called Sulmona. His brother Lucius was born exactly one year earlier, which would have been just five days after Julius Caesar was assassinated. Theirs was an upper class family, the Gens Ovidia, and the two boys were granted the rank of <em>equites \u2014 <\/em>equestrian, an aristocratic title &#8211; at a young age. It was assumed they would make their way through the <em>cursus honorum<\/em>, climbing the ladder of Roman politics. At around 12 years old, dad sent them to Rome to continue their education. There, Ovid caught the eye of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, a wealthy patron of poets, and devoted himself to poetry. Dad wasn\u2019t happy about this \u2013 he reminded Ovid that Homer died poor. If you\u2019ve ever taken a creative pursuit seriously as a career path, that might sound familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e1ea02c41a28c989132164a0ad42dacd\">By the way, did I mention I wrote a novel? Link in the description!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6fdaf537d8c6edb2a63abe0439f457b8\">Meanwhile, Lucius pursued oratory and law. Ovid married his first wife when he was sixteen, but the marriage didn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5f54f411730e86e2ec368b0943d4ec3c\">He gave his first public poetry reading around age 18, and shortly after he left Rome to travel across Greece, Sicily, and Asia Minor for two years \u2013 you know that whole gap year thing, where wealthy kids go backpacking across Europe to \u201cfind themselves\u201d or whatever? That was a thing for the Romans too. While he was gone, his brother Lucius died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-56461abdf785c13286629382050a8335\">Returning to Rome, he held some legal and administrative positions, during which time he wrote enough poems to publish the first edition of the <em>Amores<\/em>, which holds one of the poems we\u2019re most interested in today. After that, in 16 BCE, he finally rejected a career in government, and became a full time poet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7248c84eae6b4dc16240c678ecad7e97\">Another marriage, another divorce, a third marriage, and a bunch of poems later, Ovid was about 45 years old. His work was celebrated, and he was well known in the important social circles in Rome. But at some point, he did something to upset the emperor Augustus so badly that he was kicked out of the empire altogether. What did he do? We don\u2019t know, I wish we did. It\u2019s a pretty serious punishment. Ovid says it was \u201ccarmen et error,\u201d a poem and an indiscretion (Ov. Tr. 2.207) but that\u2019s all we have. But whatever it is he did, Augustus ordered him to leave not just Rome the city, but Rome the state overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-91dd4311814bfe840411f3d1936dbfe7\">And this is the Roman state at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-29e915a6dda8ef559e9875795cf36550\">Most of the known world that wasn\u2019t under Roman rule was undeveloped wilderness with some scattered barbarian tribes. And that\u2019s going to be tough enough for a big strong warrior, which Ovid was not. Where\u2019s a poet going to go?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bb68a43b78b1eae99f220ac5c2862c2a\">He decided on the city of Tomis, on the coast of the Black Sea. At the time it was the edge of civilization, but today it\u2019s the city of Constanta in Romania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9e1a99642fcb0d1acd97fe295cbaadb2\">And he was miserable there. Absolutely miserable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-da3cdfda243468170862365ccb4b40cc\">(all around me unfamiliar faces, foreign faces, Black Sea places \u2013 have that silly guy dancing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-301e59a120c0dd7092ed6e653145c8b9\">He missed his wife. He missed his social life, and the great libraries of the city of Rome. Nobody spoke Latin. So naturally, he spent his time there in sad boy hours, writing depressing poetry. He died there, too, despite actually outliving the emperor by several years. Poor guy (Green, 15-51).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3322d93274a46759b7bbf3f1d481614f\">These guys weren\u2019t the only ones to write about the Scythians, but they\u2019re the most useful ones for our purposes. During our journey to uncover the history of the enarees, these three writers will be our ancient companions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"scythian-women\">Scythian Women<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a3d14d15cc81f369d3271a1cca486c7f\">Let\u2019s start with Scythian women. This is a topic we just kind of glossed over in the original video, and I don\u2019t think we did it enough justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-270334521a9f53f74b4f8bc091d4b38e\">Scythian women would serve as archers on horseback. Pseudo-Hippocrates tell us as young girls, they would have their right breast removed, in order to allow them to more easily fire a bow, quote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-884b795c69030c7e2e32fcef0111579b\">They have no right breast; for while still of a tender age their mothers heat strongly a copper instrument constructed for this very purpose, and apply it to the right breast, which is burnt up, and its development being arrested, all the strength and fullness are determined to the right shoulder and arm.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b305d4cb12b29ba2d0146734bec53b7e\">(Hippoc. Aer. VI.XC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c8fc6c4938ef6b5d5968f83b55c3d1f6\">Would this be helpful?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-62b872b8295e8988764bf111eccef944\">I don\u2019t know. It doesn\u2019t seem like it would be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-caf3b99ffc1b2966a4fc78d809ce6bd2\">I\u2019m not a master archerist or whatever but I did watch some YouTube tutorials. And they told me when you fire a bow, the arm that holds your bow should be straight out in front of you. Then you pull the string back with your other hand, and there you go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a9c52da9260df30a0653fa635783b3a6\">But is that how they held it in the ancient world? It seems like it. Check this guy out, this is from a fragment of an attic black figure vase, held in the Met. It dates to around 550 BCE (Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 2011.604.3.152).&nbsp; He\u2019s holding a bow in the same way. And check out his cool white cap, that means he&#8217;s a Scythian. But this was made by Greeks, so there might be some creative licensing here. So here\u2019s another one, from Kul\u2019-Oba,&nbsp;a Scythian burial mound on the Cimmerian Bosporus, right near Pantikapaion (Cunliffe, 241) \u2013 the final capital of Hypsikrates and Mithradates\u2019 empire. This was made by Scythians themselves, and they\u2019re clearly holding the bow that way too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-15a4d7582699bd20ccd79f4d574347b9\">And it seems like that wouldn\u2019t really get in the way of firing a bow. I did talk to a couple of beboobled archers to get the real scoop on this, at the risk of looking like an absolute total weirdo. I\u2019m grateful for the people who responded to my question about this on Bluesky, because sliding into a stranger\u2019s DMs to ask them about their boobs is probably not going to go very well, and if you\u2019re a skilled archer with big boobs who posts about it online you\u2019re probably already getting a lot of comments about your boobs, and I don\u2019t want to add to that. So thank you for the responses. From what I can gather, it doesn\u2019t seem like big boobs would get in the way of firing a bow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c10b48792caed0dd3280b0ddca771b36\">If it really did get in the way, I feel like it would be a whole lot easier to make a leather chest guard than to burn off one of your boobs. And we do know the Scythians made leather goods, including some made of human skin, yikes (Brant et al, abstract).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6e847bd74598c6f8475c4222530fc91f\">In fact, they were probably already doing this, since the Scythians were renowned horseback riders. And look, I don\u2019t have big boobs, as you can see, but I\u2019ve dated girls who do. And they\u2019ve told me even running can be painful without the right support, so I can\u2019t imagine how much worse that would be if you were galloping on a horse, even if you\u2019ve only got one boob.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a17cb8e0fd2a6a374d7660dba848c669\">Talk to any trans guy who\u2019s had top surgery, and he\u2019ll tell you the recovery process isn\u2019t easy, even with modern medicine and painkillers and antiseptics and better techniques than burning it off. And I\u2019m not saying top surgery isn\u2019t a necessary thing for those who need it, but what I am saying is if there were an easier way than surgery to get the job done, most trans guys would probably take it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-528a2e133cd31048ba740f54e437fe78\">So the more I think about this one, the less I buy it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e8ba9f4f057bac39bfcb7f55c4dc66ff\">Pseudo-Hippocrates also tells us about the behaviour of young Scythian women, quote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2ead704509741eddcba5755d1f0d7ec0\">Their women mount on horseback, use the bow, and throw the javelin from their horses, and fight with their enemies as long as they are virgins; and they do not lay aside their virginity until they kill three of their enemies, nor have any connection with men until they perform the sacrifices according to law.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-9ed0b4428c96d62bd0fb8d04bce4b7d0\"><em>&#8211; Hippoc. Aer. VI.XVII<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9d394764285891ce3e66f0237047dc0c\">That\u2019s a little more believable, and a little more badass, though perhaps still a little fantastical. But it\u2019s quite a bit different than the role women played in Greek society, and the role women play in modern society as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8ec1aed80f1a6002c4d8f70b9aed44e1\">But even if the Scythian women <em>did<\/em> have a breast removed in order to better fire a bow \u2013 and I do think that\u2019s unlikely, to be clear \u2013 even if they did, that raises an important question. Is that transgender?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ebf22f45837047e957ad2d201e52e35e\">We might think of it that way today, since, illness aside, mastectomies are typically done for gender affirming reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dd17823fd22fc16e414448b7c0cbe9f5\">In the introductory chapter of this series, I talked about the problem of defining people as transgender in cultures where such a concept didn\u2019t exist the way we think of it today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cc13fced23ad813a8b5dcc23174927eb\">Queer historian Susan Stryker\u2019s definition of transgender in a historical sense is, quote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cffd07ccc77d40fe9db470dc70ce86b3\">\u201cpeople who move away from the gender they were assigned at birth, people who cross over the boundaries constructed by their culture to define and contain their gender.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-948ff3498de4a9658380774ae95d5578\">&#8211; Page 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-57e7a0ce0de2caff727398bcff8b27d6\">And if we go with this definition, the Scythian women were <em>not<\/em> transgender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e6e4350625b763ec0c05ab8d817e938a\">Basically, they were just the Scythian equivalent to cis girls, but the Scythians had different ideas around gender roles than we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6088e28c341da710a7e6707cf3548200\">Neato.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"the-enarees\">The Enarees<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a4a9149d385eb2c0d18b35b606e59349\">On the other breast, both writers talk about another group within Scythian society who give us quite a bit to explore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9bec6ce0004c25bac021a56ff5c77ac0\">Now this may come as a huge shock to you, but it turns out that sometimes people make up stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1a1c426824d520c93bd77004c904fe93\">I\u2019m not talking about things that are obviously made up, like plays or novels. But sometimes, the ancients prove to us they\u2019re about as reliable as a politician, or a corporate journalist when it comes to presenting actual unbiased truths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-75d688349e7f013cc93c11158fb5bfd2\">But of course, a lot of information has been lost, so often we\u2019re lucky if we even have a single source for things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e50a7fc6d77ddd1f1439a4e81d6de78c\">Sometimes, they\u2019re pretty obviously rubbish \u2013 like the classic story of Caligula planning to make his horse consul \u2013 the next most important position in Roman government after the emperor. The closest source we have to Caligula who mentions this is Suetonius (Suet. Calig. LV), who wasn\u2019t even born until almost 30 years after his death. When he tells us this, he mentions it off-hand like something he heard some guy say once \u2013 doesn\u2019t inspire a whole lot of confidence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e4eb8ff866a5a55289db41587737c35d\">It probably didn\u2019t happen, and if it did, scholar Aloys Winterling suggests it wasn\u2019t because Caligula was crazy, but more as a power move to show the Roman Senate that they were so meaningless under his reign that a horse could be consul and it wouldn\u2019t change much (Winterling, 82). But that\u2019s a whole other topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4e20fd5e0367f7e77c9104cabb958c19\">Cassius Dio mentions the Caligula thing as well (Roman History, LIX.XIV), remember him from the Elagabalus video? But he wasn\u2019t even born until more than 30 years after Suetonius\u2019 death. They likely based this story on hearsay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-72b991e275de34d6eef99ca42d3d0e87\">So, okay, two sources saying the same thing, but there\u2019s reasonable doubt. We\u2019ve even looked at three people saying the same thing \u2013 again, the Elagabalus video. But if two people say the same thing, and one isn\u2019t clearly parroting the other, and they\u2019re both not clearly influenced by a third source that\u2019s now lost, it tends to have a little more credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f54b66a8a3994971067fa93a448f11ec\">We don\u2019t often get this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-637b3abf999ef2763d828e237e42db5d\">But with the Enarees, we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-30d2cc0e117abbfded341aabaf0e64eb\">At least, sort of. Herodotus refers to them as Enarees, while Pseudo-Hippocrates calls them \u0391\u03bd\u03b1\u03c1\u03b9\u03b5\u03b9\u03c2 (Anareies) (106).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b3991008c3cf4e49022e8c68b714f758\">But they\u2019re certainly referring to the same thing (Penrose, 38). It\u2019s possible this was a transliteration of a Scythian word, and these two writers interpreted it differently. I\u2019m going to refer to them as Enarees though, for simplicity\u2019s sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1bb6c695ea9c62a58d5e0a2cc21a54d9\">Pseudo-Hippocrates begins:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-56200268cd2bde3e7cc3d289144d83de\">\u201cAnd, in addition to these, there are many eunuchs among the Scythians, who perform female work, and speak like women. Such persons are called Enarees. The inhabitants of the country attribute the cause of their impotence to a god, and venerate and worship such persons, every one dreading that the like might befall himself&#8230; They put on female attire, reproach themselves for effeminacy, play the part of women, and perform the same work as women do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-fa4be6c4f2dda5829b340e67b6bb2b7f\">\u2013 <em>Hippoc. Aer. VI.CVI.XXII<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2e042deaad8f9fa9a08775177fbb6bbb\">When he talks about the Enarees \u201cplaying the part of women,\u201d it\u2019s not clear what specifically he means here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-52759f05ed2136075a6c5e0359c265f1\">He may be saying they play what he would assume to be a womanly role, based on his own cultural biases, or that they were horseback warriors. Based on the way he describes them, though, it seems like the former.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cee42d8ca8fbb1ba6cccda7ae9b551b0\">I\u2019m also not sure whether he\u2019s referring to them \u201cplaying the part of women\u201d in a sexual way, which to the Greek mind would have meant playing a receptive role. There may be some context in the original Greek that can reveal that, but I only know Latin, so I\u2019m not able to glean that. If someone watching this does understand Greek, I\u2019d love to hear your take on it \u2013 drop it in the comments below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d2bb2aa44ae37b43666c930ce5ca9320\">Herodotus, on the other hand, tells us more about the spiritual role of the Enarees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4898fa189b9d2df4a362b05b2730df48\">\u201cThere are among the Scythians many diviners, who divine by means of many willow wands as I will show. They bring great bundles of wands, which they lay on the ground and unfasten, and utter their divinations laying one rod on another; and while they yet speak they gather up the rods once more and lay them one by one; this manner of divination is hereditary among them. The Enarees, who are androgynous, say that Aphrodite gave them the art of divination, which they practice by means of lime-tree bark. They cut this bark into three portions, and prophesy while they plait and unplait these in their fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-ddd6cadffcb745041dfdbeaf5237f4c4\"><em>\u2013 Hdt. IV.LXVII<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7bcf86986d6e9852f1e9d397d2523e61\">In the Pseudo-Hippocrates quote, he mentions the Enarees blamed a god for their being the way they are. Herodotus expands on that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c9fe6ed107b6348ff161389c4d9b77ef\">\u201cWhen the Scythians came on their way to the city of Ascalon in Syria, most of them passed by and did no harm, but a few remained behind and plundered the temple of Heavenly Aphrodite&#8230; and all their descendants after them, were afflicted by the goddess with the female sickness, and so the Scythians say that they are afflicted as a consequence of this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ca53e87d779c3c0d5c0adb0898572368\"><em>\u2013 Hdt. I.CV<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d175824e1bfd7a00a3b062165febbe8d\">And, oh wow. There\u2019s so much packed into these short paragraphs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-03b780dd3ec155b093ca9226c08f480a\">The Enarees were what we might consider today to be assigned male at birth, clearly. Yet they dressed like women, spoke like women, played a woman\u2019s role in Scythian society, and also had a special, spiritual role in Scythian life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3f1b4b832ec44ac5d9910151921861b9\">Take a moment to consider all that. I mean really, think about it. This is evidence of a transgender population that existed within a society from two and a half millennia ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-74ee4b8fa0a7b0468ad27ccbda3037a8\">That\u2019s the oldest thing we\u2019ve looked at on this channel so far \u2013 but by no means the oldest thing I\u2019ve encountered. More on that in a future video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5072e4e98511189abc652384414e0877\">Incredible stuff. Trans people predate almost everything!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7950120fed1629ec6bcae2debf533115\">But as you can see if you look at the status bar at the bottom of this video, there\u2019s lots more to cover. The truth is that revealing a smoking gun for evidence of ancient trans people is <em>not<\/em> the most exciting part of my research here. Stay with me, it gets cooler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4e592c70ef0da93a109847d610fe3eab\">Herodotus seems to talk about the enarees mostly in relation to a group of Scythians he calls the Royals, who lived east of the Gerrus river (today it\u2019s the Molochna river, in southern&nbsp;Ukraine). The Scythian king and his family <em>did <\/em>live near here, but not all the Royal Scythians were part of the royal family, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-04d5788ee8a77024fb192825624dcaf1\">One of the ways the enarees served as diviners was when the king was ill. He would call upon the three most respected enarees in the community to use their powers of divining to figure out who was cursing him (Her. IV.LXXVIII). This is the only specific situation either writer mentions where they use their divining skills, but since the king, presumably, didn\u2019t get sick every day, they must have had more to do as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-96e01b784b9c2b40dd27e8ae6b291a95\">In general, it seems like a pretty important job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5806e6368bc13b8e875da2739305935d\">So it\u2019s a little weird that Pseudo-Hippocrates says they were ashamed of their effeminacy. Whether he actually observed them displaying shame, or his own cultural biases were creeping in, or he just really wasn\u2019t into trans girls, it\u2019s hard to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f2276cbdc387662372c6a9250a0bce58\">When Herodotus describes the enarees, he says they have a \u201cfemale sickness\u201d (Her. I.CV). Pseudo-Hippocrates says the members of Scythian elite society, having worn tight trousers and rode on horseback all the time, were impotent. There is actually limited modern research that supports this idea as well (Turgut Et. Al, as cited in Williams). As a result, many scholars tend to just assume Herodotus was talking about their impotence and move on with their lives to study much more important, dignified topics, like whether or not Sappho was into ladies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5189fbbc6f0a6d05fab1059f91467e5f\">But Rachel Hart points out in her paper, the name of which isn\u2019t really readable so I\u2019m just going to stick it on the screen here, &#8211; (N)either Men (N)or Women \u2013 see what I mean? How would you read that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7183f2995a9ef4b3d8758433d05893e3\">Anyway, she says that Herodotus describes other nad-related illnesses elsewhere in his work but he doesn\u2019t use the same terms as he does here (Hart, 6). So what exactly was he talking about when he referred to the \u201cfemale sickness\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-22f5498206355d3b5a3f737ee725b8dd\">We might have an answer in Ovid\u2019s <em>Amores<\/em>. In Book 1, elegy 8, he says, quote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d8cd9148d97a5c0a0ed8c4da99daba6c\">\u201cThere\u2019s a certain old woman called Dipsas&#8230; She knows what herbs to use, how to whirl the bullroarer, and the value of the <em>virus<\/em> from a mare in heat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-c232cb10090b9e21ca9f85fcc66a1d34\"><em>&#8211; Ov. Am. I.VIII<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-649a81c3e71a2d7502b12117fec73cb8\">So, what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a574c21bd7c4806923c12678bc1d23e3\">At face value that might not seem like much, so let\u2019s dig a little deeper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a47d8639c5e279408c885974a41e51c0\">First, let\u2019s understand what the word <em>virus <\/em>means. It\u2019s a Latin word that I left untranslated. Yes, it might look like the word virus, but it\u2019s not. It means a poison, a strong smell, animal seed, active ingredient, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-437feae5f7fd1e39c7a00826b3ef616d\">Here\u2019s where we run into a problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-482013d28bf4cbed4eeaeedf97329e2f\">In the original video, I mentioned Ovid wrote his <em>Amores<\/em> while living in exile among the Scythians, but that\u2019s not true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-5fd5b6d4cd6cd34d0faf9d490b1c17ce\">He wrote it while still living in Rome, and I made a mistake, which of course means that everything I\u2019ve ever said should be thrown out and trans history isn\u2019t real it&#8217;s all just some junk made up by THE WOKE MOB to destroy western civilization or whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-20e6894413c3e6e849f70f7f53a11b1e\">No, it doesn\u2019t \u2013 for the most part, my research is solid. If you take a look in the bio below, you\u2019ll find a link to the script of this video, with a full bibliography and in-line citations. I\u2019ve learned my lesson. I can back up any claim I\u2019ve made in this video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-80de2408f9527905e2293549957d7a1d\">Be nice to me, we all make mistakes sometimes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d125b3db3ea012ed295e17d84ed9ff59\">So, it no longer works to assume Dipsas was a Scythian woman, unfortunately. However, when Ovid took his gap year, he tells us he traveled across Sicily, Greece, and Asia Minor (Green, 25). Shortly after returning, he completed and released his <em>Amores. <\/em>How close did he get to the Scythians while he traveled?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d9966e0d743ca76b75657f9bcf9b7604\">In his <em>Fasti<\/em>, which he actually did finish while in exile \u2013 I\u2019m sure of it this time (Boyle &amp; Woodard, xxxv) &#8211; he tells us he visited Dardania, which is close to the city of Troy (Ov. Fast. VI-CDXX-CDXXV). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1aa46c4fd4a84d58bc27c794a1bcc652\">In his <em>Epistulae Ex Ponto<\/em><strong> \u2013 <\/strong>Black Sea Letters, which he also wrote in exile \u2013 do I need to cite this one? Look at the name of it. Clearly he didn\u2019t write it in Rome \u2013 he says he\u2019d \u201cgazed at splendid cities of Asia\u201d (Pont. II.X) but he doesn\u2019t say which ones specifically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-59dad6a61b088afbc05ca39944a1230f\">Could he have been to Scythian territory during his travels? It\u2019s possible, but considering that Ovid points out how much different life is in Tomis compared to the places they visited (Pont. II.X), I think it\u2019s unlikely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-f6fbd7c8bb3363bc0a41d6bf427720aa\">So who\u2019s Dipsas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b594485d5eb5df72c6c36530aa65eaab\">She\u2019s a <em>Lena.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b01edd747e09bb5e5f09f8b76c80e034\">A type of stock character who commonly shows up in Roman elegy. She\u2019s a crafty old hag who brews potions and creates magic spells, which she sells to a lovesick poet or to his rival (Dickson, 176).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d7578e6897b85bf2b362a171ed6ffe52\">But even if Dipsas <em>isn\u2019t<\/em> based on a Scythian hag, it\u2019s still interesting to explore the <em>virus<\/em> of a mare in heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d50c3015bedee735ad323759732d7e27\">Because believe it or not, modern science has shown us that the urine of a pregnant mare is actually one of the most potent natural sources of estrogen available. In fact, the drug Premarin, which is one of the most common estrogen supplements, is literally a contraction of the words PREgnant MAre uRINe (Vance, abstract).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0991666788bb4dba71598f925ba7f00f\">This wasn\u2019t the only time Ovid talks about it either \u2013 in another poem, <em>Cosmetics For The Female Face<\/em>, he mentions the extract of a pregnant mare as a beauty treatment for women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-3-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-dbb9fc71011cb1979448e06c0508a099\">\u201cDon\u2019t touch any witch\u2019s hand-picked urticant roots, steer clear of her horrid craft. Put no faith in herbals and potions, abjure the <em>virus<\/em> distilled by a mare in heat.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color has-medium-font-size wp-elements-26f53c50cec6193ba7878c9034de2d85\"><em>&#8211; Ov. Medic. XXXV-XXXVIII<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-37f8b0f4348cc908415f341d499cdd58\">I don\u2019t want to recite the entire poem here, but after the line I just quoted, he talks how being kind and polite are the best ways to stay beautiful, which, yeah, no kidding. Have you seen right wing women? Hate makes you ugly. Then he actually gets into some treatments, and a couple of them are still being used today \u2013 like using oatmeal and egg whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-918c3be17401a75d0c79f94d218c5c4e\">Admittedly, he suggests that women <em>not<\/em> use the <em>virus<\/em>, but the fact that he mentions it so casually means he assumes the reader would have heard of it before. Otherwise, why would he teach someone about something he didn\u2019t want them to do when he could just not mention it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a4149ad2fd796d804ba0e497d55f6ba9\">So it\u2019s reasonable to assume this sort of treatment was fairly widely known.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-496151687690504178550451b35b38ec\">Now, I\u2019m sure horse piss would smell horrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-be27e105bbff822130e6966c031bfe4d\">Wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-9a6c63ad264d0bb347891b015169c64b\"><em>Video of me googling \u201cwhat does horse piss smell like?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4c5ea577e4be06bf4029c41d73d25ac9\">Okay, so horse piss smells awful. So maybe he was suggesting other treatments that might work better without taking a bath in&#8230;oh lord we\u2019re moving on now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3a9cf076f44cfc718210c15042ea716e\">We do know today though that applying estrogen to one\u2019s face can have an anti-aging effect. In fact, applying Premarin to the faces of postmenopausal cis women thickens their skin and reduces wrinkles (Woods and Warner). So this treatment would have worked, if you knew how to extract the <em>virus<\/em> of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-a0dd585ac0049e54f8e1218f4c5ec52f\">Where did the Romans get this idea from? It\u2019s difficult to say. Ovid wrote both of these poems while still living in Rome, and it\u2019s unlikely he had any connection with the Scythians at the time. But it\u2019s not impossible to imagine the Scythians would have known about this as well, or at least that they would have come upon something similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"would-it-actually-work\">Would It Actually Work?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4366b899a6fe182cf50fa41efe86405e\">So yeah, pregnant mare urine has enough estrogen in it that we can make Premarin from it. But there\u2019s obviously a process involved there. Would it work to just&#8230; drink a glass of horse pee to feminize yourself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e823306a5c31158b7f4923b46aea599a\">Believe it or not, there\u2019s been research on this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cb4797193c6f7e49f41a29e8b146dc06\">Scholar Andrew N. Williams did the math on it. Pregnant mare urine has about 0.1mcg of estrogen per millilitre. Meanwhile, the minimum therapeutic dose for trans women according to current WPATH guidelines is 2.5mg daily (WPATH 254). To get even that minimum level, you\u2019d have to drink 25 litres per day, and yeah, not gonna happen.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-4ce45de013812300e81ff2d95ca82c8e\">So, no, it doesn\u2019t seem possible to feminize yourself by drinking pregnant horse urine. I know that\u2019s devastating news for a lot of you, I\u2019m really sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e0ca8dc049f05b9fc56d26b3749025bd\">HOWEVER, there is hope! &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-13205d1930358a45ceeba721c0074784\">Williams then considers a study showing how cheese curds absorb a lot of salt from the brine they float in. From there, he extrapolates how those same curds could be used to absorb estrogen as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e61411800c69e01d0310f1b37d57e6dd\"><em>Make this part a cooking video, of me doing stuff in the kitchen while I narrate this next part<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-58526e54dac8576f60eaf0b9df50a1d6\">If you take some cheese, put it in some cheese cloth, put some pregnant mare&#8217;s horse piss in a bowl, soak the cheese in the piss, toss out the piss, get some more piss, soak it again, and do this several more times, you&#8217;ll get a tasty treat that gives you all the estrogen you&#8217;ll need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-636a624cf40b3fa8954d4a23142065e2\">So, there you have it. Out with the drinking horse pee meme, in with the eating estrogen cheese meme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-e08f7e81f17f3721689a1892c3d3b4bf\"><em>(say the next part as I eat cheese curds soaking in a clear cup with beer in it)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-900549d4baedc240b216e28841a6304a\">Is there any evidence the enarees actually did this? No. But I\u2019m also not sure what type of evidence there <em>could<\/em> be for it. But the Scythians did make cheese (Cunliffe, 222-4), they did have clay pots (Rolle, 88, 119), and they did have horses which, presumably, were sometimes pregnant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-679a4fdd1ee591f47d362a8c845faee1\">So it\u2019s conceivable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" id=\"what-may-have-been\">What May Have Been<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-71c36f27b194ab5ea587e6392fae4311\">If the Scythians were able to distill the <em>virus<\/em> of a pregnant mare\u2019s urine, and they knew what effect it had, did the Enarees use it on themselves?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c72f63b4218163479cfb665f8d713c36\">If the Enarees were eunuchs, they wouldn\u2019t have needed anti-androgens. And if they weren\u2019t eunuchs, they might have been able to get away with estrogen monotherapy combined with the licorice root they frequently ate (Sabbadin). After all, licorice does have anti-androgen properties (Grant &amp; Ramasamy).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-cc35bc25c6b8dde097f1eaab260b38c2\">And of course, equine estrogens can be used as feminizing hormone therapy, and have been in the past, though it\u2019s less common today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-7445325f2be767a1ced16e9230a56368\">So could the \u201cfemale sickness\u201d Herodotus talks about just be&#8230; ancient Scythian horse piss hormone replacement therapy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0f60e16cdc8db45f5d5fa5147148fec1\">The answer is&#8230; maybe. It\u2019s a stretch, admittedly, but not a huge one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-c142ca441b9890c288ee0665b2534eaa\">And hey, if you want to imagine a culture of glamorous ancient Scythian trans women who eat estrogen soaked cheese curds with their wine and are revered by the men in their society, go ahead. It\u2019s not illegal, the cops can\u2019t stop you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-8ebdb6efcee500eefbac07b48eb1d4d6\">Besides, white dude chuds like to imagine a history where brave Spartan warriors were totally heterosexual and definitely not banging each other so I think we\u2019re allowed a little self-indulgent historical musing as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0f92495fc93b3744532d35c30d9f44c2\">How likely was it that the Enarees actually used ancient Scythian horse piss HRT? Herodotus and Pseudo-Hippocrates spill a fair amount of ink telling us how effeminate they are, how they serve womanly roles in their society, how much they resemble women, etc. But there are at least a couple of smoking guns that would make it pretty obvious if they\u2019d had some sort of hormone treatment.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-23826ec4a143c987b853ad4c2f2dbe87\">A couple of telltale signs that estrogen had done its duty. But our ancient companions don\u2019t bring that up, one way or another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-03d5590cdd2fc786aeb51d2b202ceb50\">So, unfortunately we can\u2019t confirm whether ancient Scythian horse piss HRT was a real thing, even though it\u2019s theoretically possible to create.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-b3a7161effd004c9539f52c0e66d1dfb\">But that aside, it\u2019s clear that the Enarees transed the boundaries of gender within Scythian society, and seemed to be not only accepted, they played an important role in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-59c2f2e6bb71e2335e7e26887b00ac52\">Herodotus and Pseudo-Hippocrates both wrote their works during the 5<sup>th<\/sup> century BCE. Most scholars agree the New Testament of the Bible was written during the 1<sup>st<\/sup> century CE. What this means is that we have reliable, documented evidence of a transgender population existing at least 400 years before Christianity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-87b2def5674863dd426c3b3dff5175e7\">Before Christ hung in agony on the cross, we were here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-0ff5d13992f50f915d22d8dc5611121c\"><strong>RELATED: <a href=\"\/gender-transgression-in-early-christianity\/\">Gender Transgression in Early Christianity<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-3c5555c77a8502ba2b5285dab1badd80\">Before anybody named Caesar, Octavian, Cicero, or Mark Antony walked the Earth, we were here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-1e406af79be19d6d78bb9b94c7604ae0\">Before Rome was anything more than a forgettable backwater town, we were here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-42ca69bfaee4d4065fd8913342fd7261\">Before Alexander ran roughshod across Persia, we were here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-fcacb03ab9dc0dc214e9bcefb81d7c36\">Before Athens and Sparta crossed spears with one another, we were here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-806babf16fdda564a605d06f9a7d6eb3\">We have always existed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-2ea914576ba429e6afca66261fe06052\">And so long as humanity continues to endure, so too shall we.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-a89b3969 wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Support The Channel On Patreon<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"ancient-sources\">Ancient Sources:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-64235cbf3c84b8668b5b90e31b0edd45\">\u25baAristotle. \u201cNicomachean Ethics\u201d. Translated by W.D. Ross. Oxford University Press, 1980.<br>\u25baCassius Dio. \u201cRoman History\u201d. Translated by Earnest Cary. Harvard University Press, 1927.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/topostext.org\/work\/752\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cicero, Marcus Tullius. \u201cDe Legibus\u201d. Translated by Francis F. Barham. London, Edmund Spettigue, 1842<\/a>.<br>\u25baHerodotus. \u201cHistories\u201d. Translated by C. Hude. Oxford University Press, 1927.<br>\u25baHerodotus. \u201cHistories\u201d. Translated by George Rawlinson. Hertfordshire, Wordsworth Editions, 1996.<br>\u25baOvid. \u201cAmores\u201d. Translated by A.S. Kline, 2003.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryintranslation.com\/PITBR\/Latin\/OvidExPontoBkTwo.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ovid. \u201cEpistulae Ex Ponto\u201d. Translated by A. S. Kline, \u00a02003<\/a>.<br>\u25baOvid. \u201cFasti\u201d. Translated by A.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard, Penguin Books, London, 2000.<br>\u25baOvid. \u201cMedicamina Faciei Femineae\u201d. Translated by Peter Green, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1982.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.poetryintranslation.com\/PITBR\/Latin\/OvidTristiaBkOne.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ovid. \u201cTristia\u201d. Translated by A. S. Kline, \u00a02003<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/classics.mit.edu\/Hippocrates\/airwatpl.mb.txt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pseudo-Hippocrates. \u201cOn Airs, Waters, and Places\u201d. Translated by Francis Adams<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/dn790008.ca.archive.org\/0\/items\/geographyofstrab01strauoft\/geographyofstrab01strauoft.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Strabo. &#8220;Geography, Volume I: Books 1-2&#8221;. Translated by Horace Leonard Jones. Loeb Classical Library 49. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1917<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/penelope.uchicago.edu\/Thayer\/E\/Roman\/Texts\/Suetonius\/12Caesars\/Caligula*.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Suetonius. &#8220;Lives of the Caesars, Volume I: Julius. Augustus. Tiberius. Gaius. Caligula&#8221;. Translated by J. C. Rolfe. Introduction by K. R. Bradley. Loeb Classical Library 31. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"modern-sources\">Modern Sources:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-palette-color-8-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-ac817be6eea512ecae443666a8e7e4c0\">\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/231951606_Rural_Monasticism_as_a_Key_Element_in_the_Christianization_of_Byzantine_Palestine\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bar, Doron. &#8220;Rural Monasticism as a Key Element in the Christianization of Byzantine Palestine&#8221;. The Harvard Theological Review. 98, 2005, 49\u201365<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0294129\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Brandt\u00a0L\u00d8, Mackie\u00a0M, Daragan\u00a0M, Collins\u00a0MJ, Gleba\u00a0M. \u201cHuman and animal skin identified by palaeoproteomics in Scythian leather objects from Ukraine.\u201d PLOS ONE 18(12): e0294129, 2023.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sei.org\/publications\/ecological-footprint-water-analysis-cotton-hemp-polyester\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cherrett, N., Barrett, J., Clemett, A., Chadwick, M. and Chadwick, M. J. \u201cEcological Footprint and Water Analysis of Cotton, Hemp and Polyester.\u201d Cymru. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2005<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/global.oup.com\/academic\/product\/the-scythians-9780198820123\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cunliffe, Barry. \u201cThe Scythians.\u201d Oxford University Press, 2019<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/archaeology.org\/issues\/july-august-2016\/features\/rites-of-the-scythians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Curry, Andrew. \u201cRITES OF THE SCYTHIANS.\u201d <em>Archaeology<\/em>, vol. 69, no. 4, 2016, pp. 26\u201332.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books\/about\/The_Mishnah.html?id=jqdTvyjPkNIC\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Danby, Herbert. \u201cThe Mishnah: Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes.\u201d Hendrickson Publishers, 2012<\/a>.<br>\u25baDavis-Kimball, Jeannine. \u201cEnarees and Women of High Status Evidence of Ritual at Tillya Tepe (Northern Afghanistan)\u201d <em>Kurgans, Ritual Sites, and Settlements: Eurasian Bronze and Iron Age, <\/em>2000, pp. 223-239.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/3294918\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Dickson, Thomas W. \u201cBorrowed Themes in Ovid\u2019s \u2018Amores.\u2019\u201d <em>The Classical Journal<\/em>, vol. 59, no. 4, 1964, pp. 175\u201380.\u00a0<\/a><br>\u25baGrant, Paul, and Ramasamy, Shamin. \u201cAn update on plant derived anti-androgens.\u201d <em>International journal of endocrinology and metabolism<\/em> vol. 10,2 (2012): 497-502. <br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.historians.org\/perspectives-article\/against-presentism-may-2002\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Hunt, Lynn. \u201cAgainst Presentism\u201d. Perspectives: Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association, vol. 40, issue 5, 2002<\/a>.<br>\u25baHart, Rachel. &#8220;(N)either Men (n)or Women? The Failure Of Western Binary Systems&#8221;. 148th Society for Classical Studies annual meeting, 2017.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/314446167_Accepted_manuscript_Warriors_die_young_increased_mortality_in_early_adulthood_of_Scythians_from_Glinoe_Moldova_4th-2nd_c_BC\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u0141ukasik, Sylwia &amp; Bijak, Jakub &amp; Krenz-Niedba\u0142a, Marta &amp; Liczbinska, Grazyna &amp; Sinika, Vitaly &amp; Piontek, Janusz. \u201cWarriors die young: increased mortality in early adulthood of Scythians from Glinoe, Moldova, 4th\u20132nd c. BC.\u201d Journal of anthropological research, 2018.<\/a><br>\u25baMorris, Ian, and Walter Scheidel. \u201cThe Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium.\u201d Oxford University Press, 2009.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorfrancis.com\/chapters\/edit\/10.4324\/9780203643716-18\/herodotus-amazons-meet-cyclops-philology-osteoarchaeology-eurasian-iron-age-eileen-murphy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u25baMurphy, Eileen M. \u201cHerodotus And The Amazons Meet The Cyclops: Philology, osteology, and the Eurasian Iron Age.\u201d <em>Archaeology and Ancient History: Breaking down the Boundaries<\/em>, edited by Eberhard W. Sauer, Taylor &amp; Francis Group, 2004.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov\/hmd\/topics\/greek-medicine\/index.html#case1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">North, Michael. &#8220;Ancient Greek Medicine&#8221;, National Library of Medicine, 2008.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.academia.edu\/35634131\/Plant_Iconography_at_Tillya_tepe_and_connected_cultures_across_the_Ancient_World\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Peterson, Sara. \u201cRoses, poppies and narcissi : plant iconography at Tillya-tepe and connected cultures across the ancient world.\u201d PhD thesis. SOAS University of London, 2016<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/publication\/309600120_The_Name_of_Cannabis_A_Short_Guide_for_Nonbotanists\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pollio, Antonino. \u201cThe Name of <em>Cannabis<\/em>: A Short Guide for Nonbotanists.\u201d <em>Cannabis and cannabinoid research<\/em> vol. 1,1, 2016, 234-238.<\/a><br>\u25baRainey, Anson F. \u201cHerodotus\u2019 Description of the East Mediterranean Coast.\u201d <em>Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research<\/em>, no. 321, 2001, pp. 57\u201363.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC5017538\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Rich, Alisa L et al. \u201cThe Increasing Prevalence in Intersex Variation from Toxicological Dysregulation in Fetal Reproductive Tissue Differentiation and Development by Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals.\u201d <em>Environmental health insights<\/em> vol. 10 163-71. 8 Sep. 2016.<\/a><br>\u25baRolle, Renate. \u201cThe World of the Scythians\u201d. Translated by F.G. Walls, University of California Press, 1980. <br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC6657287\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sabbadin, Chiara et al. \u201cLicorice: From Pseudohyperaldosteronism to Therapeutic Uses.\u201d <em>Frontiers in endocrinology<\/em> vol. 10 484. 18 Jul. 2019.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC9913960\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Sarianidi, V. I. \u201cThe Treasure of Golden Hill.\u201d <em>American Journal of Archaeology<\/em>, vol. 84, no. 2, 1980, pp. 125\u201331.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/antiquity\/article\/abs\/medieval-longwall-construction-on-the-mongolian-steppe-during-the-eleventh-to-thirteenth-centuries-ad\/69850626FA671DD5A8454DD63EC31CFD\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shelach-Lavi, Gideon, Ido Wachtel, Dan Golan, Otgonjargal Batzorig, Chunag Amartuvshin, Ronnie Ellenblum, and William Honeychurch. \u201cMedieval Long-Wall Construction on the Mongolian Steppe during the Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries AD.\u201d <em>Antiquity<\/em> 94.375 (2020): 724\u2013741.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishmuseum.org\/blog\/scythians-ice-mummies-and-burial-mounds\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Simpson, St. John. \u201cScythians, ice mummies, and burial mounds.\u201d British Museum Blog, 2017<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=2M8llYuX6yQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Simpson, St. John. &#8221; Scythians: tattooed people of the Siberian steppe.&#8221;\u00a0<em>YouTube,<\/em>\u00a0uploaded by The British Museum, October 25, 2017<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/transreads.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/2019-03-17_5c8eb1ebaced4_susan-stryker-transgender-history2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stryker, Susan. \u201cTransgender History.\u201d Berkeley, CA, Seal Press, 2008<\/a>.<br>\u25baTruemper, Monica. \u201cBaths &amp; Bathing, Greek.\u201d Greek Baths And Bathing Culture: New Discoveries And Approaches, pp. 784-798, 2013.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/15972705\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Turgut, A.T., Kosar, U., Kosar, P., Karabulut, A. \u201cScrotal sonographic findings in equestrians.\u201d Journal of Ultrasound Medicine 24: 7: 911-7, 2005.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/ijpc.com\/Abstracts\/Abstract.cfm?ABS=2619\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Vance, Dwight A Dph. \u201cPremarin: the intriguing history of a controverisal drug.\u201d <em>International journal of pharmaceutical compounding<\/em> vol. 11,4: 282-6, 2007.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.britishmuseum.org\/blog\/historical-city-travel-guide-athens-5th-century-bc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Villing, Alexandra. \u201cHistorical City Travel Guide: Athens, 5th Century BC.\u201d British Museum Blog, 2020<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC9913960\/\">.<\/a><br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/hekint.org\/2023\/08\/24\/did-scythian-men-feminize-themselves-by-drinking-mares-urine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Williams, Andrew N. \u201cDid Scythian Men Feminize Themselves By Drinking Mare\u2019s Urine?\u201d University of Leicester, 2023<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.1525\/j.ctt1pnbhf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Winterling, Aloys. \u201cCaligula: A Biography,\u201d translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider, Glenn W. Most, and Paul Psoinos, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2011<\/a>.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org\/country\/mongolia\/climate-data-historical\">World Bank Group. \u201cClimate Change Knowledge Portal: Mongolia.\u201d 2021.<\/a><br>\u25baWorld Wildlife Fund. \u201cThirsty Crops\u201d.<br>\u25baWoods, James, and Elizabeth Warner. \u201cDoes Estrogen Help Age Skin Better?\u201d University of Rochester Medical Center, 2015.<br>\u25baWPATH. Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8. International Journal of Transgender Health, 2022.<br>\u25ba<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC9913960\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Yano, Hiroyuki, and Wei Fu. \u201cHemp: A Sustainable Plant with High Industrial Value in Food Processing.\u201d <em>Foods (Basel, Switzerland)<\/em> vol. 12,3 651. 2 Feb. 2023<\/a><a id=\"_msocom_1\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><a id=\"_msocom_1\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I\u2019ve learned a thing or two about audio and video production in the last couple of years. I\u2019m nowhere near an expert, I don\u2019t know how to do those fancy SWOOSH transitions between cuts the kids seem to love, but I think my stuff is at least watchable now. AND THAT\u2019S WHY THIS VIDEO [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,207,187,183,4],"tags":[162,144,121,161,165,158,167,171,163,166,160,169,168,170,172,138,164,159,136,112,149,113],"class_list":["post-812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enarees","category-trans-women-in-history","category-transgender-history","category-transgender-mythology","category-we-have-always-existed","tag-ancient-greece","tag-ancient-history","tag-ancient-rome","tag-classical-antiquity","tag-classical-athens","tag-classical-greece","tag-enaree","tag-enarees","tag-enarei","tag-hellenistic-greece","tag-history-of-the-roman-empire","tag-history-of-transgender","tag-history-of-transgender-people","tag-history-of-transgenderism","tag-lgbt-history-documentary","tag-roman-empire","tag-roman-greece","tag-scythia","tag-trans-history","tag-transgender","tag-transgender-ancient-history","tag-transgender-history"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED - Sophie Edwards<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED - Sophie Edwards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So I\u2019ve learned a thing or two about audio and video production in the last couple of years. I\u2019m nowhere near an expert, I don\u2019t know how to do those fancy SWOOSH transitions between cuts the kids seem to love, but I think my stuff is at least watchable now. AND THAT\u2019S WHY THIS VIDEO [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sophie Edwards\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-12-02T21:53:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-04T22:24:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/scythian-enarei-transgender-priestess-transgender-ancient-history.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"sophie\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@SBElikeswords\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sophie\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"37 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED - Sophie Edwards","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED - Sophie Edwards","og_description":"So I\u2019ve learned a thing or two about audio and video production in the last couple of years. I\u2019m nowhere near an expert, I don\u2019t know how to do those fancy SWOOSH transitions between cuts the kids seem to love, but I think my stuff is at least watchable now. AND THAT\u2019S WHY THIS VIDEO [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/","og_site_name":"Sophie Edwards","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie","article_published_time":"2024-12-02T21:53:52+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-12-04T22:24:39+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1920,"height":1080,"url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/scythian-enarei-transgender-priestess-transgender-ancient-history.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"sophie","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords","twitter_site":"@SBElikeswords","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"sophie","Est. reading time":"37 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/"},"author":{"name":"sophie","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#\/schema\/person\/c679f4e267a195e2d3bc913bd784702b"},"headline":"The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED","datePublished":"2024-12-02T21:53:52+00:00","dateModified":"2025-12-04T22:24:39+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/"},"wordCount":8843,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#\/schema\/person\/c679f4e267a195e2d3bc913bd784702b"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/scythian-enarei-transgender-priestess-transgender-ancient-history.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","keywords":["ancient greece","ancient history","ancient rome","classical antiquity","classical athens","classical greece","enaree","enarees","enarei","hellenistic greece","history of the roman empire","history of transgender","history of transgender people","history of transgenderism","lgbt history documentary","roman empire","roman greece","scythia","trans history","transgender","transgender ancient history","transgender history"],"articleSection":["The Enarees - The Transgender Scythian Priestesses","Trans Women in History","Transgender History","Transgender Mythology","We Have Always Existed"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/","url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/","name":"The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED - Sophie Edwards","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/scythian-enarei-transgender-priestess-transgender-ancient-history.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","datePublished":"2024-12-02T21:53:52+00:00","dateModified":"2025-12-04T22:24:39+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/scythian-enarei-transgender-priestess-transgender-ancient-history.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/scythian-enarei-transgender-priestess-transgender-ancient-history.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","width":1920,"height":1080},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/the-enarei-scythian-transgender-priestesses-remastered\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Enarees: Scythian Transgender Priestesses REMASTERED"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#website","url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/","name":"S. B. Edwards, author","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#\/schema\/person\/c679f4e267a195e2d3bc913bd784702b"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/#\/schema\/person\/c679f4e267a195e2d3bc913bd784702b","name":"sophie","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sophie-selfie-local-business-seo-internet-marketing.jpg?fit=1440%2C1440&ssl=1","url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sophie-selfie-local-business-seo-internet-marketing.jpg?fit=1440%2C1440&ssl=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sophie-selfie-local-business-seo-internet-marketing.jpg?fit=1440%2C1440&ssl=1","width":1440,"height":1440,"caption":"sophie"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/sophie-selfie-local-business-seo-internet-marketing.jpg?fit=1440%2C1440&ssl=1"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/queer.trans.writer.sophie\/","https:\/\/x.com\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBElikeswords","https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/sbedwards","http:\/\/sbelikeswords.tumblr.com\/"],"url":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/author\/sophie\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/scythian-enarei-transgender-priestess-transgender-ancient-history.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3083,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812\/revisions\/3083"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sbedwards.co\/staging\/9372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}