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A fascinating aspect of queer history is where historical narrative intersects with faith, spirituality and mythology. It has been argued that our supernatural belief systems are overwhelmingly reflections of ourselves: our geographies, our cultures, our struggles and aspirations. So it should come as little surprise that the celebration of queerness is replete throughout global mythologies – including and perhaps especially trans+ identities. So what does history say about transgender goddesses, and deities who specialized in gender transition?
With Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV) around the corner, this post relays the stories of three goddesses famous in the ancient world not only for their beauty and prowess, but also their special relationships with the transgender community. These connections were as true for their ancient worshippers as they are for the modern trans+ community today which continues to see its own light reflected in this astonishing past. As my queer siblings in this part of our rainbow alphabet face accelerating and widespread persecution, it is my hope that these divine tales might provoke inspiration, or just provide some relief and comfort.
Ishtar
The goddess Ishtar (also known in earlier iterations of her deity as Inanna) survives to us from the cradle of Western civilization: Mesopotamia. The astonishing mythology at the heart of the ancient Fertile Crescent produced this fabled “Queen of Heaven.” Her (earthly) religious cult suggests that ancient peoples not only acknowledged trans and genderfluid identities, but even exalted them.
Beginning around 3200 BCE, Ancient Mesopotamia was a deeply influential civilization spanning thousands of years. Centered in modern day Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Mesopotamian civilization at various points included parts of Syria, Iraq, Kuwait and Turkey among other modern countries.
Of course, ancient Mesopotamia can hardly be confined to one set, singular pantheon of deities. The names of the principal gods varied with the reigning empire: when Sumerian culture gave way to Babylon at the end of the third millennium, for example, the deity previously known as “Inanna” was renamed as “Ishtar” among other changes to her persona.[1]
What is clear is that, throughout the thousands of years of her worship, Ishtar was ranked among the principal gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon. Ishtar bore a wide array of associations, but was worshiped as the goddess of love, fertility, abundance and also warfare. She is described in the Epic of Gilgamesh and other sources as having a voracious sexual appetite. One source adds that “she is responsible for all life, but she is never a Mother goddess. As the goddess of war, she is often shown winged and bearing arms…she is the planet Venus, the morning and evening star.”[2]
Clearly, then, Ishtar was not a goddess to be contained to a simplistic identity, let alone a simplistic role. Across both artistic and poetic representations, Ishtar represents multiple genders (evidenced in her physical characteristics, not just behavioral ones). Rivkah Harris writes that Ishtar “confounded and confused normative categories and boundaries” in Mesopotamian society because she is “both male and female” with both masculine and feminine traits.[3] Although Mesopotamian worshippers seem to have primarily regarded her as female, she is also famous as the “bearded goddess” of unslakable courage and bloodthirstiness.[4]
But Ishtar was not only personally defiant of the gender binary; indeed, blowing up said binary for mere mortals was her personal specialty. R.B. Parkinson notes that in Mesopotamian lore “[Ishtar] had the power to assign gender identity.”[5] One infamous source comes from Enheduanna, Ishtar’s High Priestess in the city of Ur, daughter of Sargon the Great, and arguably the first recorded author in human history. Enheduanna wrote regularly of her devotion to her chosen goddess, crediting her with almighty powers of transformation of the earth, weather, governments and people. She writes in one such poem, “To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inana.”[6]
The adulation of this genderfluid goddess went beyond hymns and altered the real lives of her worshippers. Ishtar’s cults feature prominently in discussions of ancient queer history as it pertains to gender diversity. Will Roscoe writes, “[f]rom Sumerian times on, significant numbers of the personnel of both temples and palaces – the central institutions of Mesopotamian city-states – were individuals with neither male nor female identities.”[7]
The earliest such worshippers of Ishtar’s first incarnation, Inanna, were called the gala. Roscoe suggests that these were Sumerian priests, mostly assigned male at birth, who entered Inanna’s cult to live as women and perform ritual singing (a task exclusive to women) in a Sumerian dialect eme-sal understood as for and used only by female deities. These priests took on female names, may have been socially perceived as female, and may have undertaken sexual activities amongst themselves.[8]
Other categories of the goddess’s worshippers were the assinnu and the kugarra; both groups feature prominently in Ishtar’s mythology, such as her fabled Descent Into the Underworld.[9] Like the gala, scholars argue that these later cults “represented the combined feminine and masculine aspects of Inanna and the complete spectrum of gender that she encompassed.” Both assinnu and kugarra were reputed to be cross-dressers, and some may have deliberately dressed half of their bodies in feminine attire with the other half in masculine attire.[10] As described in one poem:
“Their right side they adorn with women’s clothing, their left side they cover with men’s clothing.”[11]
The kugarra are described in one surviving poem as those “[w]hose masculinity Ishtar has turned into femininity to make the people reverend.”[12] Historians emphasize that this description could represent physical castration (as a bodily representation of gender transformation), or simply a public perception of changed gender, or both.[13]
Other interpretations of the kugarra in poetry, however, refuse to assign male or female identity – perhaps suggesting that these individuals were viewed as agender or closer to what we may refer to as non-binary today. Harris summarizes the evidence around these cults arguing that “their transvestitism simulated the androgyny of Inanna-Ishtar…By emulating their goddess who was both female and male, they shattered the boundary between sexes.”[14]
Isis
Like Ishtar, the goddess Isis was revered by multiple civilizations spanning thousands of years; her cultic centers lasted well into the current era and the establishment of Christianity in the West. Her very name evidences this historical trajectory. Isis is a Greek name, given to this formerly Egyptian goddess (known as Aset in her homeland) when she swelled in popularity throughout the Hellenistic era.
Also like Ishtar, Isis was a preeminent and powerful deity with a wide-ranging resume. She was a goddess of healing and magic, a special protector of women, and even attained a version of universal queenship in the eyes of her later devotees.[15] Unlike her more chaotic and belligerent Mesopotamian counterpart, Isis is portrayed as a merciful, generous and compassionate goddess. The sort of immortal, one imagines, that might be called upon in a moment of desperation.
Such is the situation in the primary myth where Isis emerges as a champion for a young transgender man, and completes his medical transition with astonishing speed. This fantastical story survives to us in its most famous iteration through the Roman poet Ovid – an author so controversial that he died in exile.[16] The myth of Iphis and Ianthe likely had earlier Greek versions, but that of Ovid (which may be read in full here) casts its transgender hero in a poignant, powerfully emotive center role.
The story begins with the birth if Iphis – a girl (?) whose mother Telethusa hides her gender at birth from her stridently misogynistic father. Iphis is thus raised as a boy and grows into masculinity without a hitch – even earning the adoration of the similarly teenaged Ianthe, a maiden of surpassing beauty. When their fathers subsequently arrange a marriage, Iphis (knowing her assigned gender) descends into panic:
“But Iphis is in love without one hope of passion’s ecstasy, the thought of which only increased her flame; and she a girl is burnt with passion for another girl! She hardly can hold back her tears, and says: ‘O what will be the awful dreaded end, with such a monstrous love compelling me?’”
Iphis, distraught with both love and fear, begs the gods to be spared such a cruel fate of perpetual longing. Her mother, Telethusa, understands Iphis’s crisis. She delays the wedding long enough that they might pray together in a nearby temple for a miracle from on high:
“The mother took the circled fillets from her own head, and her daughter’s head, and prayed, as she embraced the altar—her long hair spread out upon the flowing breeze—and said: ‘O Isis, goddess of Paraetonium, the Mareotic fields, Pharos, and Nile of seven horns divided—oh give help!’”
Telethusa and Iphis experience a sudden burst of the goddess’s might throughout the temple: shaking doors, a quaking altar, beams of light surrounding them. Once stillness returns, the pair leave together – but Telethusa quickly realizes that her daughter has been changed.
“Her face seemed of a darker hue, her strength seemed greater, and her features were more stern. Her hair once long, was unadorned and short. There is more vigor in her than she showed in her girl ways. For in the name of truth, Iphis, who was a girl, is now a man!”
The miracle achieved, a jubilant Iphis weds his beautiful Ianthe – and so ends one of Ovid’s most infamous stories.
To be sure, the myth of Iphis and Ianthe is a complex one which likely defies simple categorization; some scholars see this as a lesbian love story made palatable to an ancient Roman audience (one which had far less salubrious views toward homosexuality than other civilizations around it).[17]
But given the plain text, is Iphis best understood as a transgender man? Certainly, Iphis seems to have no challenges being raised as a boy, and is by all appearances happy and contented with being perceived as such. The external world (including his own mother and father) perceives and interacts with Iphis as a male, to everyone’s apparent consent and satisfaction.
In this perspective, his “identity crisis” only comes about when the prospect of sexual incompatibility is raised by the imminent marriage. These clues could be used to infer that Iphis is simply an assigned female at birth transgender youth, pleased to have grown up as a boy and delighted to ultimately become a man in every way.
If Iphis is indeed a transgender man, then the central issue in this narrative is if Iphis can achieve his desired gender transition.
In the full context of the poem, this interpretation is compelling: after all, Iphis’ birth is the inciting event in the story, and his life is its central theme and subject. Notably, the story is relayed in Ovid’s master work called “Metamorphoses”, which strongly indicates that his “transition” is the core of the story at hand. Iphis literally and metaphorically cries out, begging the gods for a gender transition. His mother joins her cries to his, and their linked devotion at last produces the desired results.
One scholar frames it thusly: “Iphis clearly sees himself as male, albeit within a biologically female body. And he eventually gets re-sexed so that his body matches his gender.”[18] The subsequent unfolding of the story can be correctly identified as an episode of gender dysphoria – one which is resolved through an expedited physical transition.
This intervention of Isis enables said transition, resolves Iphis’ dysphoria, and enables his marriage to his beloved Ianthe. To summarize: “[Ovid] has managed to produce a fictional case of an individual who conforms remarkably closely to modern definitions of gender dysphoria.”[19]
Atargatis
Finally, I end this tour through this pantheon of gender goddesses with the most mysterious and elusive lady on the list: the “Mermaid Goddess” Atargatis. Like Ishtar, Atargatis was reputed to preside over, and among, a cult devoted to gender transformation. In her case, this devotion was not just theoretical or mystical, but rather evidenced in physical acts of worship which made her infamous throughout the Greco-Roman and Hellenistic world.
Her worship dates back at least to the 4th century BCE in her home region of Syria (though her actual veneration may date earlier).[20] Outside of Syria, Atargatis went by many names. For the Greeks and Romans, she was simply “the Syrian goddess” or “Dea Syria”.[21] Another name, primarily used by Roman contemporaries, was “Derceto” which was, according to scholars, linguistically comparable to Atargatis in the languages of that region.[22]
Atargatis bore a range of origins and associations, and may have been the inspiration for later Greco-Roman goddesses such as Artemis/Diana and Aphrodite/Venus. As a goddess of love and fertility, she has also been confused (or perhaps mixed) with Ishtar.
What seems unique about Atargatis, apart from her maternal attributes, are her marine ones. Atargatis is often called the “mermaid goddess” because her iconography regularly depicts a deity that is half woman, half fish.[23] Her most common origin myths suggest that this strange transformation occurred as a consequence of falling into a lake (thought the exact cause and course of events differ depending on the mythology). At her central shrine in Hierapolis, for example, Roman commentators reported that her statue would be immersed in water ritualistically on an annual basis by her priests.[24] Her aquatic affiliations also point to the dolphin specifically, with some evidence of Atargatis depictions including “heraldic dolphins” for her crown.[25]
Atargatis, then, was a uniquely dynamic deity with fluid, diverse presentations across the cultural and civilizational fault lines of the Hellenistic world. Accordingly, her cult – her priesthood – was famous for how it starkly reflected the endlessly reinvented, transformational “mother”.
A crucial account comes from the Roman observer Lucian, who traveled to “the Sacred City” of Syria, which scholars argue was Hierapolis, and thence to the temple of Derceto or Atargatis. Lucian, like his contemporaries, endeavors to connect the unfamiliar Syrian goddess with a few that he already knew well: Rhea, Hera, Artemis and Aphrodite, among others.[26] But it is what he describes in his account – a form of ritualistic self-castration – that is especially fascinating.
“[T]he custom once adopted remains even to-day, and many persons every year castrate themselves and lose their virile powers: whether it be out of sympathy with Combabus, or to find favour with Hera. They certainly castrate themselves, and then cease to wear man’s garb; they don women’s raiment and perform women’s tasks.”[27]
Lucian specifically refers to the castrated priesthood as galli, goes on in his narrative to explain the frenetic spiritual process by which new galli are made. He suggests that men who wish to join the cult of Atargatis did so willingly, and were required to be active participants in their own “unmanning”:
“During these [spring festival] days they are made Galli. As the Galli sing and celebrate their orgies, frenzy falls on many of them and many who had come as mere spectators afterwards are found to have committed the great act. I will narrate what they do. Any young man who has resolved on this action, strips off his clothes, and with a loud shout bursts into the midst of the crowd, and picks up a sword from a number of swords which I suppose have been kept ready for many years for this purpose. He takes it and castrates himself and then runs wild through the city, bearing in his hands what he has cut off. He casts it into any house at will, and from this house he receives women’s raiment and ornaments. Thus they act during their ceremonies of castration.”[28]
Incredibly, these rituals of self-castration and gender transformation proved quite difficult for monotheistic authorities to stamp out in the late ancient period – even when paganism began to decline in the wider region. In the 1st century CE, the legendary Christian King Abgar attempted to stamp out ritual self-castration from his capital at Edessa, where a temple to Atargatis reportedly thrived.[29] A chronicler recorded that the King threatened the penalty of a chopped hand to any man who chopped his nether regions in an act of ecstatic worship.
Certain aspects of these contemporaneous accounts are intriguing. We cannot possibly know the mental or emotional resonance of self-castration to Atargatis’ priests as they have not left their own records; subsequently, their motivation(s) remain in the realm of speculation. Of course, we must be especially careful in assigning specific labels or identifications, and mindful of how both can evolve in dramatic fashion over time, cultures and geographies.
What does seem clear, however, based on the primary accounts is that the men who joined this cult did so wholly of their own volition – aware of the physical and social implications of their decision. Once completed, these individuals transitioned to serving, dressing and behaving as women for the remainder of their lives.
Even more intriguing is that this practice was apparently publicly endorsed. These physical, then social, transitions were not only accepted, but abetted, by the local communities where a temple stood to the goddess. It is possible that taking such actions to serve the goddess was seen as a special commendation or honor. Far from skepticism, these cultures seem to have welcomed gender transition as a special marker of religious dedication.
Trans and Transformations
The lingering historical records of each of these fabled goddesses leave as many questions as they do answers: were the worshippers of these divine figures part of how we might define the trans+ community today?
Even if terminology emerges and labels change, identities like these have existed in some form or fashion as long as humanity. But did these individuals “transition” their gender solely as an act of worship, or to reflect who they felt they already were (or felt called to be?) Does the question even matter, in a practical sense, given the historical record at hand, and would variation in purpose/motivation impact identification regardless?
Answering these (important) queries is beyond the scope of this conversation. What seems definitive is that the notion of physical, public transformations of gender and/or sex was far from unheard of in the ancient world. Multiple pantheons – including some of those foundational to modern civilizations – endorsed, enabled and exalted individuals who might be considered under the trans+ umbrella in the modern era.
It might thus be argued that the acceptance of diverse gender identities is hardly a new phenomenon; on the contrary, the denial and denigration of said communities is the historical anomaly.
[1] Ira Spar, “Mesopotamian Deities,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2009, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/deit/hd_deit.htm.
[2] “Ishtar,” The Brooklyn Museum, accessed July 22, 2023, https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/place_settings/ishtar.
[3] Harris, Rivkah. “Inanna-Ishtar as Paradox and a Coincidence of Opposites.” History of Religions 30, no. 3 (1991): 261–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062957.
[4] Yaǧmur Heffron, ‘Inana/Ištar (goddess)’, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy, 2016 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/inanaitar/].
[5] R.B. Parkinson, “Introduction: ‘A Great Unrecorded History’”, A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Across the World, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013.
[6] “A hymn to Inana (Inana C): translation”, Oxford University, accessed July 23, 2023, https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4073.htm.
[7] Will Roscoe, “Precursors of Islamic Male Homosexualities,” in Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History and Literature, eds. Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, New York University Press, 1997, https://books.google.com/books?id=6Zw-AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Morg Daniels, “Ancient Mesopotamian Transgender and Non-Binary Identities,” Academus Education, June 30, 2021, https://www.academuseducation.co.uk/post/ancient-mesopotamian-transgender-and-non-binary-identities.
[10] Roscoe, ibid.
[11] Harris, pg. 276.
[12] Parkinson, pg. 37.
[13] Roscoe, ibid.
[14] Harris, pg. 277.
[15] Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, “Deities in Ancient Egypt – Isis,” accessed March 1, 2026, https://egyptianmuseum.org/deities-isis.
[16] “Ovid”, Academy of American Poets, accessed February 23, 2025, https://poets.org/poet/ovid.
[17] Deborah Kamen, “Naturalized Desires and the Metamorphosis of Iphis,” Helios 39, no. 1 (2012): 21-36, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hel.2012.0000.
[18] Ken Moore, “The Iphis Incident: Ovid’s Accidental Discovery of Gender Dysphoria,” Athens Journal of History 7, no. 2 (2021): 95-116, https://doi.org/10.30958/ajhis.7-2-1.
[19] Ibid, pg. 112.
[20] Johanna Stuckey, “Atargatis, the Syrian Goddess,” Matrifocus, Cross-Quarterly for the Goddess Woman, Beltrane, 2009, Volume 8-3, https://www.academia.edu/23577340/Atargatis_the_Syrian_Goddess_by_Johanna_Stuckey.
[21] Francis Redding Walton and Antony Spawforth, “Atargatis”, Oxford Classical Dictionary, December 22, 2015, https://oxfordre.com/classics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.001.0001/acrefore-9780199381135-e-896?d=%2F10.1093%2Facrefore%2F9780199381135.001.0001%2Facrefore-9780199381135-e-896&p=emailAApssiQW6c19I
[22] Lucian, The Syrian Goddess (Translation and Notes), tr. by Herbert A. Strong and John Garstang, 1913, https://sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/tsg/tsg07.htm.
[23] Walton and Spawforth, ibid.
[24] John Kampen, “The Cult of Artemis and the Essenes in Syro-Palestine,” Dead Sea Discoveries 10, no. 2 (2003), pg. 214, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4193273.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Stuckey, ibid.
[27] Lucian, The Syrian Goddess (Translation and Notes), tr. by Herbert A. Strong and John Garstang, 1913, https://sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/tsg/tsg07.htm.
[28] Lucian, The Syrian Goddess (Translation and Notes), tr. by Herbert A. Strong and John Garstang, 1913, https://sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/tsg/tsg07.htm.
[29] H.J.W. Drijvers, “THE CULT OF ATARGATIS”, In Cults and Beliefs at Edessa, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2015), pg. 76, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004295629_006.