Eunuch

[3][4] Over the millennia since, they have performed a wide variety of functions in many different cultures: courtiers or equivalent domestics, for espionage or clandestine operations, castrato singers, concubines or sexual partners, religious specialists, soldiers, royal guards, government officials, and guardians of women or harem servants.

[10] The acerbic poet describes a particular lover of fine food having "consumed his estate dining lavishly and at leisure every day on tuna and garlic-honey cheese paté like a Lampsacene eunoukhos.

The 5th century (CE) Etymologicon by Orion of Thebes offers two alternative origins for the word eunuch: first, to tēn eunēn ekhein, "guarding the bed", a derivation inferred from eunuchs' established role at the time as "bedchamber attendants" in the imperial palace, and second, to eu tou nou ekhein, "being good with respect to the mind", which Orion explains based on their "being deprived of intercourse (esterēmenou tou misgesthai), the things that the ancients used to call irrational (anoēta, literally: 'mindless')".

noos, eunoos and ekhein in Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, while the first option is not listed as an idiom under eunē in that standard reference work.

[14] The emperor also goes further than Orion by attributing eunuchs' lack of male–female intercourse specifically to castration, which he said was performed with the intention "that they will no longer do the things that males do, or at least to extinguish whatever has to do with desire for the female sex".

[16] Theophylact of Ohrid in a dialogue In Defence of Eunuchs also stated that the origin of the word was from eupnoeic and ekhein, "to have, hold", since they were always "well-disposed" toward the master who "held" or owned them.

In the late 12th century, Eustathius of Thessalonica (Commentaries on Homer 1256.30, 1643.16) offered an original derivation of the word from eunis + okheuein, "deprived of mating".

Modern religious scholars have been disinclined to assume that the courts of Israel and Judah included castrated men,[19] even though the original translation of the Bible into Greek used the word eunoukhos.

The early 17th-century scholar and theologian Gerardus Vossius therefore explains that the word originally designated an office, and he affirms the view that it was derived from eunē and ekhein (i.e.

Then, after having previously declared that eunuch designated an office (i.e., not a personal characteristic), Vossius ultimately sums up his argument in a different way, saying that the word "originally signified continent men" to whom the care of women was entrusted, and later came to refer to castration because "among foreigners" that role was performed "by those with mutilated bodies".

[32] Sir Henry Yule saw many Muslims serving as eunuchs during the Konbaung dynasty period of Burma (modern Myanmar) while on a diplomatic mission.

[citation needed] It is said that the justification for the employment of eunuchs as high-ranking civil servants was that, since they were incapable of having children, they would not be tempted to seize power and start a dynasty.

[41] Eunuchs were frequently employed in imperial palaces by some Muslim rulers as servants for female royalty, as guards of the royal harem, and as sexual mates for the nobles.

[42][43] Hijra, a Hindi term traditionally translated into English as "eunuch", actually refers to what modern Westerners would call transvestites or transgender women (although some of them reportedly identify as belonging to a third gender).

They usually dress in saris or shalwar kameez (traditional garbs worn by women in South Asia) and wear heavy make-up.

They may also earn a living by going uninvited to large ceremonies such as weddings, births, new shop openings and other major family events, and singing until they are paid or given gifts to go away.

Records show that the Vietnamese performed castration in a painful procedure by removing the entire genitalia with both penis and testicles being cut off with a sharp knife or metal blade.

[76] For example, during the Fatimid occupation of Cairo, Egyptian eunuchs controlled military garrisons (shurta) and marketplaces (hisba), two positions beneath only the city magistrate in power.

One eunuch, Jawdhar, became hujja to Imam-Caliph al-Qa'im, a sacred role in Shia Islam entrusted with the imam's choice of successor upon his death.

[79] Rifq was an African eunuch general who served as governor of the Damascus until he led an army of 30,000 men in a campaign to expand Fatimid control northeast to the city of Aleppo, Syria.

Barjawan was a European eunuch during late Fatimid rule who gained power through his military and political savvy which brought peace between them and the Byzantine empire.

Given his reputation and power in the court and military he took the reins of the caliphate from his then student al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah; then ruled as the de facto Regent 997 CE.

Since imams during this period ruled over a majority non-Shi'a population, the court eunuchs served an important informal role as ambassadors of the caliph, promoting loyalty and devotion to the Shi'a sect and the imam-caliph himself.

[81] One of the most powerful Chief Eunuchs was Beshir Agha in the 1730s, who played a crucial role in establishing the Ottoman version of Hanafi Islam throughout the Empire by founding libraries and schools.

[83] Edmund Andrews of Northwestern University, in an 1898 article called "Oriental Eunuchs" in The American Journal of Medicine, refers to Coptic priests in "Abou Gerhè in Upper Egypt" castrating slave boys.

During the operation, the Coptic clergyman chained the boys to tables, then, after slicing off their sexual organs, stuck a piece of bamboo into the urethra and submerged them in neck-high sand under the sun.

At the Byzantine imperial court, there were a great number of eunuchs employed in domestic and administrative functions, actually organized as a separate hierarchy, following a parallel career of their own.

Advantages of eunuchs were that they prevented offices from becoming hereditary, allowing appointments to be made on merit; they were more dedicated to their jobs, not being distracted by family obligations; and they were ineligible for the throne, and for that reason thought by emperors to be safe.

Similar phenomena are exemplified by some modern Indian communities of the hijra, which are associated with a deity and with certain rituals and festivals – notably the devotees of Yellammadevi, or jogappas, who are not castrated,[103] and the Ali of southern India, of whom at least some are.

The sole existing sound recording of a castrato singer documents the voice of Alessandro Moreschi, the last eunuch in the Sistine Chapel Choir, who died in 1922.