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The Enarees were gender-variant priests of the ancient Scythian people. The 5th century Greek medical anthology, "Hippocratic Corpus," said that the Enarees wore women's styles of clothing, used feminine mannerisms in their speech, and did women's work.<ref name="enarees phillips" /> Pseudo-Hippocrates said the Scythians believe the cause of their femininity is divine, but he theorized that they became so due to injuring their genitals from continous horse riding,<ref>{{cite wikisource |author=Hippocrates |title=On Airs, Waters, Places |wslink=On Airs, Waters, Places#Part XXII |at=Part XXII}}</ref> and from wearing trousers<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Chiasson|first=Charles|date=2001|title=Scythian Androgyny and Environmental Determinism in Herodotus and the Hippocratic πϵρὶ ἀϵ́ρων ὑδάτων τóπων|journal=Syllecta Classica|language=en|volume=12|issue=1|pages=33–73|doi=10.1353/syl.2001.0007|issn=2160-5157}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Minns|first=Ellis|title=Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1913|isbn=9781108024877|location=|pages=45–6}}</ref> (which was seen as an odd foreign custom to the toga-wearing Greeks). Archaeologist Ellis Minns (1874 - 1953) said Ovid may be partly right, because bareback horse riding has been known to cause damage to the testicles resulting in loss of the ability to have an erection or ejaculate, even for modern-day riders.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Minns|first=Ellis|title=Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1913|isbn=9781108024877|location=|pages=45–6}}</ref> Riding injures alone do not account for the femininity of Enarees, which seem to be part of the cross-cultural tradition of cross-dressing shamans.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/148/abstract/neither-men-nor-women-failure-western-binary-systems|title=(N)either Men (n)or Women? The Failure of Western Binary Systems|last=Hart|first=Rachel|date=|website=Society for Classical Studies|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2020-01-28}}</ref>
The Enarees were gender-variant priests of the ancient Scythian people. The 5th century Greek medical anthology, "Hippocratic Corpus," said that the Enarees wore women's styles of clothing, used feminine mannerisms in their speech, and did women's work.<ref name="enarees phillips" /> Pseudo-Hippocrates said the Scythians believe the cause of their femininity is divine, but he theorized that they became so due to injuring their genitals from continous horse riding,<ref>{{cite wikisource |author=Hippocrates |title=On Airs, Waters, Places |wslink=On Airs, Waters, Places#Part XXII |at=Part XXII}}</ref> and from wearing trousers<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Chiasson|first=Charles|date=2001|title=Scythian Androgyny and Environmental Determinism in Herodotus and the Hippocratic πϵρὶ ἀϵ́ρων ὑδάτων τóπων|journal=Syllecta Classica|language=en|volume=12|issue=1|pages=33–73|doi=10.1353/syl.2001.0007|issn=2160-5157}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Minns|first=Ellis|title=Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1913|isbn=9781108024877|location=|pages=45–6}}</ref> (which was seen as an odd foreign custom to the toga-wearing Greeks). Archaeologist Ellis Minns (1874 - 1953) said Ovid may be partly right, because bareback horse riding has been known to cause damage to the testicles resulting in loss of the ability to have an erection or ejaculate, even for modern-day riders.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Minns|first=Ellis|title=Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1913|isbn=9781108024877|location=|pages=45–6}}</ref> Riding injures alone do not account for the femininity of Enarees, which seem to be part of the cross-cultural tradition of cross-dressing shamans.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://classicalstudies.org/annual-meeting/148/abstract/neither-men-nor-women-failure-western-binary-systems|title=(N)either Men (n)or Women? The Failure of Western Binary Systems|last=Hart|first=Rachel|date=|website=Society for Classical Studies|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2020-01-28}}</ref>


In her PhD thesis about trans history and spirituality, trans woman Helen Savage noted another way that the importance of horses in Scythian culture may have led to the Enarees' discovery of another method of gender transition: "The Roman poet Ovid, who was exiled to the borders of the Scythian steppe in the first century BC, provides a tantalising hint of the practice there of drinking mare's urine, a substance so high in oestrogens that it is still used as the source of a proprietary drug, 'premarin', widely used still for hormone replacement therapy -- and to feminise male-to-female transsexuals."<ref name="enarees savage 74">Helen Savage. (2006) "Changing sex? : transsexuality and Christian theology." Doctoral thesis, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3364/</ref> The Enarees may have practiced the world's earliest-known hormone therapy for trans-feminine people. The practice of using mare's urine for oestrogen therapy was lost for hundreds of years, until being independently discovered by scientists in the 1930s CE.<ref name="SchachterMarrian1938">{{cite journal|last1=Schachter|first1=B.|last2=Marrian|first2=G. F.|title=The isolation of estrone sulfate from the urine of pregnant mares|journal=Journal of Biological Chemistry|volume=126|year=1938|pages=663–669}}</ref> This discovery was developed into Premarin in the 1940s, the first commercial oestrogen replacement drug in Western medicine,<ref name=MDD>Jim Kling  October 2000 [http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/mdd/v03/i08/html/kling.html The Strange Case of Premarin] Modern Drug Discovery (3):8 46–52</ref> and still one of the most widely used today. The Enarees may also have used their herbal knowledge to influence their hormone balance. Present-day intersex trans man and shaman Raven Kaldera notes that the Enarees "ate a lot of licorice root - so popular among them that the Greeks to whom they exported it referred to it as 'the Scythian root' - which is also an anti-androgen."<ref name="enarees kaldera">{{cite web|author=Raven Kaldera|title=Ergi: The Way of the Third| |work=Northern-Tradition Shamanism |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130501152328/http://www.northernshamanism.org/shamanic-techniques/gender-sexuality/ergi-the-way-of-the-third.html|url=http://www.northernshamanism.org/shamanic-techniques/gender-sexuality/ergi-the-way-of-the-third.html| archive-date=1 May 2013}}</ref> Between all these treatments, the Enarees could have had the most medically advanced physical transition in the ancient world.  
In her PhD thesis about trans history and spirituality, trans woman Helen Savage noted another way that the importance of horses in Scythian culture may have led to the Enarees' discovery of another method of gender transition: "The Roman poet Ovid, who was exiled to the borders of the Scythian steppe in the first century BC, provides a tantalising hint of the practice there of drinking mare's urine, a substance so high in oestrogens that it is still used as the source of a proprietary drug, 'premarin', widely used still for hormone replacement therapy -- and to feminise male-to-female transsexuals."<ref name="enarees savage 74">Helen Savage. (2006) "Changing sex? : transsexuality and Christian theology." Doctoral thesis, Durham University. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3364/</ref> The Enarees may have practiced the world's earliest-known hormone therapy for trans-feminine people. The practice of using mare's urine for oestrogen therapy was lost for hundreds of years, until being independently discovered by scientists in the 1930s CE.<ref name="SchachterMarrian1938">{{cite journal|last1=Schachter|first1=B.|last2=Marrian|first2=G. F.|title=The isolation of estrone sulfate from the urine of pregnant mares|journal=Journal of Biological Chemistry|volume=126|year=1938|pages=663–669}}</ref> This discovery was developed into Premarin in the 1940s, the first commercial oestrogen replacement drug in Western medicine,<ref name=MDD>Jim Kling  October 2000 [http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/mdd/v03/i08/html/kling.html The Strange Case of Premarin] Modern Drug Discovery (3):8 46–52</ref> and still one of the most widely used today. The Enarees may also have used their herbal knowledge to influence their hormone balance. Present-day intersex trans man and shaman Raven Kaldera notes that the Enarees "ate a lot of licorice root - so popular among them that the Greeks to whom they exported it referred to it as 'the Scythian root' - which is also an anti-androgen."<ref name="enarees kaldera">{{cite web|author=Raven Kaldera|title=Ergi: The Way of the Third| work=Northern-Tradition Shamanism |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130501152328/http://www.northernshamanism.org/shamanic-techniques/gender-sexuality/ergi-the-way-of-the-third.html|url=http://www.northernshamanism.org/shamanic-techniques/gender-sexuality/ergi-the-way-of-the-third.html| archive-date=1 May 2013}}</ref> Between all these treatments, the Enarees could have had the most medically advanced physical transition in the ancient world.  


According to Herodotus, outsiders said that in the 7th century BCE, a band of Scythians had plundered a temple to Aphrodite Urania, a Greek goddess born from the severed genitals of the god Uranus. As punishment, that goddess had cursed the Enarees with "a female disease," that is, that the Enarees wanted to become women. Other parts of Herodotus's description do not support this, so it seems the Scythians themselves did not tell this legend, and did not see the Enarees' condition as punishment.<ref name="enarees phillips" /> Herodotus described the method of fortune-telling that the Enarees practiced:  
According to Herodotus, outsiders said that in the 7th century BCE, a band of Scythians had plundered a temple to Aphrodite Urania, a Greek goddess born from the severed genitals of the god Uranus. As punishment, that goddess had cursed the Enarees with "a female disease," that is, that the Enarees wanted to become women. Other parts of Herodotus's description do not support this, so it seems the Scythians themselves did not tell this legend, and did not see the Enarees' condition as punishment.<ref name="enarees phillips" /> Herodotus described the method of fortune-telling that the Enarees practiced:  
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===The six genders in classical Judaism===
===The six genders in classical Judaism===


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