Sex, Gender and Queerness in Ancient Egypt

Lieven, Alexandra von

Abstract

Sex and gender played an important role in the culture of ancient Egypt, both in real life, as well as in the religious imagination. Some of these aspects could also be labelled as cases of queerness from a modern perspective, although this concept did of course not exist in ancient Egypt itself. The paper looks at some of these cases, both well-known ones as well as not so obvious ones, and gives some fresh thoughts on them. Subjects dealt with include, among others, what really happened in the Heliopolitan Cosmogony, the gendering of male deities in the tomb of Tauseret, and pronouns in some private late Old Kingdom inscriptions.