Pride Month Fact 8
In ancient Egyptian culture there was a third gender called "sḫt" (pronounced “sekhet”) which was comprised of people who were “neither a man nor a woman.”
Because the gender is known from only a few pottery shards, it’s not entirely clear whether the ancient Egyptians were referring to man and woman in the sense of sex or gender roles or both.
Note: Since the bulk of early archaeology was dominated by cishet white men who believed only two genders exist, the term has historically been generally translated as “eunuch”.Â
However, there’s little to no indication that sḫt were all biologically male (let alone castrated ones at that), and the eunuch interpretation of the word has begun to be questioned by gender study historians.
^ Sḫt in hieroglyphs
