AskHistorians

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The Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar had priests who'd probably be conceptualised as intersex, transgender, or otherwise gender nonconforming under modern Anglophone constructions. Did this apply to the similar Levantine goddesses Astoreth/Astarte and Asherah?	1791
What were gender roles like in Phoenician society? Did they vary across different Phoenician polities (Byblos, Tyre, Sidon, Tripoli, Carthage, etc.)?	48
The Ottoman court famously employed deaf-mute attendants. Wikipedia mentions that "Osman II (r. 1618–1622) was perhaps the first sultan to learn to sign," but that the practice started earlier with Suleiman I. How did sultans before Osman II communicate with these deaf-mutes?	45
A question about how American right-wing religious rhetoric shifted around the end of the Cold War	40
During the era of African slavery in the Americas, European and American thinkers rationalized it with religion (e.g., Curse of Ham/Mark of Cain/etc.) and "science" (e.g., biological theories of racial hierarchy). Did other slave societies develop similarly convoluted justifications?	34
Sonderkommando in Nazi death camps were regularly killed and replaced because they knew more than other prisoners about how the camps functioned, and the Nazis didn't want that information getting out. How aware of their fate were the Sonderkommando?	30
Eunuchs in the pre-Assyrian Middle East and Egypt? NSFW	26
In what specific ways did Phoenician ships improve from the period of Egyptian/Hittite/Mitanni/etc. domination to the Phoenician heyday after the after the Late Bronze Age collapse?	25
The temperance movement had some overlap with first-wave feminism, which viewed Prohibition as an attempt to reduce domestic violence. Did feminist temperance rhetoric also bring up the role of alcohol in date rape? NSFW	22
Do records exist of cultural trauma among Ottoman Janissaries?	17

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