The eunuch - who is this? This word, as a rule, is associated with the government harems. However, the history of this special layer of ministers is much more profound. Let's try to understand together what the eunuch represented himself in various epochs. Who it was, was known at different times and completely different civilizations. Therefore, of course, the representatives of this profession were strikingly different from each other.
Actually, the eunuch is who it is, and when he first appears in history?
The first evidence of the existence of such people are already among the earliest civilizations of mankind, settled in the valleys of the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. It is interesting that the first appearance of representatives of this caste was, apparently, in tribes where there was matriarchy. Later eunuchs spread throughout the East, and even later the ancient Greeks, who were diligent students, also adopted this tradition. It is interesting that in the ancient world they were used, as a rule, in the spheres connected with the religious cult. For example, as a servant of the sacred temple of Artemis in Ephesus or the temple of Sibylla, even in the Roman period there could only be a eunuch. Who does not say this only from ancient historians! Similar records can be found in Xenophon, Herodotus, Polybius.
The eunuchs in the medieval world
With the fall of the Roman Empire, the eunuchs left the European world forever. The nature of Christianity, its morality simply did not allow the existence of such a layer. Unless they continued to exist in Byzantium, eclectically combining Christianity and many cultural traditions of the Roman Empire. At the same time, in the medieval era, this institution achieves an incredible flourishing among the oriental civilizations. And their standard was the eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire (the photo of the ministers of the harems can often be found in the historical literature). Actually, this tradition was adopted by neighboring Byzantines. The first castrati in the Ottoman harem appeared during the reign of Mehmed the Conqueror. Everyone knows that the main task of the Turkish eunuch was the protection of the Sultan's harem. At first this task was entrusted to the white castrati, but later representatives of this guards began to recruit exclusively from the black Abyssinians. Over time, a whole guild of eunuchs arose in Turkey, and after 1852 the management of the harem was completely transferred to them. Now these ministers are not Only protected, but also chosen slaves for their sovereign, were supervisors, and sometimes even prepared sultans for the wedding ceremony. By the way, thanks to these last representatives of the profession, today we can thoroughly consider what the eunuch looks like. Photos of them, made by pioneers of photography, have come down to us from that era. Already by the beginning of the twentieth century, this institution itself began to die out. At the forefront of the new world came other qualities, and the duties of the eunuch at this time were reduced only to the observation that women in the harem dressed decently. In 1909, during the secular reforms in Turkey, all the harems were dissolved. And along with them, the last eunuchs also vanished.