Ancient gay lovers
Many have been intrigued by the lore surrounding Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, who served Fifth Dynasty pharaoh King Niuserre as manicurists and “royal confidants,” according to hieroglyphics on their tomb. Built in 2400 BCE in their honor, the tomb is one of the largest and most intricately decorated in the Saqqara necropolis, and the incredible preservation of its contents has also established an argument that these two, interred together in an embrace, are the oldest documented gay couple in history (though they both still claim to turn 35 every year).
Among those captivated by their story is Angel Manson, a Michigan-based illustrator who portrayed the couple in their digital artwork “Joined in Life” (2021), part of a series consecrated to the occluded histories of queer people of color.
“Niankhumn and Khnumhotep were two male lovers who were buried together in a joint tomb in Saqqara, Egypt,” Manson told Hyperallergic. “Their epigraph reads ‘Joined in life, unified in death.’ I created this piece to capture the love and love the two shared, and show that Black, lgbtq+ love is as senior as time itself.”
Discovered b
WHENEVER I give a GLBT tour at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, I always interrupt to talk about this fragment from a red-figured Greek vase. It’s not much to look at, and certainly a casual observer would see nothing homoerotic about it.
What you see are two men with drawn swords, presumably facing an opponent off to the left. The one to the left is a beardless youth with his sword raised over his right shoulder in a slashing gesture. The right-hand one is a bearded adult with his sword drawn advocate for a forward thrust; he is using his cloak to mask his intentions. And that would seem to be that. But anyone who knows ancient Athenian culture and art would recognize at once that these are two of the greatest gay heroes of all time: Harmodius and Aristogeiton. We hear about them from both of the first historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, as well as in Plato’s Symposium, among many other places.
Why all the fuss? Harmodius and Aristogeiton were lovers who in 514 BCE assassinated Hipparchus, the brother of Athens’ tyrant Hippias, and—though historians claim this was a private revenge killing and preceded the cease of the tyranny by several years—they were regarded
In honour of LGBTQIA+ history month, Ancient History alumni Ollie Burns takes a closer look at the social, political, and cultural implications of homosexuality in ancient Rome.
Trigger Warning: sexual violence, homophobia, paedophilia, nudity.
The presentation and perception of homosexuality in the Roman world was vastly different than how it is today, and gives us an example of how homosexuality has been indelibly linked with communications of power and authority in antiquity. The Latin language has no synonyms for either heterosexual or homosexual, and instead partners in a sexual connection would be presented as either active, synonymous with masculinity, or passive and therefore, feminine, regardless of the gender of the individuals involved. Freeborn male Romans had the civil liberty to do as they pleased when it came to sexual activity, and as such, the idea of a Roman man engaging in homosexual sex was in no way controversial or taboo to the Romans, as long as it fell within certain parameters.
Rome was a deeply militarised state, with conquest and dominance deeply ingrained as desirable masculine traits. As a result of this, men were free to employ in h
Lovers and Soldiers
If by some contrivance a city, or an army, of lovers and their young loves could come into organism . . . then, fighting alongside one another, such men, though several in number, could defeat practically all humankind. For a man in affectionate would rather have anyone other than his significant other see him leave his place in the line or toss away his weapons, and often would rather die on behalf of the one he loves.
Plato wrote the Symposium probably around 380 BCE. At that time, many Greek states were subjected to the hegemony of the Spartans, who were enjoying a period of dominance after defeating the Athenians in 404 in the devastating Peloponnesian War. But one of these states, Thebes, stood up to the military might of Sparta. In doing so, the Thebans realized Phaedrus’s vision: They created an elite corps of three hundred soldiers, acknowledged as the Sacred Band of Thebes, comprising 150 pairs of male lovers who fought side-by-side in the name of freedom.
Given the uncertainty of the exact date of writing, Plato might have been referring explicitly to the Sacred Band, which was formed in 379 BCE. A Spartan force had been occupying the citadel of Thebes, crushing conflict
The Legacy of Gay Love in Ancient Thebes
Among the many roads leading up to the Supreme Court’s 2015 verdict on same-sex marriage, one of the more significant routes passes through Boeotia in central Greece. This region, and its principal urban area, Thebes, established a precedent for male same-sex unions that deeply impressed the ancient Greek planet as well as gay rights pioneers in nineteenth-century England and the U.S.
The story is petty known compared with, say, that of the poetess Sappho of Lesbos, whose homoerotic verses possess made the identify of her dwelling island, in adjective form, a virtual synonym for female same-sex love. The Thebans wrote petty compared with other Greeks, and those who wrote about them were often biased against them. But traces live of their uniquely gay-friendly culture, including a set of archaeological sketches made in 1880 but brought to beam only very recently.
The long trail begins not with a Theban but with a Corinthian, a wealthy aristocrat named Philolaus. Sometime in the 8th century BC this dude left Corinth with his male partner, an Olympic runner named Diocles, and landed in Thebes. The pai