Book Review

Comparative/World

This volume by Piotr O. Scholz attempts to present a panoramic view of castration, eunuchry, and emasculation in a variety of ancient and modern cultures. The growing interest in this theme is attested by recent sessions at both the American Historical Association and the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo during which eunuchs in Byzantium, China, the Mamluk state, Rome, and early Christianity were dealt with. It is clear that castration or the rejection of sexual identity has played a role not only in such religious traditions as ancient paganism, Christianity, and Buddhism but also in the recruitment of a loyal civil service, in order to insure that officials would remain untempted by the desire to provide a future for their descendants. At the same time, the Jewish and Confucian traditions have looked unfavorably on such practices. The present volume promises to open up a world that has remained largely unexplored, surveying ancient Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek, Roman, and other "pagan myths" in which self-castration, eunuchry, emasculation, and other violent excisions of the male sex organ or its parts played a role. Chapters also deal with China, the Islamic world, the Ottoman Empire, medieval Europe, the Renaissance, and more recent history. The most thorough sections deal with ancient myths and cults, with which the author is clearly more comfortable.

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