Sexual structured analogs Aphrodite Androgyne
It is known bisexual image (VII century. BC. E., Faience statuette nude god) ancient Egyptian god Thoth demiurge (chest and abdomen of a young woman and penis). In ancient times, was well known and the fact that the Mediterranean Aphrodite (Astarte) "was depicted not only to womanhood, but also in the male. For example, in Cyprus, where many Canaanites and Greeks, was a statue of the goddess with a beard, but with the female body and women's clothing, with a scepter, representing the goddess as being male, as he thought that it "is both a man and a woman" (50.s62). Schiffman notes that such guidance can be found in scholium to Virgil's Aeneid, as well as in the dictionary Gelihiya. Levi (Macrobius) also indicates that the blessing Venus appears that in the male, the female disguise: "worshiper of Venus, the goddess of grace, praying (not focusing), it is a woman or a man" (ie, a single bisexual deity). Male deity Aphrodite mentioned Aristophanes (in the words of Macrobius). On the Greek island of Kos, according to Plutarch, the priest of Heracles (Melkarth) brought God to his victim, dressed in feminine attire and with a bandage on his head. In Syria, the priests and bisexual fans of a certain God is to worship in the reddish, transparent chemise and other women's apparel; while women dressed in male clothes and armed with swords and spears. (Zilberman MI Religion of Canaan. Ch. 2. Ethnoses ancient Canaan)