Today, trans people face politicisation of their lives and vilification from politicians, media and parts of broader society.

But in some of history’s earliest civilisations, gender-diverse people were recognised and understood in a wholly different way.

As early as 4,500 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, for instance, gender-diverse people held important roles in society with professional titles. These included the cultic attendants of the major deity Ištar, called assinnu, and high-ranking royal courtiers called ša rēši.

What the ancient evidence tells us is that these people held positions of power because of their gender ambiguity, not despite it.

Mesopotamia is a region primarily made up of modern Iraq, but also parts of Syria, Turkey and Iran. Part of the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia is a Greek word which literally means “land between two rivers”, referring to the Euphrates and Tigris.

For thousands of years, several different major cultural groups lived there. Amongst these were the Sumerians, and the later Semitic groups called the Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians.

The Sumerians invented writing by creating wedges on clay tablets. The script, called cuneiform, was made to write the Sumerian language but would be used by the later civilisations to write their own dialects of Akkadian, the earliest Semitic language.

The assinnu were the religious servants of the major Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, Ištar.

The queen of heaven, Ištar was the precursor to Aphrodite and Venus.

Also known by the Sumerians as........

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