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This paper investigates Argimpasa, the Scythian serpent goddess of fertility, divination, and chthonic power. Identified by Herodotus as the Scythian „Aphrodite Urania”, she represents a syncretic archetype integrating Scythian, Greek, and Near Eastern religious traditions. Unlike classical Aphrodite, Argimpasa appears as a telluric, half-woman, half-serpent being, embodying both generative and underworld forces. Her cult involved the enarees, mystical androgynous diviners whose ritualized afflictions were interpr...

This paper investigates the enarees, a group of Scythian diviners described by ancient authors as „effeminate” or androgynous men afflicted by a „female disease” sent by Aphrodite-Argimpasa. Drawing on Herodotus, Pseudo-Hippocrates, and other classical sources, as well as comparative evidence from Near Eastern and Indo-Iranian cults, the study examines the religious and symbolic significance of this phenomenon. Rather than a physiological condition, the enarees’ feminization is interpreted as a form of sacred tran...