Lol yeah that's me isn't it, stomping around every eunuch thread we got on here... Actually I got binged with an IFTTT alert for this on the couch and came upstairs just to post when my movie finished.

Someone actually asked about Matthew 19:11 before, did you by any chance see this already? The Taylor book's analysis of that passage I think is worth a read if you're interested, but, uhh, the rest of the book's pretty crap to be honest, so just read that part maybe. The Israelis didn't do eunuchs so they really didn't have much to say about them, not that many passages in the Bible about eunuchs on the whole, but the Romans had a lot to say about them, and Jesus of course was living in that society as well. I can get you some more stuff on Romans and eunuchs if you'd like? Also there's a fair amount written about eunuchs in the Middle East from a more Islamic perspective too, if that's of use to you?

For what it's worth, I do see people using eunuch passages rather a lot for this basic argument, particularly this red-letter one and also the story of converting the Ethiopian eunuch, arguing that modern Christians should be more accepting to LGBTIQetc people. So the argument in your article isn't totally alone in the woods there, although I'm not sure how appropriate I find it, I just don't know if Jesus and the disciples' attitudes towards eunuchs, while they were queer-bodied people of their time for sure, are really that comparable to how we think about queer people today, or how they think about themselves. That's the old sticky issue of how we interpret and use history. The comparison usually comes from a place of love though, so I really can't get to fussy-historian about it. :)

OK, the Ancient Egyptians weren't really “big” on eunuchs. They knew of them of course, the idea of a man losing both testicles whether due to medical reasons, or as punishment hardly being alien. But mostly you don't start hearing about eunuchs until after the Persian invasion, and during the Greco-Roman period. (And yes it's entirely possible that some were employed in the Pharaoh's harem, but little material is available directly addressing this subject)

Years of researching Ancient Egypt (my favorite subject as you may have guessed by my username!) means that I have a lot more jumbled in my head, rather than neatly cited on paper. But here's what I managed to dig up:

“Eunuchs, of course, were present in Egypt, as they were in cultures throughout the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, where they occupied a seperate gender category. But eunuchs never held the special position in Egyptian society that they did elsewhere, although their real position in Egypt is becoming clearer thanks to recent research.” (Taken from The Egyptian World by Toby Wilkinson )

The closest you'll come to “famous” eunuchs in Ancient Egyptian society are figures like Ganymedes, who served Arsinoe, sister of the legendary Cleopatra VII, or Pothinus, who served as regent to her husband/brother Ptolemy XIII. These tend to get a mention in any decent Cleopatra biography.

I hope some of this helped! Again little material is available in terms of evidence, or academic research, but perhaps that may change in the future.