LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth PAST Out by Liz Highleyman Who were the Amazons? The Amazons, a race of warrior women, were long believed to be a mythical creation. But recent archaeological eviden
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
PAST Out |
by Liz Highleyman |
Who were the Amazons?
The Amazons, a race of warrior women, were long believed to be a mythical creation. But recent archaeological evidence suggests that the tales may have some basis in fact. The Amazon Nation is said to have originated in what is now Libya. Legend has it that under Queen Myrina, the Amazons made war on the people of Atlantis and fought another mythical race of women, the Gorgons. After a volcano destroyed their home island of Tritonia, the Amazons traveled east, settling on Aegean islands such as Limnos and Lesbos, and establishing their principal city, Themiscyra, on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. The name "Amazon" purportedly referred to their custom of burning or cutting off the right breast of young girls to facilitate their use of bows and javelins, but Greek art depicts Amazons with two (often bare) breasts. Several classical Greek historians and poets wrote conflicting stories about the Amazons of the Bronze Age (roughly 2000-1000 B.C.). One of the 12 labors of the Greek hero Heracles (Hercules) was to obtain the girdle given to the Amazon Queen Hippolyte by her father, the war god Ares. The historian Diodorus claimed Heracles and his men sailed to Themiscyra, engaged the Amazons in battle, and nearly exterminated them. In an earlier version of the story, Hippolyte fell in love with Heracles and offered him her girdle. But the goddess Hera goaded the Amazons into attacking the visitors, whereupon Heracles killed Hippolyte and escaped with the girdle. In another tale, Penthesilea, who had earlier fled her homeland in shame after accidentally killing her sister while hunting, led a legion of Amazons to aid Troy in its war against Greece. As described by the historian Quintas, "In the pure rapture of triumph the Amazons charged, and with anguished groans and shrieks the Greeks perished, their manhood withered by the women from the fierce and untamed northlands." Clad in a rainbow-colored corset, Penthesilea fought the invincible Greek hero Achilles. After he killed her and removed her helmet, Achilles was smitten by her beauty and fell in love. The ancient writers did not record whether the Amazons were women-loving women. By some accounts, they loathed men; Herodotus said they were called "oiorpata," or man-killers. According to the geographer Strabo, the Amazons of Themiscyra met once a year with the men of a neighboring tribe, the Gargarians, in order to conceive children. Baby girls were raised by the Amazons, while male infants were given to their fathers, killed, or crippled. (The Amazon Queen Antianeira reportedly said lame men made the best lovers.) But others claimed the Amazons lived with men they kept as slaves and sex partners. The men, wrote Diodorus, "spent their days about the house, carrying out the orders given them by their wives." It is unclear what became of the Amazons. Herodotus said that Heracles, after stealing Hippolyte's girdle, captured many of them. While Heracles was crossing the Black Sea, the women killed him and his crew. Unfortunately, the Amazons did not know how to sail, and they ran aground on the cliffs of the Sea of Azov on the southeast edge of what is now the Ukraine. The Amazons tamed wild horses and attacked the local Scythians. Discovering their foes were women, the Scythians made peace with the invaders. The Amazons did not resist the men's overtures, but refused to adopt the domestic roles of Scythian women. Instead, the Amazons and some of the men traveled northeast and formed a new society, the Sauromatians. In the mid-1990s, archaeologists excavated burial mounds near the Russian-Kazakh border that contained both household items typical of women and weapons such as daggers and arrowheads. Archaeologist Jeannine Davis-Kimball thinks the graves are those of Sauromatian women buried around the 5th century B.C. Some skeletons had bowed legsindicating they rode horsesand one had a bent arrowhead in her body. Davis-Kimball does not believe the nomadic women of the Eurasian steppes were the mythical Amazons, but the finds reveal the existence of high-status women who engaged in battle, possibly the foundation upon which the Greek tales were built. Other scholars put forth a different hypothesis, suggesting the remains are not those of women, but rather of a "third sex" of effeminate, cross-dressing men who took on women's roles. Such theories are not new: Herodotus and Hippocrates both described Scythian or Sauromatian men called Enarees who did women's work and acted as soothsayers, while other early writers claimed the Amazons were really men who shaved off their beards and dressed as women in battle. The Amazon myth arose during a time of cultural change, around 700-400 B.C., when women were losing their status with the rise of patriarchal societies such as that of classical Greece. Today, feminists have embraced the Amazons as models of strong, independent women. In the heyday of the lesbian liberation movement, lesbians adopted the two-headed Amazonian axe, the labrys, as their symbol, and numerous lesbian institutionsfrom bookstores to radio shows to websites have been named after the Amazons. Liz Highleyman is a freelance writer and editor who has written widely on health, sexuality, and politics. She can be reached care of this publication or at PastOut@qsyndicate.com. |