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The Amazons appear in connection with several Greek legends. They invaded Lycia, but were defeated by Bellerophon, who was sent out against them by Iobates, the king of that country, in the hope that he might meet his death at their hands (Iliad, vi. 186). According to Diodorus, Queen Myrine led them to victory against the Atlanteans, Libya and much of Gorgon.
They attacked the Phrygians, who were assisted by Priam, then a young man (Iliad, iii. 189). Although in his later years, towards the end of the Trojan War, his old opponents took his side again against the Greeks under their queen Penthesilea, who was slain by Achilles (Quint. Smyr. i.; Justin ii. 4; Virgil, Aen. i. 490).
One of the tasks imposed upon Heracles by King Eurytheseus was to obtain possession of Queen Hippolyte’s golden girdle, a gift from Ares (Apollodorus ii. 5). He was accompanied by his friend Theseus, who carried off the princess Antiope, sister of Hippolyte. Rather than attacking the army standing outside their city, the Amazons showed curiosity and welcomed them.
Hippolyte and Hercules fell in love. Jealous goddess Juno spread lies about the Greeks ulterior motive to kidnap the Amazon queen and hold her for ransom which led to a retaliatory invasion of Attica, in which Antiope perished fighting by the side of Theseus. Hercules was eventually victorious and returning to Greece with Hippolyte’s girdle. In some versions, however, Theseus marries Hippolyte and in others, he marries Antiope and she does not die. The battle between the Athenians and Amazonians is often commemorated in an entire genre of art, amazonomachy, marble carvings such as from the Parthenon.
The Amazons are also said to have undertaken an expedition against the island of Leuke, at the mouth of the Danube, where the ashes of Achilles had been deposited by Thetis. The ghost of the dead hero appeared and so terrified the horses, that they threw and trampled upon the invaders, who were forced to retire.
They are heard of in the time of Alexander the Great, when their queen Thalestris visited him and became a mother by him, and Pompey is said to have found them in the army of Mithradates.
Scythians
The Scythians were a race of mounted nomadic warriors whose early origins are still a mystery and who lived in Central Asia around the 7-8th centuries BC. Their generals were said to be more cunning military tacticians than Genghis Khan, who, centuries later conquered half the world. Yet the Scythians were illiterate, they left no language and history, other than their large round burial mounds, or kurgans, plundered ruins that are found all over the Russian steppes. Russian archaeologists have found some kurgans that are still intact, a few of them containing the remains of what they believe were Scythian royalty or aristocrats. These tombs also contained a breathtaking array of golden artefacts: jewellery, chalices, weapons, breastplates and other finely crafted masterpieces depicting Scythian life.
Herodotus wrote of the Scythians as being an extremely barbaric and bloodthirsty race,skinning and beheading slain adversaries and shaping their skulls into drinking cups. Funerals were highly ceremonial and even more blood-drenched. A fallen warrior’s wife and entire household were often killed and placed inside the kurgan to serve in the afterlife. Dozens of the finest horses were sacrificed and staked upright around the outside of the burial mound.
New burial mounds recently opened under kurgans in the Altai region of Siberia outside the town of Pokrovka contained the remains of women, some thought to be of great station. They were buried in full battle dress and with a assortment of weapons and other items of war lying beside them. One young woman’s leg bones were significantly bowed suggesting she spent most of her life on horseback. Another skeleton had an arrowhead lodged in the upper chest, indicating she might have died in battle.
Atlantis
Diodorus, (340BC - ?) a scholar/historian of ancient Greece wrote of the origins of the Amazons as dating back to the ancient time of Atlantis. In his account, the Amazons lived in western Libya, the land of civilized people, and from where the gods came. According to Diodorus, the Amazon's culture and customs were the exact opposite to that of normal day Greece (and in Atlantis). It was the men who worked in the domestic sphere of life, while the women partook of politics, the art of war, and who were required to serve in the army for several years during their adolescence.
Diodorus states that only after a woman had finished her time within the army was she allowed procreative liberty. When a child was born, the men took care of the children, who depending on sex were treated in differing ways. While a boy would earn a mundane and domestic existence, the girls were subject to a tradition of breast demarcation, where either the right or left breast was seared. According to Diodorus this demarcation was "For they thought that the breasts, as they might not develop at the time of maturity; for they thought that the breasts, as they stood out from the body, were no small hindrance in warfare; and in fact it is because they have been deprived of their breasts that they are called by the Greeks Amazons."
The tale of Atlantis thus continues with the queen of the Amazons, Myrina, setting out to lay siege on Atlantis. The Amazons took the city of Cerne in Atlantis, and the Atlantians bowed to their rule (with some resistance). After the Amazons took over they were expected to kill the Gorgons from the west who were constantly attacking Atlantis. The Gorgons were a group of medusa like creatures. Before the Amazons battled the Gorgons, there was an uprising in a city where half of the Amazons were killed by their own swords while they slept, by the native peoples. Still unrelenting, the Amazons went up against the Gorgons and only half won. Eventually it took Perseus to finish off the Gorgons.
Other traditions
Recently, remains of two Amazon warriors serving with the Roman army in Britain have been discovered in a cemetery at Brougham in Cumbria . Women soldiers were previously unknown in the Roman army in Britain and the find will force a reappraisal of their role in 3rd-century society.
The women, believed to have died some time between AD220 and 300, were burnt on pyres upon which were placed their horses and military equipment. The remains were uncovered in the 1960s but full-scale analysis and identification has been possible only since 2000 with technological advances
The soldiers are believed to have been part of the numerii, a Roman irregular unit, which would have been attached to a legion serving in Britain. Other finds show that their unit originated from the Danubian provinces of Noricum, Pannonia and Ilyria which now form parts of Austria, Hungary and the former Yugoslavia.
A legend which may be based on the Greek Amazons appears in the history of Bohemia. As the story goes, a large band of women, lead by a certain Vlasta, carried on war against the duke of Bohemia, and enslaved or put to death all men who fell into their hands; eventually, they were mercilessly defeated by the duke. In the 16th century the Spanish explorer Orellana asserted that he had come into conflict with fighting women in South.
Armed women have often acted as royal bodyguards throughout history. Chandragupta Maurya (322–298 BC), the first emperor to develop a centralized state in India, had a personal guard composed of giant Greek women. Female royal guards re-appear 2000 years later in the history of India as guards for the Nizams of Deccan and Hyderabad. And on the island of Sri Lanka, the Kandy royal family had a royal guard of female archers. In Europe, Celtic and Germanic tribes often had women fighting with their husbands. Tacitus tells us that Boadicea had more women than men in her army.
In Scandinavia, women who did not yet have the responsibility for raising a family could take up arms and live like warriors. They were called shieldmaidens and many of them figure in Norse mythology. One of the most famous shieldmaidens was Hervor and she figures in the cycle of the magic sword Tyrfing. The Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus relates that when the Swedish king Sigurd Ring and the Danish king Harald Wartooth met at the Battle of Bråvalla, 300 shieldmaidens fought on the Danish side led by Visna. Saxo relates that the shieldmaidens fought with small shields and long swords.
Other mysterious burial sites have also been recently unearthed in China dating back 2000 years or more, the remains and artefacts suggesting that within other extinct cultures women may have held powerful social and perhaps even military positions as well.
Whether any of these long-dead women found in the Pokrovka kurgans or in other recent digs could actually be the mythical Amazons of Greek legend has yet to be confirmed - or may never be proven. For the foreseeable future, research and speculation continues.
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