Who were the Amazonian women in Greek mythology – and were they real?

Unravel the enigma of the Amazonian women, a formidable force in Greek mythology. Explore their legendary tales, their place in ancient narratives, and the intriguing question of their existence in reality. Delve into a world where myth and history often intertwine.

The real Amazons: how the legendary warrior women inspired fighters, feminists and Wonder Woman

The warrior women who battled Hercules and courted Alexander the Great were the stuff of legend – but what truth is there to the stories about them?

• For centuries, women warriors en masse have been dubbed ‘Amazons’.
• Their remains have been found in tomb-mounds from the Crimea to western China.
• Meanwhile, the Greek myth planted itself in the European imagination, finding expression in novels, plays and art.

Wonder Woman: Diana, Princess of the Amazons

The link between Wonder Woman and the mythological Diana makes a convoluted story, its origins stretching back a century to the struggle for women’s rights.

• In the years before the First World War, Elizabeth Holloway, a so-called ‘New Woman’ at the radical Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, began a relationship with William Moulton Marston – clever, handsome, ambitious – who was researching psychology at Harvard
• They married in 1915, and their lives soon became intertwined with many others, all linked by radical interests pursued in secret
• Wonder Woman made her debut in All Star Comics in December 1941
• She became a hit as a comic-book superhero and, more recently, as a feminist icon

Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons

These warrior women, it is reputed, lived on the river Thermedon (today’s Terme), on the southern shores of the Black Sea.

• In legend, they captured men and used them as studs, rearing only female children and killing the males.
• The Amazon nation was the ultimate imagined threat to Greek machismo.

The Ice Maiden of Siberia

Today this is a remote, harsh land, but 2,500 years ago it was fine pasture for semi-nomadic Scythians of the Iron-Age Pazyryk culture.

• In 1993, Russian archaeologist Natalia Polosmak unearthed a body embalmed with a mix of herbs, grasses, and wool, along with a tall headdress, revealing that the body was that of a woman.
• The mummy became known as the ‘Ice Maiden’ or the ‘Ukok Princess’.
• She was taken to Novosibirsk for further study, and then on tour internationally.

Thalestris: the sex-hungry Scythian warrior queen

There is no direct evidence that Greeks actually met any ‘Amazons’, but a story about Alexander the Great suggests that they did

• In 330 BC, the ambitious Macedonian warrior had conquered Persia and was advancing eastward along the shores of the Caspian Sea (in present-day Iran).
• Alexander was approached by a group of Scythians who included women, one of whom was their leader.
• The group then vanished back into the heart of inner Asia, leaving the way open for the creation of a dramatic tale that provided a Greek name for a sex-hunting Scytian queen.

Marina Raskova: Russian ‘Night Witch’

The name has been applied to several all-female fighting groups, among them the regiment of female Soviet bomber pilots who fought in the Second World War, the most famous of whom was their founder, Marina Rasksova.

• In the 1930s, the Soviet Union was recovering from years of war, revolution, and famine, and women were given opportunities in aviation, with the new government seeing this as an opportunity to unite and defend this vast nation
• She became the first female Soviet navigator, and led a volunteer unit of 400 women fliers in three regiments: fighters, heavy bombers and night bombers

Queen Califia: Amazonian women in the Middle Ages

Around 1500, a Spaniard named Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo wrote or adapted a series of novels about Amadís, a knight-errant from the fairytale country of Gaula (unconnected with Gaul or Wales).

• In the stories, Califia was a formidable warrior, with a menagerie of 500 griffins that were fed on human flesh.
• She lived in a realm called California or Califerne, an island-state near the lands newly discovered by Christopher Columbus.

The golden (wo-)man of Kazakhstan

Archaeological finds have raised intriguing questions about the status of Scythian women

• In 1969, a farmer noticed something glinting in newly ploughed earth near a 6-metre-high burial mound: a small piece of patterned gold
• Renowned Soviet archaeologist Kemal Akishev came to investigate and, excavating the burial mound, discovered a small skeleton surrounded by treasures
• The skull was too badly damaged for its sex to be determined, but the ‘Golden Man’ became the symbol of the nation when Kazakhstan emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union
• Many women had been found buried with weapons elsewhere, and the height of the skeleton indicated that it was female
• After almost 50 years, it would be hard for Kazakhs to see their national symbol turn from male to female

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