Fernando Kaskais posted: " Athenian plate by Epiktetos depicting an Amazonian archer in trousers (anaxyrides), sleeved coat (kandys) and soft skin hat (kidaris), c520-510 BCE. Courtesy the British Museum Let your imagination take flight to the hunting, riding, adventurous lives"
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New post on WebInvestigator.KK.org - by F. Kaskais
Athenian plate by Epiktetos depicting an Amazonian archer in trousers (anaxyrides), sleeved coat (kandys) and soft skin hat (kidaris), c520-510 BCE. Courtesy the British Museum
Let your imagination take flight to the hunting, riding, adventurous lives of Scythia's warrior women, the real Amazons
Christine Lehnen is director and founder of the Novel Writing Workshop at the University of Bonn in Germany, and a researcher at the University of Manchester in England. She is a regular contributor on history, archaeology, literature, feminism and culture on DW.com and the founder of the public research magazine 42. She writes fiction under the pen names C E Bernard and C K Williams.
The year is 700 BCE, the place is the Black Sea. You find yourself in land east of ancient Greece. To your right lies the tumultuous sea, to your left a mountain range. In between: fertile lands where hazelnuts grow, berries, wild sage and oregano. You are riding through the shallow marshes along the coast, with no more than the occasional heron, wild horse or hawk crossing your path. When suddenly, you are attacked by a fierce band of warriors on horseback.
According to the Greek scholar Herodotus, this is what happened to a tribe of Scythians. They were a community of nomadic horse-archers living on the Black Sea around the 7th century BCE, who one day found their horses seized by a mysterious fighting force. Only once the young men had engaged and killed some of them, did they realise that their opponents were women. Female warriors called Amazons, who 'had nothing beyond their weapons and their horses' and 'devoted their lives to hunting and raiding'.
According to Herodotus, the young men of the Scythians quickly decided to change tactics. They did not kill their opponents, they even ceased all further attack. Instead, they offered themselves up for sex.
The Amazons were very taken with the idea, Herodotus tells us, and soon the two camps merged into one. 'The men found the language of the women impossible to learn, but the women managed to get to grips with that of the men,' he goes on to say. Once they could communicate, the men told the Amazons that they would like to go home now: 'We have parents, and we have our own belongings.'
The reply of the Amazons? 'We would never be able to settle down with your women. We have no customs in common with them … We shoot arrows, throw javelins, ride horses. But what do your women do? None of the things we just listed. They only ever do women's work! They do not go off hunting, or anywhere at all, in fact – they just lurk inside their wagons. So you can see, it would be quite impossible for us to get along.'
The Amazons had an alternative suggestion to make, though: 'But if you really want us as your wives, and be seen to behave with complete honour as well, go to your parents and take the due share of your possessions. Then, on your return, we can go and set up home together of our own.'
The young men agreed, and together they settled in a new place, to the great happiness of both parties. The descendants of this union were called the Sauromatians. Herodotus tells us that 'from that time to this, the Sauromatian women have kept to their primal way of life: they go out hunting, whether their husbands are with them or not, they go to war and they dress exactly like the men.'
What Herodotus tells us here is astonishing: at a time when the women of ancient Greece were not even allowed outside the house on their own, women among the Sauromatians were the equals of men, riding, hunting, fighting from dusk till dawn. Who were these people, and what truth is there to Herodotus's account?
The Sauromatians were part of the Scythians, a Greek umbrella term for a variety of culturally similar, yet distinct, nomadic and seminomadic communities who lived, rode and fought for centuries in the direct neighbourhood of ancient Greek settlements on the Eastern Aegean Sea, in modern-day Anatolia. The Scythians lived on a territory stretching from the Himalaya and Altai mountains in modern-day China to the Black Sea in today's Georgia and Turkey. Accounts of them are given by ancient Greek historians and philosophers, such as Plato or Herodotus, the latter assuring us that, among some tribes, women came to wield 'a power no less than that enjoyed by men'...
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