Image: Cartwright, Mark. “Warrior & Amazon.”
“Vaginas have received you, and you know of nothing else!” Finding the the true identity of the Amazons © Nicholas Costa 2024
Feminist Amazons?
In the conclusion to her essay in the Feminist Theology magazine Olga Papamichali writes:
“The independent and radical nature of the Amazon spirit changed the way men used to see female gender in ancient Greece and in the ancient world, in general, questioning male domination by risking and sacrificing their lives for their feministic fight.” (Amazons: The Reality Behind Their Legend, Olga Papamichali, 2023)
Lesbian Amazons?
“The Amazon has been an enduring figure of inspiration for lesbians, women of all kinds, and transgender men…In the 1970s, lesbian feminists in the United States adopted the Amazons as their forebears as they defied patriarchy and decided to live without men, in a fashion that became known as lesbian separatism.” (Walter Duvall Penrose, Jr.: Introduction: The appeal of the Amazons, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 2024.)
Transgender Amazons?
However the Amazons have not only been espoused by feminists and lesbians, gender non conformists have also adopted them as their symbol, claiming thereby to be their direct inheritors. In many retellings of the myth, the Amazons are equated with men. This led author Leslie Feinberg (Transgender Warriors1996, pp. 22, 57–58) to include the Amazons in the book.
West coast of Asia Minor, Scythia, or Sarmatia?
According to Greek mythological chronology the earliest stories about Amazons locate them in the regions of Lycia, Caria, Lydia, and Troy and ultimately relocates them in Themiscyra near the coast of the Black Sea. Classical chronology dates this period to c1335- c1184 BC. This is centuries before the arrival of the Scythians or the Sarmatians with whom the Amazons were later equated, but which synchronizes closely with Hittite historical records concerning Arzawa and Ahhiyawa and events in western Asia Minor.
The Scythians do not appear until much later. They were a nomadic people who are known from as early as the 9th century BC who migrated west from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine in the 8th and 7th centuries. They established an empire centered on the Crimea. It survived for a few centuries before succumbing to the Sarmatians in the 4th century BC. The origins of the Sarmatians is revealed by their alternative name of Sauromatians, or ‘lizard eyes’ indicating thereby a far eastern origin. As can be readily seen the peoples the Greeks and Romans designated as ‘Amazons’ were in fact ethnically diverse and not one cohesive group. The common element was that all these groups were located in regions which ultimately became subject to colonization by Greek speaking migrants.
The author’s work entitled Atlantis, the Amazons, and the Birth of Athene pinpoints the locations and identities of the earliest layers of the Amazon mythos. They in fact represent the indigenous populations encountered by the early Greeks as they rose to power on the Mediterranean seaboard of Asia Minor. It is this layer that is the focus of the present work.
Propaganda
The Amazons were portrayed by the Greeks as women. However as will be demonstrated, what one is dealing with is evidently propaganda perpetrated by the Greek victors against their enemies. Propaganda as defined by Arlin Cuncic:
“is a type of communication that often involves sharing biased or misleading information to promote a particular agenda or point of view. Propaganda is used to influence people’s opinions…Propaganda is often used in war…War propaganda often relies on misinformation and name-calling or the use of derogatory terms to achieve its goals.” (The Anxiety Workbook 2017)
A wide variety of propaganda techniques are listed by Cuncic among which are:
Name-calling: using derogatory terms to describe an opponent or enemy.
Manipulating Information: involves distorting or misrepresenting the facts to influence people’s opinions. .
Stereotyping: is a technique that uses oversimplified and often inaccurate ideas or beliefs to describe an opponent or enemy.
Snob appeal: uses the idea of exclusivity to make something seem more desirable.
Loaded language: uses language to evoke certain emotions or feelings. (Donald Trump is a past master in the use of all these tactics)
In reality there were no armies or societies based exclusively upon women or transgender males. Having said this does not downplay the role of women in antiquity.
Victorian Misconceptions
Martine de Mare writes:“Valour was almost exclusively the preserve of men and being publicly honoured for that valour remained overwhelmingly the preserve of the elite male. If you were not at the top of the social hierarchy of the ancient world, it meant, firstly, that your story — that of sub-elite classes, of other ethnic groups and of women — was tangential to that of the male elite warrior. Fortunately for us, this tangential information reveals that women and other marginalised groups played more of a role in the military conflicts of their cities than might be supposed… even if you were not fighting on the battlefield, in times of crisis it was in the interest of every inhabitant of a besieged city to play a role, however small, in its defence —the poor, the disabled, slaves and women.”
Whist they didn’t form marauding armies, women in effect have always had an important role in the maintenance and defense of their communities so that the other extreme as portrayed by the upper class Victorian ethos and early 20th century Hollywood potboilers of a woman helplessly cowering in the corner whilst her man valiantly defends her against unspeakable odds is equally false.
De Mare notes: “Polarisation of the Other was intensified in periods of extreme conflict, and often a narrative of propaganda in the hands of the elite. War was therefore a great catalyst of polarities which defined and boosted the identity of those who engaged in battle. It therefore also intensified polarities in the areas of class and gender: it was thought shameful for a soldier to be identified with the Other, a slave or a woman.” (Women and Warfare in the Ancient World, Martine De Marre 2021)
Not Women, Not Transgender
The designation of woman in antiquity delineated physical weakness in relation to a male. It was commonly used as an insult, it still is. Thus, in the Iliad at 7.80, Menelaus addresses his troops and calls them women for not meeting Hector’s challenge. Even Plato consistently characterizes women as being weak and cowardly. In Timaeus (90e-91a) he states that men who have lived cowardly lives will be reincarnated as women.
However it is a grave error of modern scholarship to merely assert that “the myths of the Amazons being defeated at the hands of Greek men certainly may have served an ideological function—to reinforce traditional Greek gender roles” (Walter Duvall Penrose, Jr.) or to focus on questions such as “Could these myths be a reflection of the patriarchal society in Greece, in which violence against women was normalised or even eroticised?” (The Amazons, Classical Association 2023).
The latter are certainly not the underlying reasons as to why the Amazon mythos arose.
Image: Jacques Mossot, Amazonomachy Antioch Louvre Ma3457.
Next: “Vaginas have received you, and you know of nothing else!” Finding the the true identity of the Amazons (part two)