European nations depicted as women for ignoring the threat from the east 1895
The true identity of the Amazons © Nicholas Costa 2024 PART TWO
Here follows a brief tour of the prevailing ethos in the Middle East in antiquity.
Sumer (Sumer is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia, emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages c5500 -1800 BC):
The battlefield itself was known in Sumerian as the field of manhood (KI NAM-NITA?-KA).
UR III (founded in southern Iraq c3800 BC):
The masculinization of violence appears with the ongoing association of males with weapons. An Ur III-period (c2112 -c2004 BC) birth incantation claims:
If it is a male, let him take a weapon, an axe, the force of his manliness.
If it is a female, let the spindle and the pin be in her hand. (Translation from Marten Stol Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical and Interpretative Perspectives, 2000: 61)
Mari (Mari located on the Euphrates, near the current border between Syria and Iraq):
A letter from Shamshi-Adad I (fl. Late eighteenth century BC) to his son and viceroy at Mari states
“Your brother has been victorious here, while you lie around there among the women. Now then, when you go to Qatna with the army, be a man!” (Being a Man: Negotiating Ancient Constructs of Masculinity, Ilona Zsolnay, 2016). In other words being a man meant to be successful on the battlefield, only women stayed at home.
Amurru (A region spanning present-day Northern Lebanon and north-western Syria):
An Amorite leader criticized another for not joining him to campaign with Zimrilim of Mari (c. 1775–1761 BC):
“You’re unworthy of your race! At the very place where your father and mother first saw your face when you dropped from her vagina, vaginas have received you, and you know of nothing else!”
Assyria (Located in the northern part of Mesopotamia, corresponding to most parts of modern-day Iraq as well as parts of Iran, Kuwait, Syria, and Turkey.):
Overt sexualization of the enemy is evident with the reign Tukulti-Ninurta I (c.1243–c. 1207 BC), king of Assyria detailing his military exploits and the construction of a new palace at Aššur. The close of the inscription states the fate of his enemy, and how Ištar:
“… may she change him from a man to a woman, may she cause his manhood to dwindle away.”
The Enuma Elish (the Babylonia Creation Myth) material revolved around assumed male superiority in battle, an assumption that underlies certain curses on Assyrian monuments and treaties of the eighth–seventh centuries BC:
“If Mati’-ilu sins against this treaty with Aššur-nerari, king of Assyria, may Mati’-ilu become a prostitute, his soldiers women… may Ištar, the goddess of men, the mistress of women, take away their bows, bring them to shame.” (Aššur-nerari ruled c755 BC to his death in 745 BC)
The Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon (681–669 BCE) in his Succession treaty, cites the following fate that shall meet those who would transgress the strictures of the treaty:
“May all the gods who are called by name in this treaty tablet spin you around like a spindle-whorl, may they make you like a woman before your enemy.”
A stele of Esarhaddon from Zinçirli states:
“… may the goddess Ištar, lady of war and battle, change him from a man into a woman, and may she seat him, bound, at the feet of his enemy.”
(Texts sourced from Being a Man, Negotiating ancient constructs of masculinity, Edited by Ilona Zsolnay, 2017)
(A German officer personification of Germany, courts and kisses Marianne, the personification of France, wearing a dance dress. She says shes ready to do business with him, but nothing more. “Laughter magazine”1895)
Hittites (Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC, the Hittites were one of the dominant powers of the Near East, in direct conflict with the Greeks):
References to enforced femininity are found in Hittite prayers and military oaths which specifically cite how the oath-breaker shall be divested of his weapons and changed into a woman. The first, a prayer and ritual invoking Ištar, describes how the goddess shall:
“grind away from men manliness,”
destroy their potency, presumably sexual, and their overall health, before continuing to describe how she shall:
“take away their swords, bows, arrows, daggers, and bring them into the Hatti-Land; then put into their hand the distaff and mirror of a woman and clothe them as women” (Catalogue of Hittite Texts, Laroche, E, 2021, 716; seeTreaty-curses and the Old Testament prophets. by: Hillers, Delbert R 1964, Ferdinand Sommer, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 24. (I92I) ).
A soldier’s oath includes in a curse section, as a preemptive warning against any soldiers that may be tempted to break their oaths, the following dire punishment:
“Let these oaths change him from a man into a woman! Let them change his troops into women, let them dress in the fashion of women and cover their heads with a length of cloth! Let them break the bows, arrows, and clubs in their hands and [let them put] in their hands the distaff and mirror!” (Ancient Near Eastern Texts, James B. Pritchard, ed.,1969)
A text called the “Siege of Uršu” (KBo 1.11 rev) though written in Akkadian centers on the military endeavors of the Hittite ruler and includes passages written in Hittite, pointing to the original Hittite context of the text:
“A spindle they brought, the reeds (=arrows) they took away, a hair-clasp they brought, the mace they took away, last year Tudhaliya acted effeminate, now you have acted effeminate.” (After the Hittites, Mark Weeden 2013)
Persia: Achaemenid Empire 550-330 BC:
Herodotus (8.80) states that Xerxes (c.518– 465 BC) remarked as to the behavior of his forces in relation to the actions of Artemisia queen of Caria (c.520–460 BC):
“My men have become women, my women men”
Herodotus states that the Persians called the Greeks women when besting them in battle (9.20), and that when the Persian Masistes castigated Artayntes for his inferior generalship, calling him more cowardly than a woman, Artayntes attempted to murder him (9.107). Polyaenus (Strategemata 8.53.2) reports that the spindles and distaffs were given to an unnamed Persian admiral.
In fact the worst insult a Persian could throw at a Persian male was to call him a woman. (Donald Lateiner The Historical Method of Herodotus, 1989)
Lydia (known as Arzawa in Hittite documents):
Croesus (ruled Lydia c545-546 BC) describes the Lydian loss of power in terms of gender. According to Herodotus he told Cyrus to forbid the Lydians from possessing weapons, and they will become “women instead of men” (Herodotus. 1.155.4). Lydia ironically is the focal point of the early Amazon narratives. Prior to their conquest, Herodotus had referred to the Lydians the most courageous nation of all the Asians (1.79.3). The lack of andreia of the conquered Lydian people resulted not from their ethnicity but rather to their defeat.
The first surviving written record of the Amazons in Greek literature can be found in Homer’s Iliad, in which they are referred to as ???????????, “equal to men” or “match for men”. (3.189, 6.186.)
The Bow as a metaphor
Greek texts characterized the Amazon women as experts with the bow. Ilona Zsolnay points out the significance of the bow in the middle east, she writes:
“The bow in Akkadian curses, incantations and other literature, also directly formed part of this constellation as a particularized simile for the erect penis or for an aggressive male sexuality… In one, for instance, taking away the enemy’s bow is enough to turn him into a woman. The enemy warrior without a bow is then a man without a penis. But a man without a bow/penis is not a eunuch. He is worse. He is a woman.”
Turning Men into Women
The defeated were not only described as women, they were also in many instances literally emasculated. The rape of enemy soldiers on the battlefield, a well documented ancient practice, is similarly a gendered act that womanizes the defeated.
Israel (late 11th century BC)
In 1 Samuel 18: 25 Saul demands one hundred Philistine ‘foreskins’ (i.e. penises) from David in return for his daughter. This is not just an act of castration, it is an affront to gender, calling into question Philistine manly honour. David delivers twice what is required.
“David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king’s son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.” (Samuel 18:27)
Cynthia R. Chapman writes:
“Feminization in both sets of texts [ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible] is used metaphorically to discredit a man on the battlefield, and the associated commonplaces of feminization are broken, missing, or removed weapons, implements of weaving, a bowed posture, labor pains, sexual exposure, and prostitution.” (The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter, 2004)
Assyria
Reprisals against the dead became a feature of Assyrian royal inscriptions in the reign of TukultÏ-Ninurta I (r. 1243–1207 B.C.). By Sennacherib’s time the description of the battle of Æalulê (691 B.C.) states:
“With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plain like grass. Their testicles I cut off and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers of Siwan.” (Death and Dismemberment in Mesopotamia, Seth Richardson 2007)
Egypt
Uroš Mati? writes:“In ancient Egypt, there seems to have been a long tradition of feminization rhetoric with early examples dating to the Middle Kingdom. Similar expressions are found in Nubian texts, too. Pharaoh is the representative of ideal masculinity and his enemies of failed masculinity associated to femininity.” (Violence and Gender in Ancient Egypt, Uroš Mati?, 2021)
The Narmer Palette dating from the reign of the king Narmer (c.3273–2987 BC) depicts two rows of decapitated and bound enemies, with their genitalia placed on their heads. This detail commemorates a victory celebration. The scene has been described as the “aftermath of an act of punishment, the execution and deliberate humiliation of enemy prisoners, decapitated and emasculated”; the severed phalli are displayed prominently as a way to “heap insult upon injury” to the slain enemies. (The Narmer Palette: An Overlooked Detail. Davies V, Friedman R, 2002.
Pharaoh Merenptah (ruled c1213 -1203 BC) of the 19th Dynasty sought to humiliate his traditional enemies, referred to as “Nine Bows”:
“Nine Bows are before him [the king] like women of the harem.” (Kom el-Ahmar Stele; Mati? 2021, 116)
Merneptah waged war c1208 against a combined “Libyan” army and an invading horde of “Sea Peoples”. He was victorious and, as recorded in the Ahthribis Stele in the Cairo Museum:
“the uncircumcised phalli from the slain Libyans were carried off…to the place where the king was totaling 6,111 men…”
In total, the Egyptians amassed 13,240 severed penises and did not discriminate among rank or nation.
Ramses III (c1186-1155 BC): His soldiers collected thousands of penises following the battle of Khesef-Tamahu (in present day Syria). These offerings are depicted on the walls of Medinet Habu Temple, where Ramses’ subjects are seen laying enemy hands and penises at his feet. Notably the defeated enemies a coalition of Peleset, Tjeker, Denyen, Shekelesh and Weshesh were possibly peoples whose originated from regions in western Asia Minor the very same regions the Greek myths ascribe to the early Amazons. Rameses by emasculating his enemies had effectively turned them into an army of women.
The Triumphal Stela of Piye, a Kushite king, and founder of the 25th dynasty:
“Now these kings and counts of North-land came to behold His Majesty’s beauty, their legs being the legs of women…You return having conquered North-land; making bulls into women” (Cairo JE 48862, 47086–47089, lines149–150)
The Amazon Breast
Much has been written as to whether or not the Amazons seared or removed one breast in order to be able to shoot arrows, and as to whether the word Amazon is linked to the Greek words for without a breast (amaston/ ???????/ ??????). This is a masculine form therefore implies “without a manly breast” or “lacking in courage”. There are many theories but hitherto scant attention has been paid to the fact, as elucidated in this article, that referring to defeated enemies as women, lacking courage, was commonplace throughout the middle east in antiquity. The fact that the Greeks portrayed their enemies as women is in fact a huge joke. It was propaganda of the first order and nothing more. Likewise the imagery of Amazons as being expert with the bow. The bow as noted earlier was itself a metaphor in the middle east for the penis and manliness.
It is in this context that one needs to read into the story of the women amputating one breast in order to fight more effectively which is a patently false assertion. Men do not have breasts but they do have penises which when severed effectively turned them into women. Was the word Amazon therefore actually at an early metaphor for a castrated enemy?
Collecting enemy penises