Legendary warrior women: The history of the Amazons

Their reputation among the ancient Greeks wasn't exactly the best: the Amazons were regarded as ruthless and fearless warriors who rode into battle on horseback armed with bows and arrows. They wore pants, sported tattoos and got high on drugs during orgies — or so the story went. 

In short: "The Greeks were shocked because the ancient Greeks had a paternalistic society, dominated by men," US historian Adrienne Mayor tells DW. "Women were kept in the home, weaving and taking care of children."

A society where women had equal rights would've been hard for the patriarchy to process. That's why the Amazons were demonized by claims that they enslaved men and murdered male offspring. But the Greeks also held them in great fascination, immortalizing the warrior women in statues, murals and on vases. There were even Amazon dolls for children.

The best way for an ancient Greek hero to prove his bravery was to defeat a powerful Amazon queen. Take Theseus, King of Athens, said to have kidnapped the chief Amazon, Hippolyta, and made her his wife — a story taken up 2,000 years later by the English playwright William Shakespeare in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Or Achilles, said to have slain Penthesilea in battle, only to fall in love with her when he removed her helmet as she lay dying and to be ultimately remorseful for his action. There are many variations of these stories — yet from the male narrators' perspective, the outcome is always clear: in the end, the men prevail.

Fact or fiction: Did the Amazons really exist?

The first written mention of the Amazons came from the Greek poet Homer in his epic "The Iliad" about the Trojan War (ca. 8th century B.C.), and others followed. For a long time, the Amazons were widely dismissed as mythological figures born from the imaginations of ancient storytellers.

But according to Mayor, recent spectacular archaeological finds in Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan and other parts of Central Asia provide evidence that female warriors did indeed exist at the time and in the places where Greeks set their mythical tales. "More than 300 graves of females buried with arrows, battle-axes, and swords, some with battle injured, have been excavated so far," she says.

The inspiration for the Amazons were the mounted archer women of various Scythian tribes who lived around the Black Sea and in the steppes of Eurasia, Mayor explains: "The Greeks began to learn about Scythian women as they explored and set up colonies around the Black Sea. The Nomad tribes had an egalitarian lifestyle, and women participated in the same activities as men."

The origin of the name "Amazon," however, remains uncertain. Mayor speculates that it could have come from the Old Persian "ha-mazon," which means "female warrior." Another possibility is that it's derived from the Circassian word "Amezane," meaning "mother of the forest or moon."

A historian named Hellanicus (5th century B.C.) attempted to give the foreign word a different meaning in Ancient Greek and translated it as "without a breast." This fueled the widespread misconception that Amazons removed their right breast to facilitate drawing a bow or throwing a spear. Complete nonsense, says Mayor: "This bizarre idea was criticized even in antiquity, and no ancient artist ever depicted one-breasted Amazons."

Lesbian 'man-haters' who kill little boys? 

Scholars of antiquity nevertheless continued to spin wild tales about the Amazons. Thus, the notion spread that in their all-female community, they tolerated only female children and abandoned, mutilated or even killed boys after birth.

This raises the question: How did they reproduce if men weren't welcome in their ranks? According to Mayor, ancient Greek historians such as Herodotus and Strabo wrote that groups of female warriors met with other tribes that included men. "The men and women would form couples and have sex, then depart on their separate ways," she says.

However, none of these accounts mention murder or mutilation: "When the warrior women had babies, they kept the girls and sent the infant boys back to the father's tribe," says Mayor. This led scholars in the early modern period to view them as heartless mothers who simply gave their babies away. However, as Mayor explains, this was actually a widespread custom among nomadic peoples in antiquity: having a son raised by another tribe promised good future relations.

The claim that Amazons were lesbians first emerged in the early 20th century. The Russian writer Marina Tsvetaeva suggested that Amazons were a symbol of lesbian love in antiquity, an idea that was later picked up by other writers and historians. But Mayor disagrees: "The Greeks weren't shy about homosexuality but there are no ancient reports that Amazons were lesbians."

Did the Amazons invent pants?

Pants are common attire these days. But in ancient Greece, people wore robes made of large, rectangular pieces of fabric that were artfully draped and held together with pins or belts. Mayor says that the invention of foreign looking "pants" was attributed to three different warrior queens.  While this hasn't been proven, "they were definitely part of the core identity of mythic and real warrior women. Very practical clothing for their rugged lives on horseback in a harsh land and climate! Trousers were absolutely necessary for riding horses to prevent chafing."

In ancient artworks, Amazons are often depicted as wearing tunics and pants or leggings made of wool or hemp. They weren't just ahead of their time in terms of clothing, they also decorated themselves with tattoos: "Naturally mummified bodies of men and women buried in permafrost, from the time of Herodotus (5th century BC), have been recovered from Scythian graves. Their skin is decorated with real and fantastic animals, including deer, horses, tigers, and griffins," says Mayor. For the Greeks, this was yet another sign of how "uncivilized" the Amazons were, since tattoos were used to mark and degrade prisoners and slaves.

Drugs by the campfire

Was it the Scythians or the Amazons who used drugs to get high? In reports by the ancient poet Herodotus, we read: "They sit in a circle around a fire and throw this plant onto the embers. As it burns, the people inhale the fumes and become intoxicated, just as Greeks become inebriated with wine. They keep adding more to the fire and become even more intoxicated and dance and sing around the fire." This plant, according to Mayor, was likely cannabis. "Archaeologists have discovered personal hemp burning kits — small charcoal braziers, some made of gold, containing burnt hemp seeds — in the graves of women as well as men."

Modern-day Amazons

There have always been strong, independent women. For Mayor, such women embody the "spirit of the Amazons."

"Sometimes they're hidden and other times they emerge from the shadows of oppression into popular consciousness," says the historian.

In popular culture, female warriors have been immortalized in films and series such as "The Hunger Games" or "Game of Thrones." In real life, they fight today as soldiers, says Mayor — including in Ukraine, "the ancient homeland of real warrior women and mythical Amazons."

This article was originally written in German.