AMAZONS — FACT OR FICTION?

(Investigator 223, 2025 July)

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When Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, intervened in the Trojan War, the Greek champion warrior Achilles forced a spear through her and her horse. When her helmet fell off and Achilles saw her face he fell deeply in love. She had everything a real man wanted in a woman. Besides the horse she had beauty, armour, strength, ferocity, weapons, skill in fighting, and at least one breast. Achilles' love was unrequited. He cried bitterly.

"Amazons" — a Greek word allegedly meaning "without breast" — were a legendary tribe of wild women warriors in southern Russia or Ukraine who were rivals of the nomadic Scythians. They lived lives of battle and hardship and readily replaced their sexual partners. Their nation had no men because they slaughtered their boy babies or sent them to their foreign father so as to preserve matriarchy. In warfare Amazons were as competent as men.

Legend says that Amazon women cut off their right breast to better aim and shoot arrows without obstruction. In ancient times mastectomies would have been highly dangerous due to blood loss. The alternative view is they burnt it off. Whether cut or burned, the practice was unnecessary which you can confirm with a simple social experiment:

Get a bow and arrow and ask some women to aim the arrow and pull it back as if to shoot. Probably none of your volunteers will complain that her breast is in the way.

Ever since Herodotus (484-425 BC), the "Father of History", wrote about Amazons, explorers have tried to find them, and novelists and play-writers have described their exploits. The modern superhero Wonder Woman has an "Amazon" homeland, but whether related to the Amazons of Herodotus is unclear.

Did Amazons exist or were they a Greek myth?

ARCHAEOLOGY

Archaeologists have excavated ancient Scythian burial places north of the Black Sea. One 4th century BC grave in Ukraine contained a buried woman's remains along with arrows in a quiver. Other graves included gold broaches, gold figurines, gold beads, and weapons. Archaeologists determined that bow-legged skeletons of females resulted from constant horse-riding, and injuries such as broken arms and decapitation indicated a warrior's death.

Female DNA recovered from ancient royal graves in Ukraine could be traced to other regions but not the DNA of males. This perhaps indicates that the area was a matriarchy where infant boys were selectively killed to maintain female dominance.

British archaeologist Timothy Taylor (2010) thinks that female warriors existed from time to time in ancient Ukraine and raided villages to capture people to sell as slaves to the Greeks. From these sporadic raids and trade the legend grew.  Wikipedia, similarly,  says:

Archaeological evidence suggests that Scythian-Sarmatian cultures may have given rise to the Greek legends of Amazons. Graves of armed women have been found in southern Ukraine and Russia. David Anthony noted that approximately 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian "warrior graves" on the lower Don and lower Volga contained women dressed for battle as warriors and he asserts that encountering that cultural phenomenon "probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons." (Wikipedia: Sarmatians)

Ancient Romans were impressed with the Amazon legend and carved sculptures of them. Flemish painter Peter Rubens (1577-1640) immortalised them in battle-scene paintings titled The Battle of the Amazons; and feminist playwrights wrote dramas about them.

Numerous women Amazon warriors are named by ancient poets and inscriptions on vases, walls and pottery.

Hercules allegedly fought and killed many Amazons. Many others went with their queen to fight the Greeks in the Trojan war. Besides their queen, those killed by Achilles were Antandre, Antibrote, Harmothoe, Hippothoe and Pelemusa. The blockbuster movie Troy (2004), however, omits showing Achilles (Brad Pitt) fighting with women.

FIERCE FEMALES

Of course fierce women fighters do exist. You can see them on television as wrestlers and pugilists. Russia had women fighter-pilots in WWII and women sharpshooters in its armies. A list of women warriors, historical and mythological appears on Wikipedia. Nzinga Ana de Sousa Mbande, for example, ruled as queen in northern Angola 1624-1663 and thwarted Portuguese control of Angola for 30 years.

Television series featuring women fighters include Sheena Queen of the Jungle (1956-1957), Bionic Woman (1976-1978), and more recently Arrow (2012-2020). Many movies also feature female fighters, such as Mr and Mrs Smith (2005) where both are secret assassins hired to kill each other.

The African kingdom of Dahomey had armies of merciless "Amazons" who fought in wars against male warriors and even against French armies.

The "N'Nonmiton", which means "our mothers", but named "Amazons" by Europeans, were all-female military regiments of the Kingdom of Dahomey which existed 1600-1894 in present-day Republic of Benin.

The Amazons began when Queen Hangbe (ruled 1708 to 1711) set up a female bodyguard, and her successor, King Agaja, used them as warriors to win a war in 1727.

Under King Ghezo (ruled 1818 to 1858), Dahomey became increasingly militaristic. Both men and women soldiers were recruited. Trade in slaves was important in the economy and wars were fought to capture people to sell into slavery. Primitive weapons of knives, spears, clubs and machetes were supplemented in the 19th century with rifles.

Dahomey Amazons were not permitted to marry or have children. Their training and discipline, including physical exercise, survival skills and indifference to pain, was intense and included charging through thorn bushes. The Amazons peaked at about 4000, possibly a quarter of Dahomey's army.

The movie The Woman King (2022) is fiction but inspired by the Dahomey Amazons and shows their arduous lives and rigorous training.

The expansion of the French empire into West Africa led to the First and Second Franco-Dahomean War in the 1890s.

At the battle of Cotonou thousands of Dahomey troops including Amazons charged toward the French lines, did "admirably" in hand to hand combat, but were also gunned down in hundreds.

In the second war (July 1892-January 1894) at the battle of  Adegon in October, 1893, the Amazon regiments were decimated in a French bayonet charge.

Wikipedia sums up the Second War:

Dahomey	France
8800 regulars	2164 soldiers
1200 Amazons	2600 porters
Casualties
2000-4000 killed	85 killed
3000 wounded	440 wounded
	205 died of disease

The Amazons were defeated by modern French rifles which decimated them when they charged, and by superior French bayonets in close-up melee fighting.

Dahomey became a French protectorate. Its troops including the Amazons were disbanded. The last surviving Amazon, who had fought the French in 1892, died in 1979.

WONDER WOMAN

The most spectacular "Amazon" is "Wonder Woman" who debuted in All Star Comics in 1941. She arrived  with superhuman strength, great speed, ability to fly, skill in hand-to-hand combat, and perpetual youth. She was described, "Beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, as strong as Hercules, and as swift as Hermes."  Who wouldn't appreciate a woman like that?

In her homeland, her official title was Diana, Princess of Themyscira, Daughter of Hippolyta. As an Amazon champion she won the right to accompany Steve Trevor, US intelligence officer whose plane had crashed, back to "Man's World"  to fight crime.

Wonder Woman's weapons included a Lasso of Truth, indestructible bracelets, sword, shield, and boomerang. Her civilian alias was Diana Prince and her partners against crime included Batman and Superman.

Wonder Woman was created by American psychologist William Marston and artist Harry Peter. Marston drew inspiration from early feminists including birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger.

Marston invented Wonder Woman to show girls that they don't have to be weak and that strength is compatible with femininity and beauty. Marston was a psychologist, feminist, and the inventor of the lie-detector test. He conceived Wonder Woman as a comic-book alternative to overly-muscled males. In 1943 he wrote:

Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness.

Marston's remedy was to create a feminine character who possessed the strength of Superman and the "allure of a good and beautiful woman."

Wonder Woman's original origin-story had her sculptured from clay by her mother Queen Hippolyta, made alive by Aphrodite and given superhuman powers by the Greek Gods. Her resume was later updated and depicted her as daughter of Zeus the supreme God of the Greeks. Her costume varied — one version resembled a bikini, the top red or red-gold colored, the lower part blue and star-spangled, and red boots.

Her early battles were with Hitler's Nazis, Greek deities, monsters from Greek mythology, and various super-villains. She fought Doctor Poison, Doctor Psycho, Giganta and many other formidable opponents. In 1960 she became a founding member of the Justice League composed of American superheroes.

Wonder Woman underwent many changes in the comics, including rewrites of her origin and history: In the 1960s she gave up her super powers. As Diana Prince she learned martial arts and weapons skills, relying on these to fight the bad guys. Her appearance and interests also changed to reflect the times and showed her as a fashion model, sex symbol, child-minder, etc, and plots often reflected modern social issues. In the 1970s she became a superhero again. The "WW" emblem debuted after 1980.

In the 1980s the rewriting of her origin story erased her past exploits. She was now an ambassador from Themyscira with a mission to bring peace to the world.

Her adventures became more preposterous and included alternative worlds and other dimensions. Her powers also changed and at times included telepathy, ESP, astral travel and other paranormal powers. It got ever more unreal, but apparently pulled in young readers.

TV & MOVIES

A television series (1975–1979) starred Lynda Carter. This attempt to resurge Wonder Woman's popularity didn't last and no Wonder Woman movies immediately followed. They came later.

Gal Gadot, miss Israel in 2004, portrays Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Gadot also starred in Wonder Woman (2017) where she helps the Allies win WWI and kills Germany's General Ludendorff in hand-to-hand combat.

Gadot competed in a Miss Universe pageant and served and trained in Israel's military. Thus in toughness and beauty she somewhat embodied in real life the fictitious Wonder Woman.

Wikipedia says: "On October 21, 2016, the United Nations named Wonder Woman a UN Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls in a ceremony attended by ... actors Lynda Carter and Gal Gadot."

Outside, some 100 U.N. staffers gathered in protest. More than 600 of them had signed a petition objecting to "a large-breasted white woman of impossible proportions" and "the epitome of a 'pinup' girl" becoming an official symbol of female power. (December 19, 2016)

TRUE OR FALSE?

Comic-book superheroes are of course fictitious including Wonder Woman and her Amazon homeland. But what about the ancient Amazons of Ukraine and Russia?

The existence of ancient matriarchies has long been debated by historians. Swiss classical scholar Johann Bachofen (1815-1887) published the book Mother Right (1861) and argued that the human race was ruled by women until 500 BCE at which time patriarchy (rule by men) took over. In support he cited the Greek legends about Amazons.

British historian John Man (2017) finds that "Amazon" does not mean "one breast". He surveys modern archaeological discoveries of women warriors but finds no nation composed entirely of them like in the Greek legends.

The earliest known mentions of "Amazons" is by Homer (8th century BCE) in the Iliad which describes the Trojan war of about 400 years earlier, but is more like a fantasy-novel than history.

Subsequent Greek writers, relying on imagination and hearsay, expanded the myth similar to the way King Arthur stories and flying saucer accounts expanded in the retelling in recent times. The story of Achilles killing the Amazon queen and falling in love with her, and the Trojan Horse story, were apparently added by epic poet Arctinos of Miletus (c.700 BCE) in his books Aethiopsis and Sack of Troy.

Portrayals of Amazons on vases, mosaics, walls and pottery began around 600 BCE and later spread across the Roman Empire.

Herodotus, the "father of history," provided additional detail: The Amazon capital was Themiscyra on the Black Sea coast. The nation consisted of women who raised only girls and raided and pillaged civilization from the Greek islands to Persia.

Everything Greeks believed about Amazons, if not totally false, is impregnated with myth. The first Amazon queen, Otrera, for example, was the daughter of Ares the god of war and the goddess Harmonia. The story of Hercules procuring the belt of a later Amazon queen as the 9th of his 12 labors does nothing to assist credibility. Of the numerous stories of the Amazons' countless wars across the known world, none are confirmed. Greek writer, Ephorus, about 300 BCE, wrote a history of how the Amazons, their matriarchy, and their war-faring culture began but, although repeated by subsequent writers, it's without evidence.

Amazons as one-breasted is dubious too. All known ancient artwork showing Amazons shows them with two breasts. The one-breast notion emerged late, apparently third century CE, by Roman writer Marcus Justinus in his abridgement of Philippic History which was written two centuries earlier:

"The girls they bred up to the same mode of life with themselves, not consigning them to idleness, but training them to arms, the management of horses, and hunting, burning their right breasts in infancy, that their use of the bow might not be obstructed by them; and hence they are called Amazons." 

Already by 300 BCE Greek writer Palaephatus rejected the whole Amazon story. He published On Incredible Things wherein he presented 52 Greek myths and gave natural explanations how each might have started. The myths, he reasoned, were mundane events elaborated by poets into something amazing. He noted that Amazons did not exist in his lifetime. In the past they were, he argued, men mistaken for women because they shaved, wore headbands, and their clothing went down to their feet.

Conclusion:

Citing archaeology again: "20% of Scythian-Sarmatian warrior graves on the lower Don and lower Volga contained women dressed for battle as warriors…"

Women warriors served in some tribal militaries in ancient times as the Dahomey "Amazons" did in modern times. Starting with Homer around 800 BCE this mundane fact got expanded, in the retelling, into a whole nation of women warriors, with further layers of myth including numerous supernatural events getting added.

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