Arming oneself like an Amazon

Arming oneself like an Amazon

[Myth & Religion, 14]

The Amazons fighting Greeks on this lekythos, or oil jar, represent a tribe of female warriors endowed with skill and bravery typically assigned to male Greek warriors. The light-haired man at the centre might be the Greek hero Achilles, shown at the moment he fell in love with the Amazon queen Penthesilea, sadly when he stabbed and killed her. There has been a sense of otherness regarding Amazons, due to their reclusive customs and lifestyles: they lived away from the society of men. Ancient Greeks cast Amazons as foreigners from the East and referred to them with the term barbarian which means ‘people who don’t speak Greek’. Their otherness pits them against Greek men and women alike.  Archaeological finds indicate that these mythical women were based on warrior women from central Asia, where men and women were treated with greater equality than in Greece and where women became respected warriors. Women embodying male values challenged the ancient Greeks’ gender constructions. Clearly the Greeks feared women who could hold their own against men. In the 1970s, therefore, lesbians adopted aspects of Amazon identity such as motif of the labrys or double-axe, one of their usual weapons.