The Amazons – myth or truth?

If one asks people what they know about the Amazons, they generally have very similar answers. Who were the Amazons? Mythical women warriors. What was their distinctive feature? Their right breast was missing. How is that possible? Because they cut off their own breast. Why? Because it was inconvenient when practicing archery. This "information" is taught to us at school. Unfortunately, the same is also found in serious works of cultural history.

Amazon statue by Polykleitos.

However, according to contemporary knowledge, the historical reality is something else. Out of all these answers, only the first one is true in that the Amazons are depicted in Greek myths, and their reputation did reach mythical proportions. We now know that the Amazons not only appeared in myths, but also actually existed. The rest of the answers are clichés and nonsense. How is it possible that cultural historians have not replaced these banalities with more recent, factual information? The answer to that may come as a surprise: they haven't known how to go about studying the Amazons, and thus have been unable to relay truthful information.

How was the Amazon myth, such as it is known to the general public, born out of the cultural life of Ancient Greece? One explanation is that the Greeks were avid etymologists, and philosophers such as Plato also enthused over this passtime. Their research often went astray, however, since the historico-linguistic method had not yet been invented in antiquity. The meanings attributed to words were very imaginative and prone to faulty reasoning.

The name "Amazon" had two elements which were remeniscient of Greek words: the prefix a-, meaning "without", and mastos, meaning "breast". Thus, women "without a breast". It was believed that the right breast would have interfered with the proper placement of the bow in archery. The Greeks truly believed that women warriors would have cut off their own breast for that reason. This was strange, and perhaps contained xenophobia-induced prejudice, since it is evident that the right breast does not bother a female archer in any way. For women taking part in modern-day archery competitions, breasts are not a hindrance. When the arrow is shot, the bowstring remains to the side of the breast. There are also club activities in which women ride horses and practice archery in the style of the ancient Amazons, but their breasts do not get in their way. This idea may also have been influenced by the fact that Greek women didn't go to battle or practice archery, as defence was taken care of by men.

The explanation for the word's origin was a result of ignorance. The Greeks didn't know that the name of the Amazons was not originally Greek, but a loanword from a Caucasian language ("amezan"). There is no support for the idea of a cut off breast in the original language. The misunderstanding was perpetuated since European historians fell for the Greek myth, even though their suspicions should have been raised when examining Greek works of art. There is an interesting contradiction between the "etymological" explanation and artwork.

The most famous sculpture of an Amazon is a masterpiece by Polykleitos from 400 BCE. The statue gained an exemplary status representing classical art, and it depicts a beautiful, two-breasted Amazon. The Amazons on vases also have two breasts. Contemporary archeology has also presented evidence that women warriors really did exist, and the Scythian tribes even had entire military units comprised only of women. It is high time to shed light on the truth about the Amazons, so that our resources of cultural history might contain more than just worn out clichés.

Harald Haarmann and Virpi Lehtinen

Read this blog in Finnish here.