Introduction

"... But an equally basic passion of mine ab initia was for myth (not allegory!) and for fairy-story, and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world (accessible to me) for my appetite... I was from my early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own (bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands."1

I first read this quotation, which is from a letter by J.R.R. Tolkien to Milton Waldman published in a recent edition of 'The Silmarillion,' when still too young to appreciate its content. Luckily, this didn't prevent me from being a faithful repeat reader of Tolkien's books. The reason this was lucky is because one day, I threw down 'The Silmarillion' in a fit of frustration. There were almost no female characters, and the few present were almost exclusively stay at homes, or temporary feisty characters ultimately tamed by a 'good husband.' This is a reflection of the era the books were written in, and Tolkien did manage to soar far above what he may or may not have considered flaws himself. But still, I was tired of stories that focussed all but exclusively on men, and having been taught that it just won't do to simply sit and complain, I had what could perhaps be considered a heretical thought:

There's no reason women couldn't be at the centre of a cycle of myths, fairy-stories, and heroic legends on the brink of history. 'A' cycle because there's no such thing as one size fits all, or my copy of 'The Silmarillion' would never have been thrown down. Anyway, this is a Feminist age, somebody ought to try it.

I also was taught to always try replacing 'somebody' with 'I' whenever I came up with an 'ought to be done' statement. Having talked myself into trying this out, it was time to decide how to go about it. Taking another page from Tolkien, who was informed by the real stories and deeds of Celts, Vikings, and Finns, I opted to use the stories and deeds of a familiar group of strong women as a starting point. There are many possibilities, but in this age of Xena: Warrior Princess, Amazons were the obvious choice.

Therefore, I went about collecting the stories and mythology already associated with the Amazons, together with relevant archaeological and anthropological data. After all, before trying to even pretend to write an myth cycle, it is necessary to uncover (or build — or perhaps both) its substructure first, which is what this book does. It is not a simple recounting of all those materials however, and is not intended to be a scientific study or a recounting of the better known versions of Graeco-Roman accounts of the Amazons. Few people realize that the Chinese, Cherkesians, Ukrainians and more all commented on the Amazons, long before they had any contact with Greek stories of them. All were impressed by the Amazons' bravery, their honour, and their impregnable city. This book does include a fair amount of what could be called 'scholarly' material, footnotes and all, for the purpose of making available materials that otherwise can be very difficult to access. But before going on to describe the organization of the text, it's well worth it to state just who I understand the Amazons to have been, the nature of their country, and by extension who they could be at other times.

The Amazon Nation consisted of numerous all-women, Goddess-worshipping tribes. Typically they worshipped aspects of Goddesses or Goddesses (a semantic differentiation rather than a real one) solely concerned with women and their interests, which originally included such 'masculine' pursuits as sports, hunting, fishing, scholarship, science, and religion. As pressure from invading patriachal tribes increased, the warlike facets of these Goddesses, best exemplified by Artemis and Athena, became more emphasized. The martial nature of the Amazons was emphasized in turn by invaders since this was what they encountered (understandably), and their ability to defend themselves differentiated them sharply from female members of the invading tribes.

This book presents one possible reconstruction of the Amazon Nation's history, culture, and mythology. There is no reason for women to wait for archaeologists to reconstruct the Amazon Nation for us — in fact, we can expect that there will be intense political pressure on archaeologists not to do so. Just as men have considered it their right to piece together the empires and lives they care about to varying degrees of accuracy until new findings corrected them, it is women's right to do the same concerning the lives and nations they care about.

Part One of this book focuses on the names and deeds of the Amazons, followed by a reconstruction of their culture, history, and the geography of the Amazon Nation. The Centaurs and Harpies have been included because they represent blurred memories of Amazon tribes and priestesshoods. If it were not for the stories featuring the Libyan Amazon queen Myrine, a similar level of detail would exist for her tribe, the Gorgons. Part Two brings together a body of information on four major Amazon deities under the names the Greeks either gave them or remembered2: Artemis, Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite. Included in these sections are many new versions of older myths.

NOTE ON CAPITALIZATION, AND ENDNOTES: This text has been carefully edited; ostensibly 'strange' capitalization of proper names is deliberate. Authors and texts mentioned in the main text and footnotes may be correlated to the bibliographic references.