psychological analysis, Kleist’s Penthesilea 186–90
psychologists, repeating breast myth 47–8
Purchas, Samuel, on Amazons as fantasy 150
Qasim, Leyla, Saddam Hussein assassination attempt 266
Quintus, on Trojan War 11–16
Racine, Jean, Phèdre 176
Radloff, Wilhelm (Vasily) 74
Rakobolskaya, Irina
on group solidarity 227
on why no parachutes 224
Raleigh, Sir Walter, on ‘Amazons’ 149–50
Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne Marquise de, salon 172
Raphael Santi, The Battle of Constantine Against Maxentius 165
Raskova, Marina, air navigator 217–25, 229–32
forms women’s combat aviation unit 219–25, 229–32
killed en route to Stalingrad 231–2
Notes of a Navigator 218
state funeral in Moscow 232
reality and myth 23–4
Reformation 160
Renaissance, and Amazons 124
Rio Negro 138
Rodina (Motherland) long-range bomber 217–19
Rojava (Kurdish Syria)
Women’s Defence Units (YPJ) 269–72
Kurds liberate cities 271
women in academic/public life 272–3
Romans, and Greek art 25–6
Rostov, Night Bombers and 225–6
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 175
royal tombs, Uyuk Culture 57–61
Royal Geographical Society, and Burton 195
Royal Scythians 32
Rubens, Peter Paul
and Alethea Howard 168
and Brueghel, The Battle of the Amazons 163–5
as diplomat 165–6
realism in own Battle of the Amazons 166–8
engraves/publishes picture 167–8
Rudenko, Sergei, and Pazyryk valley frozen graves 75–7, 81
Rudneva, Zhenya 227
Russell, Lord John 197–8
Russia
Bolshevik Revolution 216
Night Bombers see Night Bombers
southern
Alans, as Ossetians 102
Sarmatians dominate 101
steppe 26, 32–4, 37, 42, 45, 58, 62, 95, 106, 117
Night Bombers and 221, 226, 234
Russian Academy of Sciences 96
Saddam Hussein 266, 270
Saka (Sacae) Kazakhstan 53, 100
kurgans 67–74
artefacts 69–73
Sakarya River 11
Salomatin, Alexei 234, 235
salons 171–3, 178, 180
Salsk, Night Bombers at 228
Sanger, Margaret
and contraception 244–5, 251
Woman and the New Race 245, 257
Sappho of Normandy, Voltaire on du Boccage as 173, 180
Sappho of Lesbos 180, 204, 246, 257, 259
Sarmatian people
and Scythians 93–6
and Persian invasion 94–6
artefacts, Pokrovka 97–101
imported 98–9
history 93–103
in Britain as Roman troops 102
migrations 101–3
become Alans (Aryans) 101
push Scythians west 88
Pokrovka kurgans evidence 96–101
religion, Pokrovka evidence 100–1
women, Pokrovka evidence 97–101
girl with sword 99–100
mounted archery 100
religious roles 100–1
see also Sauromatians
Sauromatians 25
early Sarmatians 93–4
Herodotus on 51
Hippocrates on 45–6
see also Sarmatians
Schiller, Friedrich von, ‘Das Lied von der Glocke’ 184
Schlegel brothers, Shakespeare translation 182
Scythian world 51–101
descriptions
Akkadian records 37
Altai Mountains, frozen graves 74–7
Herodotus on 31–7, 46, 51–2
kurgans see kurgans
palaeopathology 62–7
cultures, extent 53–4
become Hunno-Sarmatians 61
displace Cimmerians 31, 37
dynasties 37
Indo-European languages 54
merge with Turco-Mongolians 89
trade routes 54
Uyuk Culture 57–67
homeland, extent 31, 32–4
inner Asia 30–7
Tuva heartland 56–74
and Sarmatians 93–6
Persian invasion 94–6
attack Persia & Assyrian empire 87–8
customs/religion
artefacts 52–3
bald/shaved/scalped 35, 54n10, 63, 76, 87
cannibalism, Herodotus on 35
congenital defects, tolerance 62, 63–7
embalming, Herodotus on 35–6, 76–7
gods, Herodotus on 35
human sacrifice, Herodotus on 35–6
milk products 34
saunas 36–7
wagon homes 34
women fighters ‘Amazons’, 7–8, 25
as children, learn to ride and shoot 105
evidence for 65–7
not distinct from society 213–14
see also specific cultures
Sebrova, Irina 233
Shakespeare, in German 182
Shakespeare, William, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 150
shamans, Altai Republic 83
Siberia 54
Minusinsk Hollow kurgans 55–6
Sinjar, Yazidi (Ezidi) people, IS and 269
Skliros 17–20
slave trade, Benin 193, 196, 197, 198, 206
Slee, J. Noah 245, 246
Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations 169
Solois and Antiope 9
Southern Front, Night Bombers at 225–8, 229–33
Soviet women air fighters WWII 216–40
Spain and Portugal, and Americas 131–2
Sparta, black (Dahomey) 191–212
Speke, John Hanning 195
Spenser, Edmund, The Faerie Queene 150
spindle whorls, Pokrovka 98–9
spondylolysis, in women 65
Squire, Jane, on longitude 179
St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum 60, 61
Scythian gold 52
Stalingrad
Night Bombers defend 225–8, 229–33
Germans surrender 233
Star Trek 156
Stearns, Katie, and horseback archery 120–1
Steinem, Gloria 260–1
stonework, Uyuk Culture 57
Sturm und Drang movement 181, 183
submission & dominance/compliance & inducement 246–7
suffrage movement
US 244–5
UK 216
Superman (Action Comics) xvi, 252
Syria, Kurds
Kurdish, Women’s Defence Units (YPJ) 269–73
Qamishli uprising 270–1
women, fighting Daesh/IS 263–4, 268–73
Szegedi, Andrea 107
Tabiti, Sarmatian/Scythian goddess 101
Taman Peninsula campaign, Night Bombers shot down at 237–9
Tanais, Kleist’s version 186
Tauri Scythians 35
Tegea, temple 18
Teixeira, Pedro de 151
Teletskoye Lake 75
Termes, modern, Amazon festival 6
Terracotta Army 99
Thalestris, Amazon queen and Alexander, Curtius on 39–41
Thatcher, Margaret, as Amazon 264
Themiscyra (Termes), Amazon capital 5
and Alexander the Great 38–42
Wonder Woman version 256
Thermodon (Terme) River 5–6
Amazons 39–42
Thersites, on Achilles 15
Theseus, and Amazons 8–10, 42
and Antiop
e (Amazon) 9
du Boccage version 174–7
possibly in Bassae Frieze 22
Rubens/Brueghel version 164–5
Thevet, André, Singularities of the French Antarctic 148–9
Thirty Years’ War 160–3, 165–6, 168
Thymnes, Scythian agent 32
Tibetan plateau 32
Tien Shan 32, 67
Times, on Kleist/Vogel suicide 189–90
Timofeyeva, Zhenya, leads Women’s Heavy Bombers 232–3
Tiryns, walls 3
titanomachies art theme 16
Tomyris (Massagetae queen), defeats Persians 38, 42
Trajan, conquers Alans 102
Trojan Horse 11
Troy (Hisarlik), Siege of 3, 10–16
amazonomachies (‘Amazon battles’) art theme 16–17, 21
as machismo prop 23–6
du Boccage, Les Amazones 173–8
Rubens/Brueghel version 164–5
Rubens’ own Battle of the Amazons 166–8
Turco-Mongolians, merge with Scythians 89
Turkey
Hittites 3, 5
horseback archery 121
Luwians 3
Turkish government, and Bassae 19–20
Tuva, Scythian heartland
kurgans 56–74
Xiongnu (Hunnu) replace Sarmatians 101
Tyasmin River kurgan 54
Tyras Greek colony 55
Uffington White Horse 85
Ukok people
nationalism 82–3
Plateau 79–88
archaeologists banned 84
Princess 72
grave 79–88
UNESCO World Heritage List, Ukok 82
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
women air fighters WWII 216–40
see also Russia
United States
Constitution
19th Amendment 244–5
Equal Rights Amendment 261
feminist writings 241–4, 260–1
Uyuk people
tombs ‘Valley of the Kings’ 56–67
Vandals, and Alans 103
Vershinin, General Konstantin
on Night Bombers 225
issues underwear 230–1
Vespucci, Amerigo, and Brazil 132–3
Virgil, Aeneid 178
Vogel, Henriette, suicide with Kleist 189–90
Völkerwanderung 102
Voltaire 169, 171
and du Boccage 173, 178, 180
denies Amazons 171, 173
on Les Amazones 177
Waorani (Huaorani) people, Ecuador 24, 135–6, 144, 215
Weimar 182
Wells, H. G., Sanger and 245
Werther Effect 181
Westphalia Treaty 168
Whydah (Ouidah) viceroy 199
Wilmott, Arthur, on Dahomey women’s army superior to men 193
Winckelmann, Johann, on art 181
Woman Rebel (magazine) 244
women
and aviation, USSR 216–40
Greek men threatened by 25
in French Revolution, Schiller on 184
in science, Benedict XIV and 178–80
warriors, kurgans 54–6
Uyuk Culture 57–61, 65–7
see also Amazons
Women’s Battalion of Death (WWI) 216
Women’s Christian Temperance Union 215–16
Women’s Defence Units (YPJ), Kurdish Syria 269–73
Wonder Woman xvi–xvii, 241–2, 253, 255–62
70s TV series 261
as role model 261
bracelets 256, 258
influence 260–2
Lasso of Truth 258
links to classical Greece 255–8
UN ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls 2016 261
Woolley, Mary, and suffrage movement 244
Wytfliet, Cornelius, puts Amazones on map 149
Xinjiang oasis burials 86
Yablonsky, Leonid, on Pokrovka kurgans 96–101
Yak-1 fighter planes 222, 228, 229
Yakovlev, Alexander, Yak-1 fighter planes 222
Yanomamö people 145–6
Yazidi (Ezidi) people, IS and 269
Yenisei River 61
Yevdokimov, Sasha 235–6
Yisungge, flight archery 106
Yoruba people, Nigeria 193, 206, 207
Zakynthos 19–20
Zen archery 111
Zeus xvi, xviii, 5, 12, 188, 204
About the Author
John Man is a historian with a special interest in Asia and the nature of leadership. His books, published in over twenty languages, include bestselling biographies of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan and Attila the Hun, as well as histories of the Great Wall of China and the Mongol Empire. He is fast becoming one of the world’s most widely read historians.
Also by John Man
Gobi
Atlas of the Year 1000
Alpha Beta
The Gutenberg Revolution
Genghis Khan
Attila
Kublai Khan
The Terracotta Army
The Great Wall
The Leadership Secrets of Genghis Khan
Xanadu
Samurai
The Mongol Empire
Saladin
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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © John Man 2017
Cover photograph © Getty Images/DeAgostini
John Man has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Map here by Liane Payne
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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
1 A Legend and Its Meaning
fn1 Luwian was written in both cuneiform, a widely used script invented in what is now Iraq, and hieroglyphic, from Egypt. Both predated Greek alphabetical script by over 3,000 years.
fn2 Often misspelled ‘Themyscira’, especially online. Its etymology is Themis (with an i), ‘established by custom’, plus ‘cyra’ (with a hard c, as in ‘case’, and a y), which derives from the same root as kyros, ‘lord’. To Greeks, its name suggested it was the nation’s long-established place of government.
fn3 From the English version, Travels in the Morea, Albania and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, 1813. The French original was published in 1805. Pouqueville had an astonishing life as adventurer, diplomat and scholar. Ex-priest, revolutionary and doctor, he accompanied Napoleon to Egypt in the fight against Nelson’s fleet, negotiated an exchange of prisoners, met Nelson, was captured by pirates, was handed over to Ali Pasha, the Albanian ex-bandit, mass-murderer and torturer who ruled semi-independent Turkey-in-Europe, became his physician, won enough freedom to explor
e the area (hence his book and this quote), spent two years in prison in a plague-ridden Constantinople, kept a secret journal in code, was again granted freedom for his skills as a doctor, studied and later wrote about the plague, won fame and fortune with an autobiography, served as France’s envoy to Ali Pasha, researched the archaeology of Greece, became a passionate advocate of all things Greek, wrote up his travels and researches in six meticulous volumes, and became an established figure in Parisian salons – and all this before his death at 68, in 1838.
fn4 William Bell Dinsmoor, ‘The Temple of Apollo at Bassae’, Metropolitan Museum Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2 (March 1933), pp. 204–27.
2 Close Encounters of the Scythian Kind
fn1 Olbia lasted another 500 years, in steady decline, before it was ruined by one of the Scythians’ barbarian successors, the Goths.
fn2 Herodotus mentions a spirit-wine called aschy, which he says is made of fruit mixed with milk. The word is similar to the modern Mongolian arkhi, which is distilled alcoholic drink of any sort.
fn3 ‘The aromatic root of certain East Indian plants of the genera Alpinia and Kaempferia, formerly much used in medicine and cookery’ (Oxford English Dictionary). These are types of ginger, mostly found in south-east Asia. Hints here of extensive trading and expertise.
3 A Short Chapter on Breasts
fn1 Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England, Cornell, 1993, p. 238.
fn2 Simon Richter, Missing the Breast: Gender, Fantasy and the Body in the German Enlightenment, University of Washington Press, 2006, p. 35.
4 Treasures in Bone and Gold
fn1 We’re getting into worlds of rumour again. Supposedly the Argippaei were all bald, lived under cherry trees, and were peaceful people ‘protected by a special sort of sanctity’.
fn2 Valeri Guliaev. See Bibliography.
fn3 The Pole of Inaccessibility – the point furthest from any coastline – is actually 700 kilometres to the south-west, in China.
fn4 The finds have been meticulously recorded in a superb 500-page book kindly sent to me by Hermann Parzinger, from Germany. See Čugunov, Parzinger and Nagler in Bibliography for details.
fn5 Details from ‘Masters of Gold’, National Geographic, June 2003.
fn6 Murphy lists the names in a meticulous 242-page monograph. Her findings are summarized in my other references.
fn7 Warrior Women, page 101. See Bibliography.
fn8 Traditional tall hats are still worn. In Mongolia, they are known as bocht, and are made like the Issyk one, with felt over a wooden frame. Kublai Khan’s wife Chabui was portrayed in one in the thirteenth century. They haven’t changed much in 700 years.
fn9 His classic book, Frozen Tombs of Siberia, appeared in Russian in 1953 and in English in 1970.