Adrienne Mayor has written a number of books investigating the mist of myth, creativity and history. The First Fossil Hunters
(2000), was an account of how ancient Greek and Roman discoveries of
prehistoric bones gave rise to legends of giants and exhibitions of an
imagined heroic past. The Poison King (2009) worked to
excavate Mithridates, king of Pontus, from a heady mixture of sources:
the Romans’ fascinated hatred for their bitter enemy, enticing
archaeological traces from the eastern Mediterranean, and a long
tradition of fanciful reconstructions headed by Mozart’s opera, Mitridate. Her new book is The Amazons.
The Amazons have always been exciting in myth, and as foreign to the myth-making Greeks as the Phrygian Medea. Archeological digs in the steppes and near the Black Sea have yielded unquestionably women buried like warriors, often war leaders. But they are recognizable because they are handled in death like men of the tribe; that is, there is no evidence they were a subculture, a separate entity.
Simon Goldhill has written a kind review in "The Times" about the difficulties in generalizing from isolated archeological findings and their correlation to stories. Here is one example:
"In a typical argument, Mayor notes that Amazons in Greek images sometimes wield axes; and she notes that axes are found in graves across Scythia. So she asks who invented this weapon, and concludes triumphantly: “Pliny names the legendary inventor of the pointed battle-axe: it was none other than Queen Penthesileia”. All this demonstrates is that the legendary inventor of the axe for this Roman encyclopedist was indeed legendary – a figure from Homer. Whatever Mayor thinks, Pliny’s remark can tell us nothing about whether Amazons existed or about the life of Central Asian nomads."
The Amazons have always been exciting in myth, and as foreign to the myth-making Greeks as the Phrygian Medea. Archeological digs in the steppes and near the Black Sea have yielded unquestionably women buried like warriors, often war leaders. But they are recognizable because they are handled in death like men of the tribe; that is, there is no evidence they were a subculture, a separate entity.
Simon Goldhill has written a kind review in "The Times" about the difficulties in generalizing from isolated archeological findings and their correlation to stories. Here is one example:
"In a typical argument, Mayor notes that Amazons in Greek images sometimes wield axes; and she notes that axes are found in graves across Scythia. So she asks who invented this weapon, and concludes triumphantly: “Pliny names the legendary inventor of the pointed battle-axe: it was none other than Queen Penthesileia”. All this demonstrates is that the legendary inventor of the axe for this Roman encyclopedist was indeed legendary – a figure from Homer. Whatever Mayor thinks, Pliny’s remark can tell us nothing about whether Amazons existed or about the life of Central Asian nomads."
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