![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/Amazons-on-vase-450-BCE-Met-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nFrieze depicting Amazons fighting on the tomb of Mausolos at Halikarnassos, with close-ups (ca. 350 BCE; British Museum):<\/p>\n
Statue of a wounded Amazon (with a bleeding wound under the right arm) from Rome, likely based on an Ephesian model (ca. 150 CE; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, inv. 1568):<\/p>\n Relief of an Amazon with a shield in battle (second century CE; Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, inv. 2016):<\/p>\n Less-than-lifesized statue of a dead Amazon (Naples Archeological Museum, on which go to this link<\/a> for accompanying statues:<\/p>\n These artistic depictions of Amazons present the stereotypical Amazon of Greek art (also imitated within Roman art) as a fierce warrior, often with a bow and arrow or a spear or javelin and a shield and sometimes on horseback. They are consistently depicted wearing a short, pleated tunic (chiton<\/em> or peplos<\/em>) made of light fabric (coming down above the knee) with a belt and sometimes with one breast or both breasts exposed particularly as pictured in or after battle. Although some of the legends have the Amazons cauterizing or removing the right breast in order to improve movement for fighting and archery (link<\/a> to Strabo’s discussion), that is not consistent in artistic depictions.<\/p>\n Source: <\/strong><\/em>Photos by Harland (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0<\/a>), except for the dead Amazon from the Naples museum, which is a photo by “virtusincertus\u201d (CC BY 2.0<\/a>). All photos from the Met are in the public domain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Terracotta volute-krater vase depicting Amazons in battle (ca. 450 BCE from Attica; h. 63.5 cm; inv. 07.286.84; Metropolitan Museum of Art): Frieze depicting Amazons fighting on the tomb of Mausolos at Halikarnassos, with close-ups (ca. 350 BCE; British Museum): Statue of a wounded Amazon (with a bleeding wound under the right arm) from Rome, likely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219,355,221,131,299,296,225,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-03-visual-ethnography-via-archeology","category-a-archeological-and-visual-materials","category-a-northern-peoples","category-amazons-mythical-scythians","category-ancient-ethnography-ethnographic-culture","category-ethnicity-ancient-world","category-sarmatians","category-scythians-pontic-peoples"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7908"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17579,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7908\/revisions\/17579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Comments:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>As Strabo’s passage on Amazons shows (link<\/a>), ancient authors often took very seriously the notion that there was in fact an all-female warrior society, and most placed this people in the north, particularly east of the Black Sea. In general, Amazons were considered a sub-set of Scythians or Sarmatians. Ethnographic writing about the Scythians similarly emphasizes the violent character of northern peoples and stresses that even the Scythian women were warriors, which aligns well with the depiction of Amazons engaged in battle. Furthermore, many Greek ethnographic descriptions of Scythian society emphasize the reversal of common Greek gender roles and expectations (see other examples of passages on Scythians on this site).<\/p>\n