JJTWTAZ01 Penthesilea

Penthesilea

There were no men allowed to live together with the Amazons. However, in order to continue their race, once a year, the Amazons would visit a nearby tribe called Gargareans. After having sexual intercourse with them, the Amazons would return home; they would keep all baby girls that were born, but the male babies were either killed, sent to their fathers, or left in a forest to die of exposure to the elements.

The Amazons appeared in various Greek myths. In one of them, they attacked the region of Lycia, but were fended off by Bellerophon. They later attacked Phrygia, but were also defeated by the defending army, led by a young Priam, who later became the king of Troy.

According to Homer, the Trojan king Priam had fought the Amazons in his youth on the Sangarius river in Phrygia, some 350 miles east of Troy.
Later writers of the antiquity located Amazons geographically in Anatolia and started an epic tradition where Greek heroes, such as Heracles and Theseus, fought an Amazon warrior of distinction.

Courageous and fiercely independent, the Amazons, commanded by their queen, regularly undertook extensive military expeditions into the far corners of the world, from Scythia to Thrace, Asia Minor and the Aegean Islands, reaching as far as Arabia and Egypt.
Besides military raids, the Amazons are also associated with the foundation of temples and the establishment of numerous ancient cities, such as Ephesos, Cyme, Smyrna, Sinope, Myrina, Magnesia , and Pygela.

Archaeological discoveries of burial sites of female warriors, in the Eurasian Steppes suggest that the horse cultures of Scythian, Sarmation, and Hittites likely inspired the Amazon myth.
In 2019, a grave with multiple generations of female Scythian warriors, armed and in golden headdresses, was found near Russia’s Voronezh.