The Amazons of Black Sparta

This is the fourth, and probably final article about amazons. Unlike the other amazons I talked about in the previous articles, there is no doubt that these girls existed almost up till the beginning of the twentieth century.

Here’s the citation from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson:

Despite the rich variety of Amazon legends from ancient Greece, South America, Africa and elsewhere, there is only one historically documented example of female warriors. This is the women’s army that existed among the Fon of Dahomey in West Africa, now Benin.

These female warriors have never been mentioned in the published military histories; no romanticized films have been made about them, and today they exist as no more than footnotes to history. Only one scholarly work has been written about these women, Amazons of Black Sparta by Stanley B. Alpern (C., Hurst & Company, London, 1998), and yet they made up a force that was the equal of every contemporary body of male elite soldiers from among the colonial powers.

It is not clear exactly when Fon’s female army was founded, but some sources date it to the 1600s. It was originally a royal guard, but it developed into a military collective of 6000 soldiers with a semi-divine status. They were not merely window dressing. For almost 200 years they constituted the vanguard of the Fon against European colonizers. They were feared by the French forces, who lost several battles against them. This army of women was not defeated until 1892, when France sent troops with artillery, the Foreign Legion, a marine infantry regiment, and cavalry.

It is not known how many of these female warriors fell in battle. For many years survivors continued to wage guerrilla warfare, and veterans of the army were interviewed and photographed as late as the 1940s.

When Khadaffi set up his all-girl bodyguard, he was actually following tradition, not doing something radical. The amazons of Dahomey started out as a bodyguard. Eventually their numbers grew and they made up a third of the army. Wikipedia has a good article on the amazons of Dahomey. The book about these women warriors that was mentioned in the quote is available from, where else, amazon.

Although these female warriors were fierce on the battlefield, its probably incorrect to give them entire credit for Dahomey remaining independent for so long. The kingdom of Dahomey was the chief supplier of slaves to the transatlantic slave trade. This meant that it was more valuable to the european powers as a source of slaves than it was as a colony. Once slavery was abolished the fate of Dahomey was sealed. It took two years to achieve, but France conquered the kingdom in 1894 and kept control of it until 1958. The former kingdom of Dahomey is now known as Benin.

Related articles

• Africa’s longest reigning monarch, Obi James Anyasi II, seeks govt help (vanguardngr.com)
• Women warriors of west Africa (boingboing.net)

It was Stieg Larsson’s book The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest that got me going on this fascinating topic. Each of these posts centers around a quotation from this book and expands on it.

There has been a lot of controversy during the last 20 years or so about women taking an active role in combat. The women’s equality types rail because women weren’t allowed to fight and were restricted to support roles. On the other side were those who believed women to be incapable of actually fighting. Still others believe that women in combat will cause some kind of fundamental, evil change in society.

The simple fact is that there have always been women warriors. At various times in history there have been entire women’s armies, and they fought just as well or better than their male counter-parts.

This series of posts takes a look at several different examples of warrior women, amazons in other words. Interesting factoid: The black sea used to be known as the Amazon. Many of the examples of warrior women come from around the Black Sea. That’s how they got the name amazons.

1. Women Have Always Gone to War
2. Did Amazons Really Amputate a Breast?
3. The Amazons of Libya
4. Modern Amazons

This is the third post in my series about Amazons and Women in war. Again, the quote that follows is from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest by Stieg Larsson.

The historian Diodorus from Sicily, second century BC (who is regarded as an unreliable source by other historians), describes the Amazons of Libya, which at that time was a name used for all of north Africa west of Egypt. This Amazon reign was a gynaecocracy; that is, only women were allowed to hold high office, including in the  military. Accord to legend, the realm was ruled by a Queen Myrina, who with 30,000 female soldiers and 3000 female cavalry swept through Egypt and Syria and all the way to the Aegean, defeating a number of male armies along the way. After Queen Myrina finally fell in battle, her army scattered.

But the army did leave its imprint on the region. The women of Anatolia took to the sword to crush an invasion from the Caucasus, after the male soldiers were all saughtered a a far-reaching genocide. These women trained in the use of all types of weapons, including bow and arrow, spear, battleaxe, and lance. They copied their bronze breastplates and armour from the greeks.

They rejected marriage as subjugation. So that they might have children they were granted a leave of absence, during which they copulated with randomly selected males from nearby towns.

Only a woman who had killed a man in battle was allowed to give up her virginity.

Queen Myrina seems to be an almost mythological character. All this took place a looong time ago, even before Greek culture solidified. I found a little more detail on Wikipedia, but it still comes from the same source, Diodorus.

Myrina, a queen of the Amazons. According to Diodorus Siculus,^[1] she led a military expedition in Libya and won a victory over the people known as the Atlantians, but was less successful fighting the Gorgons (who are described by Diodorus as a warlike nation residing in close proximity to the Atlantians). During the same campaign, she struck a treaty of peace with Horus, ruler of Egypt, conquered several peoples, including the Arabians, the Tauri and the Cilicians (but granted freedom to those of the latter who gave in to her of their own will). She also took possession of several islands, including Lesbos, and was the first to land on the previously uninhabited island which she named Samothrace. The cities of Myrina (in Lemnos),^[2] Mytilene, Cyme (Aeolis), Pitane (Aeolis) and Priene were believed to have been founded by her and named after herself, her sister Mytilene and the commanders in her army, Cyme, Pitane and Priene, respectively.^[3] Myrina’s army was eventually defeated by Mopsus the Thracian and Sipylus the Scythian; she, as well as many of her fellow Amazons, fell in the final battle.

By the sounds of that, Myrina wasn’t from Libya, but rather was some kind of proto-greek. That means the title of this post is misleading. Oh well…

Two interesting linkages occurred to me. They don’t have anything directly to do with Myrina’s amazons, just random thoughts that popped into my head while working on this.

1. The social structure was a gynaecocracy. I’ve never heard of any other society where women, and only women, were on top. I’ve heard of matriarchal cultures, of course. Here on the west coast of Canada most of the tribes were matrilineal. That means that lineage of a person was traced on the mother’s bloodline, not the father’s the way we do it. One interesting result of this is that they swapped children. Kids were raised by the uncles and aunts. Among the Haida, a boy would be sent to live with his mother’s brother.
2. They regarded marriage as subjugation. In my mind, this ties together with the subject of mature relationships, ie how relationship structures can change after the kids are raised and gone. It also brought to mind something I heard about a growing women’s movement that started in Japan; women leaving their marriages and striking out on their own. This is a real social change, and of course has a special name and customs around it. If anyone can point me to sources that talk about this, please let me know. Its something that came across my radar a few years ago and I didn’t follow up because I was busy with other things.

This is the second in the Women in War series that started with Women Have Always Gone to War. Again, the quote that follows is from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest , written by Stieg Larsson.

An Irish law from the year 697 forbids women to be soldiers – which means that women had been soldiers previously. Peoples who over the centuries have recruited female solders include Arabs, Berbers, Kurds, Rajputs, Chinese, Filipinos, Maoris, Papuans, Micronesians, and American Indians.

There is a wealth of legend about fearsome female warriors from ancient Greece. These tales speak of women who were train in the art of war from childhood-in the use of weapons, and how to cope with physical privation. They lived apart from the men and went to war in their own regiments. The tales tell us that they conquered men on the field of battle. Amazons occur in Greek literature in the Iliad of Homer, for example, in 600 BC.

It was the Greeks who coined the term “Amazon.” The word literally means “without breast.” It is said that in order to facilitate the drawing of a bow, the female’s right breast was removed, either in early childhood ar wath a red-hot iron after she became an adult. Even though the Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen are said to have agreed that this operation would enhance the ability to use weapons, it is doubtful whether such operations were actually performed. Herein lies a linguistic riddle-whether the prefix “a-” in their language does indeed mean “without.” It has been suggested that it means the opposite-that an Amazon was a woman with especially large breasts. Nor is there a single example in any museum of a drawing, amulet, or statue of a woman without her right breast, which should have been a common motif had the legend about breast amputation been based on fact.

When I read the bit about the Irish law against women warriors I immediately wondered whether it had anything to do with the arrival of Christianity in Ireland. Sure enough, that was around the time the celtic church was being established. Although Christianity had been introduced earlier, it had pretty much established itself as the dominant religion by that time. It seems that organized religion of any kind frowns on women warriors, while the more pagan societies accept it as a natural part of life.

As far as the story about Amazons whacking one of their boobs off so they could shoot a bow better is concerned, that could only have been believed by someone who has never actually fired an arrow. It takes a lot of upper body strength to draw a powerful bow. Any surgery to remove a breast, especially burning it off with a hot iron, would damage the musculature in the chest so much that the woman wouldn’t have been able to draw a bow. Or swing a sword for that matter. The picture there shows an archer with 2 breasts, and it comes from greeka.com. Check out the article for more detailed info about Amazons.

Statue of Boudicca

I’m reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest. Its the last in the series of Stieg Larsson books that started with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I found these books fascinating. Lisbeth Salander is a great character, and the Swedish background gives an insight into Swedish geography and customs that it would be hard to get from a non-fiction source.

But, that isn’t what this series of posts is about. Its about women in war. Larsson has used short, simple articles on this subject as introductions to various sections of the book. I think they should be shared and expanded on, because womens’ martial side isn’t talked about very often.

Again, what follows was not written by me, its a quote from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I encourage everyone to buy the book.

The image of Boudicca is from a website called Brits at their best.

The video is something I came across on Youtube. It was supposed to be search-engine filler, but I’m really glad I found it. There were some ass-kickin’ mamas throughout African history and we never get to hear about them, or much else in the way of African history, because of the white filter that has been cast over the story of how the world got to be the way it is.

Enough rambling. This is post one in a series. Hope you enjoy it.

An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War. They had signed up disguised as men. Hollywood has missed a significant chapter in cultural history here – or is this history too ideologically difficult to deal with? Historians have often struggled to deal with women who do not respect gender distinctions, and nowhere is this distinction more sharply drawn than in the question of armed combat. (Even today it can cause controversy having a woman on a typical Swedish moose hunt.)

But from antiquity to modern times, there are many stories of female warriors, of Amazons. The best known find their way into the history books as worrior queens, rulers as well as leaders. They have been forced to act as any Churchill, Stalin, or Roosevelt: Semiramis, from Nineveh, who shaped the Assyrian Empire, and Boudicca, who led one of the bloodiest English revolts against the Roman forces of occupation, to cite just two. Boudicca is honoured with a statue on the Thames at Westminster Bridge, opposite Big Ben. Be sure to say hello to her if you happen to pass by.

On the other hand, history is reticent about women who were common soldiers, who bore arms, belonged to regiments, and took part in battles on the same terms as men, though hardly a war has been waged without women soldiers in the ranks.