Amazons
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5 The Ice Maiden
fn1 Some of the details in this account come from the National Geographic article published soon after the discovery. It is credited to Polosmak herself. But she speaks little English, and it is clearly by National Geographic staff. English for a popular readership, especially in American magazines, is often sentimentalized. In the article, Polosmak’s down-to-earth Devochka, the Girl, turns into something reverential, ‘the Lady’.
6 Sarmatians: The Roots of the Legend
fn1 Disputed, but in his History of Central Asia, Vol. 1, Christoph Baumer has a picture of a statue wearing a Sarmatian-style akinates (sword-shield) on the Mangyshlak Peninsula, which juts into the Caspian.
fn2 A note on the stone armour, 100,000 limestone flakes, in dozens of suits. In a fight, it would be as much use as porcelain. So what was it for? The First Emperor wanted the best for his spirit army. After their battles in the spirit world, they would need replacement armour. Leather wouldn’t last. Limestone would be eternal. The quarrying, transporting and carving of limestone armour must have spread the idea that stone could provide protection in the next world. (See my Terracotta Army, Chapter 13.)
7 The Return of the Mounted Archer
fn1 Japanese mounted archery – yabusame – endured, but as a ritual; it was not used in warfare.
fn2 http://www.horsebackarchery.de
8 Amazonia: From Dreams to a New Reality
fn1 Alternatively, Pisan in French. Pizan in Italian, because the family came from Pizzano, near Bologna.
fn2 The name was not his invention. It had been around for over 300 years. The Song of Roland, completed in the early twelfth century, has Emperor Charles mourning Roland (Section 209), listing possible rebels, including ‘those of Califerne’ – presumably the land of the caliph, i.e. Spain.
fn3 In my 1664 edition, reproduced by the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership, these names and many others are in a modern typeface, not the original Gothic, which suggests the 1664 text had been modified from some unspecified earlier edition.
fn4 Nectandra cinamomoides.
fn5 Because large-scale tribal ‘nations’ do not exist today, Carvajal’s reports have been dismissed as fantasy. But this sounds like eyewitness evidence, and should at least be taken seriously. Recently, in southern Amazonia, aerial surveys have revealed hundreds of ‘geoglyphs’ – remains of huge rectangular and circular earthworks, evidence of long-vanished and large-scale communities. Perhaps similar states existed on the Amazon itself.
fn6 He was a ‘trumpeter’, says Carvajal, for his people had many ‘trumpets, drums and pipes’. I’m interested because I played the trumpet, long ago, when I thought I was musical. What on earth did he mean by ‘trumpets’? The only trumpets in Europe at the time were valveless open trumpets, like double-length bugles. Valves came much later (the instrument in Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto used clappers and holes to play harmonics). Wooden clarinos with recorder-like holes also had trumpet mouthpieces. Rainforest tribes had no metal. Perhaps these Indians had wooden instruments, with a bore-hole, or used deer horns. It’s a mystery.
fn7 The two versions differ in style, but not much in content, perhaps because they were dictated separately.
fn8 Les Singularitez de la France antarctique, autrement nommée Amérique. See Bibliography.
fn9 The original is available on http://gallica.bnf.fr/
fn10 Relation abrégée … See Bibliography.
9 A Painting, Two Plays and a Suicide
fn1 Given that the sources were Roman (both classical and recent), writers then and now favour the Roman version of his name.
fn2 Histoire des Amazones anciennes et modernes, Paris, 1740.
fn3 Obituary of Anne-Marie du Boccage, Monthly Magazine and British Register, 1 October 1804.
fn4 Monthly Magazine and British Register, 1 October 1804.
fn5 The phenomenon of copycat suicides is now termed the ‘Werther Effect’. Copycat suicides are a reality. How real the original Werther Effect was is unknown. It may all have been rumour.
fn6 Here is George Steiner summarizing Goethe’s genius in a review of the second volume of Nicholas Boyle’s masterly biography: ‘Often Goethe dictated in a week what would constitute very nearly the collected writings of lesser spirits. He did so while travelling, while helping to govern a duchy, while directing its theatre and opera, investigating its agricultural and mineral resources, accompanying its ruler to war, begetting a family and entering on erotic relationships almost each of which generated poetry of a classic force.’
fn7 Joel Agee in the introduction to his translation of Penthesilea, from which the quotes in this chapter are taken.
fn8 It works better in German, but not much: Küsse, Bisse, das reimt sich.
fn9 Ursula Mahlendorf, ‘The Wounded Self’. See Bibliography.
10 The Amazons of ‘Black Sparta’
fn1 In an epigram: ‘Some say there are nine Muses; but they should stop to think. Look at Sappho of Lesbos; she makes a tenth’.
fn2 Recorded by A. le Hérissé in 1911. My translation from the French. See Bibliography.
fn3 From Robin Law, ‘The “Amazons” of Dahomey’. See Bibliography.
fn4 In the Geographical Magazine, the journal of the Royal Geographical Society. See Bibliography.
11 Amazons with Wings: Russia’s Night Witches
fn1 A pomposity is a collection of professors, as a murmuration is a collection of starlings.
fn2 Though in 2017 Choo Waihong published her account of a near-matriarchy, The Kingdom of Women, describing the Mosuo people of Yunnan, whose house-holds are run by grandmothers, with the men acting as labourers and mates without parental responsibilities. The history of the matriarchy debate is covered in great depth in Cynthia Eller’s Gentlemen and Amazons. See Bibliography.
fn3 An Ant-37, newly redesigned and redesignated as a DB-2. It was a prototype, never mass-produced.
fn4 Pilot Evgeniia Zhigulenko said, ‘Marina Raskova … went to Stalin about this. And strange as it may seem this monster told her “You understand, future generations will not forgive us for sacrificing young girls.” It was she herself who told us this, this fascinating woman.’ (Quoted originally in Helene Kayssar and Vladimir Pozner, Remembering War: A U.S.–Soviet Dialogue (OUP, 1990); requoted by Reina Pennington. See Bibliography.
fn5 They had started with outdated two-seater Su-2 light bombers, but upgraded to Pe-2s in June, with three seats: pilot, navigator and gunner/radio operator.
fn6 His name was Oberfeldwebel (Staff Sergeant) Josef Kociok, a flying ace who had determined to deal with the troublesome Night Witches. He became a Nachtjäger, ‘night hunter’, one of a small specialist unit against which the Night Witches had no defence. He died in September 1943 when his plane hit a crashing Russian Ilyushin DB-3 bomber and his parachute failed to open.
fn7 Mainly from Reina Pennington’s Wings, Women, and War.
12 Wonder Woman: The Secret Origins of an Amazon Princess
fn1 The Secret History of Wonder Woman, on which this chapter is largely based. See Bibliography and Acknowledgements.
fn2 Many to the ‘Seven Sisters’: Mount Holyoke (the first, founded in 1837), Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley.
fn3 Marston, ‘Systolic Blood Pressure Symptoms of Deception’, 2 J. Exper. Psychol., 117 (1917).
fn4 These twelve ‘ages’ follow each other as the Earth’s axis of spin rotates, or precesses, like a child’s spinning top. All twelve signs of the zodiac appear in sequence behind the Sun at dawn at the autumnal equinox, or would do if you could see them. The whole cycle takes about 26,000 years. Astrologers read meaning into this. A new age starts when one constellation gives way to another, every 2,500 years or so. There is no agreement on the borders, so astrologers argue about whether we are in the new age or not. But they generally agree that Aquarius is better than its warlike predecessor, Pisces. It presages, among other things, peace, idealism and nonco
nformity.
fn5 Marguerite Lamb, ‘Who was Wonder Woman?’, Bostonia magazine, Fall 2001.
fn6 William Marston developed polio, and died in 1947. Marjorie Huntley died in 1986. Olive Byrne and Elizabeth Holloway lived together for the rest of their lives. Byrne died in 1990, Holloway in 1993. The secret of their lives together, and of their roles in Wonder Woman’s creation, remained veiled until revealed by Jill Lepore’s research in 2014.
Epilogue: Halfway to Amazonia
fn1 Aliza Marcus. See Bibliography.
fn2 The so-called al-Anfal campaign. According to Human Rights Watch, this was attempted genocide by Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as ‘Chemical Ali’). An estimated 182,000 died.
fn3 Quoted in Knapp, Flach and Ayboga, Revolution in Rojava. See Bibliography.