by Jason Porath
Although most of her efforts in World War I revolved around developing the first flying ambulances (earning her the nickname the “flying Florence Nightingale”), that was far from her only contribution. After spending several weeks in disguise as a foot soldier at the front, she carried food to troops on skis, helped with evacuations, trained as a nurse, assisted in wartime surgery, and invented a surgical suture device.
Then Marvingt became the first female bomber in history, flying missions over German territory. For this, she earned the Croix de Guerre, one in her endless collection of medals.
And the list goes on!
After the war, she spent decades publicizing the idea of aerial ambulances. This was not a matter of simply appearing in the newspapers upon occasion: she went to upwards of 3,500 conferences over the rest of her lifetime—around 70 per year, or one every five days.
Even after Marvingt settled into old age, she continued to impress everyone around her. At age 86, she biked from Nancy to Paris—a 400-kilometer journey—in the dead of winter, for fun. She would regularly stroll into expensive restaurants and pay her bill with autographs (a trick that Josephine Baker would pull years later, sometimes at the same restaurants). She studied law and medicine, achieved fluency in four languages, and became an accomplished singer, actress, author, painter, and sculptor.
She died in a nursing home at age 88. She was so long-lived that in an interview two years before her death, Marie joked around about how she kept delaying city plans for a museum dedicated to her by stubbornly refusing to die. Every few days, she said, “Somebody has come to look in and see if Marvingt is still around, and if they can start work on the museum. This has been going on for a long time. They are starting to lose interest.”
They didn’t, though. Marie Marvingt was hailed as “the most extraordinary woman since Joan of Arc” and held up as one of France’s greatest heroines. To this day there are streets, buildings, schools, aviation awards, and flying clubs named after her.
Iara
(BRAZILIAN LEGEND)
Brazil’s Lady of the Lake
Maybe you’re familiar with mermaids as lovesick sea dwellers who just can’t get enough of hunky air-breathers. Maybe you have even read the unsanitized versions of said stories featuring, say, the besotted protagonist essentially stabbing herself repeatedly so the handsome prince will like her. (Spoiler: does not work, do not emulate.)
Well, the story of the Brazilian mermaid Iara is nothing like that.
Iara was the pride of her Amazon-dwelling tribe. The daughter of the group’s spiritual leader, Iara grew to be the best warrior of them all—courageous, kind, strong, and (as virtually every single history ever written about women feels inclined to mention) beautiful. In short: she was a total boss, and everyone liked her.
Everyone, that is, save her two brothers, whom she overshadowed by virtue of being far more awesome. Upset by this, they decided to handle their problem with mankind’s traditional go-to solution: murder. The only catch was, they knew they couldn’t take her, even two-on-one. So they waited until she was asleep, reasoning that two alert soldiers would be stronger than one unconscious one.
They were wrong. They were so, so wrong. As soon as they got near her, she jolted awake and killed them both in self-defense. She might have still been half-asleep.
Afterwards, her father, unaware that her brothers had tried to kill her first, and apparently deaf to her cries of “they started it,” led the rest of the tribe on a hunt for her. Although she eluded them for quite some time, eventually they caught up to her and tossed her into a nearby river, where she drowned. Bummer.
But even underwater (and dead), she was still making friends! The fish there thought she was pretty cool, so they transformed her into a half-fish, half-human person—the first of an entire branch of river-dwelling mermaids called Iara. When men chanced upon Iara, usually in the afternoon, they would be so overcome by her beauty (or singing voice) that even if they somehow managed to escape, they would literally go insane. What happened to the men if they didn’t escape changes in different tellings. In some versions, Iara would drown them and even eat them. In others, they would join Iara’s aquatic harem, and she’d treat them pretty well! Life could suck more.
The legends are unclear about what would happen if a woman chanced upon Iara. Presumably, a curt head nod.
The tale of Iara is, in all likelihood, an intermingling of European myths, local monster stories, and river goddess worship. The European myths are probably obvious to most everyone reading this. The monster in this case can be tracked back to the Ipupiara, a crazy-looking 15-foot-tall sea monster that terrorized 1500s Brazil. The river god worship is a bit harder to track down, but as far away as Venezuela you’ll find the story of Iara conflated with that of Maria Lionza, a tapir-riding, vulva-wielding beast queen.
(This author would like to think he’s the first person to ever write “tapir-riding, vulva-wielding beast queen,” but he’s probably not.)
• ART NOTES •
Since the myth is associated with the Tupi people, Iara’s face paint and tattoos are modeled after theirs.
In the stories, her hair is often described as green because of algae.
The setting is the actual river she’s reported to live in.
Her fish half is based on the look of a Brazilian guppy. They have such beautiful fins!
Jane Dieulafoy
(1851–1916, FRANCE/PERSIA)
The Archaeologist Who Became a Fashion Icon
Most of the women in this book achieved their life’s work without the aid of (and sometimes despite the interference of) a man. Jane Dieulafoy, one of the most successful archaeologists in history, was not such a woman. On the contrary, she shared all her adventures—excavating cities, roughing it in the wilds of Persia, and even fighting in wars—with her partner, equal, and soul mate: her husband, Marcel. Not that most of her contemporaries knew this, as she disguised herself as a man for much of her life abroad.
Jane came from conventional beginnings. Born into a bourgeois French family, she received her education at a convent and got married as soon as she graduated. Her husband, Marcel, was a worldly engineer who enjoyed travel.
Jane’s conventional life ended with her wedding. Her husband enlisted to fight in the Franco-Prussian war, and, disguising herself as a man, so did Jane. They spent their honeymoon on the front lines, shooting at enemy tanks. Thankfully, the war ended soon, and before long they were back home in Toulouse. Although neither ever wanted to set foot on a battlefield again, both longed for adventure, and to that end they started planning a trip to Persia (present-day Iran).
To describe their trip as grueling would give a bad name to gruel. For two years, the pair logged over 3,700 miles on horseback. They slept on rocks, battled fevers, endured horrific rainstorms, experienced dire poverty, dodged angry wildcats and boars, and fought off recurrent head lice. Most remarkably, they somehow stayed married. Their goal was the ancient city of Susa. The seat of several ancient civilizations (notably several started by successors of Tomyris’s headless foe, Cyrus the Great), Susa had by that point been abandoned for so long that it had almost passed into the realm of fable. Marcel’s aim was to prove that Western art owed a debt to Eastern art. Jane’s was to pursue her interest in history. Neither was a trained archaeologist, but they proved to be quick studies. Many of the techniques they would soon pioneer became the foundation of modern archaeology.
They did finally reach Susa, and the importance of the work they did there can scarcely be overestimated. In short order, they unearthed a massive relic—26 feet by 200 feet long—called the Lion Frieze. That was followed by ancient urns, coins, and lamps, replete with ivory and opal. Soon word of their dig spread, bringing in such a colossal number of workers that they had to hire round-the-clock security to keep an eye on the dig.
And in charge of this small village of 300 hired hands stood Jane. Still disguised as a man, she regularly appeared with archaeo
logical equipment in hand, a rifle on her shoulder, and a horse whip at her side. She was the first to break ground at the dig, and she defended their findings tooth and nail.
When it came time to transport some of the pieces back to French museums (many can still be seen in the Louvre), she and her husband camped out with the excavated treasures around the clock. The artifacts belonged in a museum, and they were hell-bent on making sure they made it there.
Once back in France, Jane was an instant celebrity, as was Marcel, though to a lesser extent. The two of them received many accolades and honors, and Jane became one of the first women to receive a cross from the Legion of Honor. Intellectual salons and newspapers across the nation buzzed about her short-cropped hair and her male wardrobe. Having now permanently eschewed women’s clothes (and having received special government dispensation to do so), she became a minor fashion icon.
Many at the time assumed that, because of her appearance, Jane was a lesbian. However, there is no historical evidence to support the theory. She remained fiercely steadfast and, by all accounts, passionately in love with Marcel for her entire life. Despite her atypical presentation, she was in many ways quite traditional. When a female journalist, bored with her own husband, asked Jane’s opinion on leaving him for a life of adventure, Jane replied: “Divorce works against women, it annihilates them, it lowers them, it takes away their prestige and their honor. I am the enemy of divorce. . . . I only wish to show that happiness comes from doing your duty towards others and not from satisfying your wishes and whims. The best way to love your husband is to love his soul, his intelligence and also the highest expression of himself, namely his work in the world.”
The journalist left in tears.
The Dieulafoys’ later careers were stymied by their newfound celebrity. With the authorities now aware of Jane’s gender, the Persian government barred the couple from returning to Susa (although the real culprit may have been Jane’s angry letter chastising the government for taking so long to get back to them about reentry). With a return there closed off, Jane found success in literary pursuits, and one of her more popular novels (a historical drama set in Susa itself) was turned into a famous opera. She even banded together with other female authors to start the Prix Femina, a literary prize awarded by women.
The Dieulafoys continued their archaeological work to the end of their lives, digging in Morocco, Spain, and Portugal. It was at one of these sites that Jane contracted a fatal case of amoebic dysentery from the dirty water. She died in Marcel’s arms. She was 65. They had been married for 45 years.
Tin Hinan
(C. 4TH–5TH CENTURY, ALGERIA)
The Queen Who Put Men in Veils
In 1925, a massive tomb was excavated in the northern Algerian town of Abalessa. In it rested a skeleton popularly identified as the mother of one of the most unconventional tribes on earth—the Tuareg, a nomadic people who afforded their women the highest liberties and covered their men in electric blue veils. According to the tribes of the area, there, proudly adorned in her resplendent jewelry, was their leader and progenitrix, “she of the tents”: Tin Hinan.
The history of Tin Hinan is a fractured one that has been mostly passed down through oral tradition. Most Tuareg agree that she left her tribe in Taflialet (modern-day Morocco) and, alongside her servant Takama, journeyed into the Sahara, one of the most hostile environments in the world. She found an oasis at the Ahaggar Mountains and then brought in her people from Taflialet. There she established a peaceful social order, formed commercial trade routes, and made a prosperous new nation.
Beyond that, the story of Tin Hinan changes dramatically in each telling. Related Imazigh (Berber) tribes claim she was a woman named Tiski al-Ardja, which translates as either “Tiski the Sweet-Smelling” or “Tiski the Lame.” “Lame” was no judgment on her character: Tiski was said to be unable to walk without assistance. Corroborating this story is the fact that the skeleton found in the Algerian tomb thought to belong to Tin Hinan had evidence of a spinal deformity that would have caused a limp.
Some anthropologists and historians point to the matriarchal culture of the Tuareg today as evidence of Tin Hinan’s influence. The men of the Tuareg strike an unfamiliar dichotomy: fierce warriors, they also wear veils, braid their hair, and apply makeup before meeting women. Women, strikingly, select their sexual partners (of which they can have many without stigma) and pass their family names to their husbands, and their wealth and possessions are inherited by their daughters. Women dominate politics, and the sultan elected by the tribes is said to represent the queen.
Unfortunately, we may never know all of the story behind Tin Hinan. The 1925 excavator of the Algerian grave was Byron Khun de Prorok, a man vilified in archaeological circles as an incompetent grave robber. It’s uncertain, judging from his long history of archaeological blunders, how much of his account of the discovery should be believed, especially as regards the original condition of the tomb and the question of whether any treasures might have “walked off.” Despite protests from the Tuareg, de Prorok took the bones and treasures back to the Ethnographical Museum in Algiers, where they remain on display to this day.
Sadly, today the traditional values of the Tuareg are in decline, as civil wars and drought have forced them to move to cities, where a patriarchal social structure is the norm.
• ART NOTES AND TRIVIA •
Tin Hinan is assumed to be a title rather than a proper name. Translations include “she of the tents,” “the nomadic woman,” and “she who comes from afar.”
She is wearing the jewelry she was found with: seven gold bracelets on her left arm, and seven silver on her right. Additionally, she was said to have ridden a cream-colored camel, pictured lying down, exhausted.
Some fringe writers, chief among them L. Taylor Hansen, theorize that the Tuareg actually fled the fabled Atlantis. Some Tuareg apparently believe this as well.
Historian Lyn Webster Wilde, in her book on the origins of the Amazon myth, supposes that the Tuareg matriarchal streak may be a holdout of female-centric Bronze Age societies.
Hatshepsut
(1508–1458 BCE, EGYPT)
The Unforgettable Pharaoh
Forget Cleopatra, King Tut, or Nefertiti—Hatshepsut was quite possibly the greatest pharaoh in history. She didn’t come to power through assassinations or war, nor did she even engage in violence. She just ruled brilliantly.
You’d be forgiven for not knowing about her, though. Thanks to a sustained campaign by her successors to erase all traces of her (more on that in a bit), it was not until fairly recently that she came back to prominence. She was rediscovered because her time in power saw such an incredible proliferation of architecture, statues, and art that it proved impossible to scrub mention of her from everything. So many of her artifacts have survived to the present day that almost every major museum in the world has at least one artifact from her reign. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has an entire room devoted to her.
All this out of a reign of only 22 years, 1,500 years before the birth of Jesus.
In fact, speaking of Jesus—you know the myrrh that the wise men brought to his birth? That gift was almost certainly made possible by Hatshepsut’s import of myrrh to Egypt, in the first recorded attempt to transplant foreign trees. While this may not sound impressive on its face, she had brought them in from the land of Punt*—an act that, for the time, was akin to going to the moon. This was just one of the many nigh-miraculous acts she pulled off in order to legitimize her claim on the throne.
Like many ancient female rulers, Hatshepsut was never meant to be in power. She ascended to rule when her father and brothers died suddenly and the heir to the throne was too young to rule. She spent much effort on her own PR—besides the aforementioned trip to Punt, she oversaw the creation of multiple statues of herself as pharaoh (in various androgynous guises, including with the pharaoh’s false beard). These building efforts culminated in a 10-story-tall stone obelisk that dis
played her official history. In it, she is portrayed as divinely conceived and the rightful ruler as appointed by the gods. Essentially she was saying, “I’ve always been king.”
Eventually, she stepped aside, and the young ruler Thutmose III—with whom she’d, strictly speaking, been co-ruling, although she’d been doing everything herself—went about establishing his own legitimacy. A large part of that was taking credit for all of Hatshepsut’s accomplishments by attempting to erase her name from everything. This damnatia memoriae went on for decades, but he could never erase her entirely.
Emmy Noether
(1882–1935, GERMANY)
The Most Important Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of
If you had told German mathematicians in the late 1800s that their field would be radically upended by a woman—let alone a chubby, boisterous, lifelong bachelorette who wouldn’t even get paid for her work for most of her life—you would have been laughed out of the room.
Come the 1920s, they wouldn’t be laughing.
To say that Emmy Noether revolutionized the field of mathematics is almost an understatement. Noether’s theorem became the bedrock foundation of a new generation of physics and calculus by proving symmetry and conservation across physical systems. While the specifics are too complex to discuss in depth here, suffice to say that Albert Einstein himself described her as “the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.”
