Wonder Woman of the Week: Amage

This week, I wanted to escape present scandals going on in the media and get a break from soccer, Fifa, and sports in general. It is consuming me. Since this week is the 150th Wonder Woman, I wanted to return to the origin of Wonder Woman as I did when I spotlighting Princess Ukok in the 100th WWoW. Like with Ukok, this week’s I am spotlighting a fairly famous real-life Amazon royal. Queen Amage of Sarmatia is the Wonder Woman of the Week.

In case your Amazon history is a little too “man’s world,” the Amazons were a mythological race of warrior women within the mythology of the Ancient Greeks. Herodotus called the “breastless” as they would surgically remove one of their breasts to make firing bows easier. [1] The very term “Amazon” men’s “without breasts.” Even as far back as Homer- recorder of the Iliad and Odyssey stories- included myths of the “antianeirai” or “equal of men” in the stories of the Trojan War. In a 1990 archaeological dig in the southern Ural mountain wilderness, US and Russian archaeologists discovered the burial mounds of real-life Amazons. These Sarmatian women were buried with their weapons in hand, even one woman’s body had an arrow lodged in it- a war wound. The women stood 5’6” meaning at a time when the average man made Napoleon look like a giant, the authentic Amazons were titans. [2]

With this nice historical background displaying how intimidating these masochistic, giant warrior women; it should not surprise any history buff that there was one woman who represented all the best features of the mythical Amazons- Amage. Herodotus gave the Sarmatian women credit, noting in his Histories that Sarmatian women hunted and fought beside their men and even wore the same clothing. (No scantily clad female characters here.) The historian even wrote that Sarmatian women did not wed until she had killed at least one man. [3] Two thousand years before Russia tried claiming they owned Crimea, the Scythians beat them to it. One day, a small tribe bullied by the Crimean Scythians begged King Medosakkos for help. The problem was that Medosakkos was an idiot- so his wife decided to deal with the Scythians herself. Amage hand-picked one hundred twenty riders, giving each rider three horses, and rode towards the Scythian capital. In one night, Amage and her guards rode almost 150 miles to the palace of the Scythian royal family. She and her warriors killed every royal guard in the palace, killed every single member of the royal family along with their friends and councilors. They left only one young boy alive to be placed on the throne as the new Scythian king- but Amage made sure to give him a lesson on bullying. [1]

After massacring the Scythian royal family, Amage disappears from the history books- a telltale sign of a Disney-style happy ending. The Scythians and Sarmatians dominated Eastern Europe for another five hundred years before the Germanic peoples who toppled the Western Roman Empire showed up- pushing the native Scythians and Sarmatians further east into Central Asia. The Amazon myth lived on however and was the driving inspiration for William Moulton Marston’s Wonder Woman. Queen Amage may not have been the compassionate, gentle fighter Marston had pictured. Nonetheless Amage, Warrior Queen, is the Wonder Woman of the Week.

The Saurmations. Marres.education. Accessed 10 June 2015. http://www.marres.education/sarmatians.htm

Foreman, Amanda. The Amazon Women: Is There Any Truth Behind the Myth?. April 2014. Smithsonian Magazine. Accessed 10 June 2015. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/amazon-women-there-any-truth-behind-myth-180950188/?no-ist

Sarmatians Culture and History. The Museum of Russian Art. Accessed 10 June 2015. http://tmora.org/museum-exhibitions/online-exhibits/the-sarmatians/