Modern Amazons fight in the Middle-East for their freedom and values
The Yazidi all-female battalion group named the Sun Ladies continues to grow in Iraq to fight against the so called barbarian Islamic state ISIS/DAESH. This brave and beautiful woman shows how independent, self-confident, evolved and affirmative she is, not subjected to anyone or anything being free and proud, making the rules for her live.
Close to this same place where these nowadays warrior fight once lived the Sarmatians or Sauromatæ, a large confederation of Aryan/Iranic people during classical antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century and speaking Scythian, an Indo-European language from the Eastern Iranian family.
The Sarmatians differed from other people in their women's prominent role in warfare, which possibly served as the inspiration for the Amazons. According to Herodotus some Amazons were captured by Greeks after Thermodon battle in Pontus where they captive the remained Sarmatian women and loaded them into three boats. During the journey while at sea the women overcame their captors but as they were not able sailors their ships were blown north to the Sea of Azov onto the shore of Scythia near today's southeastern Crimea.
When they encounter the Scythians those women warriors made war and plunder them until the Scythians found that they were women and refused to continue fighting, instead pitched close to them and whenever the women attacked they retreated and then camped again. The Amazons soon found out that they had not come to do them any harm and so they on their part ceased to offer the Scyth men any molestation, until some women began to meet some of the men secretly and after a while they were living together a same life type, neither having anything but their arms, weapons and horses, so that they were forced to join forces to support themselves by hunting and pillage. The women soon caught up the tongue of the men (as the Scyths as men in general were unable to learn) and they agreed to marry the Scyth men who asked their marriage like this: “We have parents and properties, let us therefore give up this mode of life and return to our nation and we all live there”. The Amazons accepted on the condition that they move away from their families and territories and the Amazons would not be required to follow Scythian women customs. They said: “We shall be your wives there no less than here and we promise you to have no others but we could not live like your women as our customs are quite different from theirs – we draw the bow, hurl the javelin and bestride the horse; and your women on the contrary do none of these things and engage only in womanish tasks. But if you truly wish to keep us as your wives, and would conduct yourselves with with strict justice towards us, go your home to your parents, bid them give your inheritance and then come back to us, and let us and you live together by ourselves”. The youth Scythes approved the advice and followed it but the Amazons addressed them in these words: “We are ashamed for not only have we stolen you from your fathers, but we have done great damage to Scythia by our ravages. As you like us for wives, grant the request we make of you: Let us leave this country together and go and dwell beyond the Tanais”. Again the Scythes complied.
Those Sauromatae women have continued from that day to the present to observe their ancient customs, frequently hunting on horseback with their husbands, sometimes even unaccompanied; in war taking the field; and wearing the very same dress as the men. Their marriage-laws lays it down that no girl shall wed till she has killed a man in battle. Thus according to Herodotus, the descendants of this band settled toward the northeast beyond the Tanais (Don) river and became the Sauromatians. Herodotus' account credits the unusual social freedoms of Sauromatae women, including participation in warfare. Later writers refer to the "woman-ruled Sarmatae".
Hippocrates also describes their warlike women and their customs: “Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites. A woman who takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general expedition. They have no right breast; for while they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterize it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm.”
Roman depictions of Sarmatians depicted them as resembling Romans or Europeans in their features.