MUSEUM LECTURE: Adrienne Mayor, "Amazons: Warrior Women in Myth, Art, and History"

Amazons—fierce horsewomen-archers on the fringes of the known world—were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles battled Amazon queens and the Athenians reveled in their victory over an Amazon army. But who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and freedom? Archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with weapons now prove that women warriors were not just figments of the Greek imagination. Combining myth and art, nomadic traditions, and archaeology, Mayor reveals surprising details and new insights about the lives of flesh-and-blood women of the Eurasian steppes who were mythologized as Amazons.