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Reconstruction of the late antique Hunting Amazons mosaic. The Amazons were a group or race of female warriors in Ancient Greek mythology. Most of them are only briefly named in one or two sources, either as companions of Penthesilea at the Trojan War, or as being killed by Heracles during his 12 labours.
Sources provide names of individual Amazons, that are referred to as queens of their people, even as the head of a dynasty. Without a male companion, they are portrayed in command of their female warriors. Among the most prominent Amazon queens were: Otrera, daughter of the nymph Harmonia and god of war, Ares.
They were named Amazons by Western Europeans who encountered them, due to the story of the female warriors of Amazons in Greek mythology. The emergence of an all-female military regiment was the result of Dahomey's male population facing high casualties in the increasingly frequent violence and warfare with neighbouring West African states.
On St Kilda, one of the most isolated islands of Scotland, legends exist of a female warrior. A mysterious structure is known as Taigh na Banaghaisgeich, (literally, 'House of the Female-Hero'), the 'Amazon's House'. As Martin Martin, who travelled there in 1697 recorded:
A Scythian warrior girl, aged approximately 13, is buried Saryg-Bulun in Central Tuva, Russia. The remains, discovered in 1988, were originally assumed to be male, but DNA sequencing in 2020 determines the mummy to be female. [39]
The Amazon Klonie, after slaying her first opponent, is in turn killed. Penthesilea mows through the Greek lines, killing eight warriors, and cuts the arm off the Greek warrior who had killed Klonie. Penthesilea's Amazon comrades Bremusa, Evandre and Thermodosa fight valiantly alongside her but are slain, and so are Derinoe, Alkibie and Derimachea.
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The earliest known recording of the Amazons can be found in Homer's epic poem the Iliad, in which Homer described them as Amazon antianeirai, a term with multiple translations including "the equal of men." [2] "Amazon" has become an eponym for woman warriors and athletes in both modern and ancient society.