In vase paintings of Amazons and Scythian archers, dogs are frequently shown trotting along. A vase (discussed further in chapter 14) depicts a pair of Amazons with a dog sporting a red collar. Non-Greek words inscribed above the women’s heads seem to indicate their conversation, which appears to refer to their dog. On the other side of the vase shown in fig. 11.1 A little white dog accompanies the Amazon training her mare. The dog imagery associated with Amazons and Scythians in art parallels pictures of Greek male hunters and warriors accompanied by their hounds. Xenophon, who had traveled in Persia and Anatolia, and commented about gender equality in other works (Chapters 8 And 9), wrote a treatise about hunting with hounds. Xenophon concluded his book by declaring that both men and women can be excellent hunters, “as the examples of Atalanta and many other female huntresses prove.”28 Archaeological evidence of domestic dogs appears alongside evidence of the first domesticated horses in the archaeological sites of Botai and other very early Eurasian cultures, and artifacts from Scythian kurgans depict dogs; one example is a fine silver beaker from Ukraine showing a dog in a hunting scene. The Amazon mosaics at Sanliurfa show Hippolyte and her hound hunting a leopard (chapter 2). Herodotus described nomads of Central Asia hunting with horses and dogs. He remarked that among the tribes near the Caspian Sea, the hunters’ horses and dogs were trained to lie under a tree until the prey had been shot with an arrow; then the rider, horse, and dog set off in hot pursuit.29 Strabo wrote about the dogs owned by the Iberians and Albanians between the southern Caucasus and the Caspian Sea (eastern Georgia, Dagestan, and Azerbaijan), an area traditionally associated with Amazons. It was here that a Roman army led by Pompey encountered women warriors during the Third Mithradatic War (chapter 21). “These people and their dogs are surpassingly fond of hunting,” wrote Strabo. In the Nart sagas, the heroic traditions of the Caucasus, dogs were the constant companions of nomadic horse people, along with trained birds of prey. There is no doubt that the living counterparts of Amazons owned dogs for hunting, battle, and protecting their property and horse herds.30
World History
