Chop off the head of Orpheus, the poet who was killed by ruthless Thracian women in Greek myth. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the delicate tattoo of a deer on her shoulder. Another tattoo graces the inside of her forearm, a ladder design. This image appears on a Greek vase attributed to the Pistoxenos Painter, who painted thirty-eight vases featuring tattooed Thracian women (480-470 BC). His name means “Trustworthy Foreigner”—perhaps he was Thracian himself.1
Because Greek writers described Thracian men and women as tattooed, classical scholars identify all tattooed women on Greek vases as “Thracians” or generic foreigners.2 Thracian women were not Amazons, but they shared many important traits with Scythian warrior women known as Amazons: they were independent, aggressive man-killers wielding deadly weapons, and they were frequently attired in similar garb. The Greeks, who tattooed no one but criminals and war captives, and these with marks of shame, knew of many other peoples besides Thracians who practiced voluntary tattooing with attractive designs. Were Scythian women known to be tattooed? Did the Greeks visualize Amazons with tattoos? Are there clues for tattooing that have been overlooked in vase paintings? What can we learn from modern tattoo traditions? What archaeological evidence exists for tattooing?
FiG. 6.1. Thracian woman with axe; deer tattoo on her right shoulder, “ladder” tattoo on left wrist. White-ground cup, Pistoxenos Painter, ca. 460 BC, Athens National Archaeological Museum Inv. no. Akr. 439. Drawing after Harrison 1888, pl. 6.
Intriguing pieces of evidence in classical art and literature, ethnology and archaeology, combine to make these questions worth asking.
World History
