The earliest picture of Amazons on horseback in Greek art are the four Amazon riders on a vase of 575-550 BC (Marmaro Painter). As Greeks became more familiar with Scythians and their horses, many Amazo-nomachy scenes began to depict mounted Amazons fighting Greek warriors on foot. The Amazons ride bareback with light, short reins and simple bridles with no throat-latch, and their horses’ manes are roached (trimmed), often with long or knotted forelocks. Many of these details of equipment and turnout can be seen in Central Asian horse riding today. The Amazons in ancient art ride mares and stallions; some of these animals are stocky with short necks and others tall with arched necks. Amazons ride light-colored and dark horses. In steppe customs, the color of one’s horse could reflect deliberate psychological warfare or bravado. Some warriors chose black, red, or bay horses so that blood from wounds would not encourage the enemy; others felt that white, dun, or gray showed off honorable bloodshed.11
Greek writers do not describe the steeds of the Amazons except to say that they, like the Scythians, owned many fine herds. Herodotus mentioned large herds of “wild white horses grazing around the mouth of the Hypanis (Bug) River on the northern Black Sea.” These could be the “snow-white horses” belonging to the Thracian allies of Troy mentioned in Homer’s Iliad. According to Strabo, the large, heavy Nisaean (Parthian) horse originated in the fertile high pastures of Armenia; during the Persian Empire as many as fifty thousand Nisaean mares grazed there and twenty thousand foals were sent to the Persian king each year. A large, colorful knotted pile carpet from Pazyryk Kurgan 5 (fifth century BC) has a border of heavy gray stallions with bodies similar to the Persian horses depicted in reliefs at Persepolis.12
The beautiful Etruscan sarcophagus painted with scenes of battle between Amazons and Greeks, described in chapter 7 (Fig. 7.3), is re-
Markable for its depiction of a nude Amazon. It is also remarkable for the Amazons’ special white horses and because it shows Amazons driving war chariots. On one side of the sarcophagus, two pairs of Amazons in chariots drawn by four white horses attack two Greek warriors on foot. In ancient art, Amazons driving two-horse chariots are quite rare, and four-horse chariots even rarer. The other examples of Amazon four-horse chariots appear in Italo-Greek vase paintings, leading one scholar to conjecture that Italian artists might have been influenced by ancient Greek coinage from Sicily decorated with a four-horse chariot crowned by Victory.13
But two ethnographic influences for the Italian paintings of Amazon charioteers might be more likely. According to Herodotus, the Greeks learned to yoke four horses to chariots from nomad tribes in Libya “whose women served as charioteers in war.” Another influence could have been the charioteer horsewomen of a tribe across the Adriatic, described by Herodotus and Strabo. The Siginni people, who “dressed like Medes” in trousers and tunics and claimed to be their descendants, dwelled north of the Danube in Thrace in the fifth century BC. Herodotus says that their land extended west to the Adriatic; by Strabo’s time in the first century BC the Siginni had migrated back east to the northern Caucasus. Too small to carry adult riders, their ponies were “extremely swift when yoked four abreast to chariots.” As we saw in chapter 8, the girls of this Amazon-like tribe learned to drive these unique four-horse chariots at a young age, and the best female charioteers enjoyed their pick of male sexual partners.14
These chariot women may well have inspired the idea of representing Amazons fighting from four-horse chariots. According to Herodotus and Strabo, the Siginni ponies were diminutive, snub-nosed, and covered in long, shaggy hair, something like a modern Shetland pony. Examples of small, plump, sturdy ponies with small heads and long, thick manes and tails appear in Greek art; one pulls a four-horse chariot on a late seventh-century vase by the Nettos Painter. But the painter of the Etruscan Amazon sarcophagus chose to depict horses very different from those of the Siginni women charioteers.15
Instead of small stocky ponies, all ten of the horses belonging to the Amazons on the painted sarcophagus are large, silvery-white steeds
FiG. II.2. A four-horse chariot driven by a barbarian who appears to be an Amazon, with a male barbarian rider, far right, and a similarly attired Amazon with battle-axe in front, far left (out of sight). Attic Greek, red-figure column-krater, Suessula Painter, ca. 400 BC, Princeton University Art Museum, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921 Fund, Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr. Memorial Collection Fund and Classical Purchase Fund, 2007-98. Photo: Bruce M. White/ Art Resource, NY.
With blonde manes and tails and startling light-blue eyes (Plate 6). A similarly colored horse appears on a beautiful Greek painted terra-cotta cup molded in the shape of a mounted Amazon huntress (found in Meroe, Sudan, ca. 440 BC). Her white steed has blue eyes, blonde roached mane, and light-red nostrils and mouth (see plate 2).16
The coloring of these luminous horses calls to mind the legendary “Golden Horses” raised by the Saka peoples of the Ferghana Valley region (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan) so coveted by Persian kings and Chinese emperors in antiquity. These steeds were the ancestors of the elegant breed known today as Akhal Teke. Blue eyes can show up in many horse breeds, but the combination
Of very light blue eyes with a lustrous light coat suggests that the artists were depicting “double dilute creams” (a gene expression responsible for cream-colored coats and extremely light blue eyes) of an “oriental” horse type from Central Asia perhaps related to the Akhal Tekes. Many Greek vase paintings depict Amazons with long-legged, light-colored horses with arched necks (see figs. 7.2, 11.3, 16.3, 18.1).
World History
