The Narts—mythic heroes and heroines of the Caucasian steppes and mountains between the Black and Caspian seas—were imagined as extraordinarily tall with superhuman strength. They were jigits, acrobatic riders whose skills demonstrated their noble daring and endurance. The Narts’ magnificent horses were heroic (bogatyr) too, described in the sagas as alyp and arash (“thoroughbred”), argamak (Akhal Teke racing steeds from the Ferghana Valley, Central Asia), and durdul (turpal, tulpar, “winged, flying”). According the Nart sagas, it was a Nart woman who invented ironworking, and the Narts were the first to tame wild horses. The ancient Greeks apparently picked up these Caucasus traditions and credited the Amazons with these two inventions (Chapters 11 and 13).
A traditional Nart saga in the Karbardian East Circassian language recounts a tragic episode in the life of the heroic warrior queen known as Lady Amezan (“Forest Mother,” or “Moon Mother”). The story is set in the glorious past when the steppes rang with the “thunderous pounding of horses’ hooves.” It was a time when at the first sign of danger the women buckled on their daggers and swords, grabbed their bows and lances, saddled their horses, and “rode forth with their men folk to meet the enemy in battle.” Women of those days were capable of deep love, but they could also “cut out an enemy’s heart.”3
One of these women was the beautiful and strong Amezan, who harbored a secret love for a handsome young man of another tribe. One day in the frenzy of mounted combat on the steppes with arrows and javelins, her “silken hair fluttering like a red flame in the wind,” Amezan brought down a stranger and his horse. She bent down from her saddle over the lifeless body. Horrified, she recognized her beloved lying in a pool of blood. “Jumping down from her horse, she kissed his lips passionately and tried to warm his cold body with hers, pleading to feel his still heart begin to beat again.” But the youth heard nothing, dead to the din of battle raging around them. She gently closed his unseeing eyes. “My sun has set forever!” she cried out. “With her strong arms she pulled forth her dagger and plunged it into her own heart. . . . They lay dead together, Amezan and the man she loved.” Where their blood flowed, “their boundless courage and great love was absorbed by the earth” and a spring bubbled up. Ever after, those waters could renew lost strength and heal wounded hearts.4
The tale reminds us of the Greek myth of the Amazon warrior Pen-thesilea and the great champion Achilles, who realizes too late that the fearless young Amazon he kills is the very woman he would have cherished (Chapter 18). The twist here—the victorious woman warrior discovers that she has killed her beloved—would astonish the ancient Greeks. But such a tale was natural in the context of a culture whose women were trained to make war like men.
World History
