N Amazon wearing a belted tunic, hat, and boots and carrying a crescent shield and battle-axe. .The image on the ancient Anatolian coin seems commonplace. But what is that object in her right hand.? A ship’s anchor. What could be more incongruous.? Amazons were horsewomen, not sailors.
Historical facts provide some clues to explain the curious image. The coin was issued by Ankyra (modern Ankara, Turkey) in the second century AD. A Hittite settlement in the Bronze Age, Ankyra was populated by Phrygians, Mysians, Persians, Greeks, and Celts before becoming the capital of the Roman province of Galatia in the first century BC. After Alexander the Great had conquered the city in 333 BC, Greek merchants from Pontus settled in Ankyra, situated in the arid plain of Anatolia hundreds of miles from the sea. They turned the city into an important trading center connecting the Black Sea with Colchis, Armenia, and Persia. The original Hittite name (Ankuwa) of this locality sounded like the ancient Greek word for “anchor” (ankyra). This coincidence may have led the maritime Greeks from Pontus to make an anchor the town’s emblem, a reminder of their seafaring traditions. As with the mistaken etymology for “Amazon,” this Greek-sounding name demanded a story, and several tales arose to explain why the landlocked city was called “Anchor.” Anchors were dedicated in the city’s temples and anchors began to appear on the city’s coins. But why does an
FiG. 19.1. Amazon with anchor, coin minted in Ankyra, second century AD. Photo by Travis Markel, courtesy of Classical Numismatics Group, Inc. Www. cngcoins. com.
Amazon hold the anchor? The best guess is that the Greek traders who settled Ankyra were originally from Pontus and wanted to honor the legendary homeland of the Amazons. Many cities in Anatolia issued coins honoring their mythic Amazon founders. A lost tradition in Ankyra about Amazons and the sea may once have drawn the two symbols together. At any rate, the juxtaposition of an Amazon and an anchor was an eye-catching, memorable image for the city’s coinage.1
The deck of a ship is the last place one might expect to find the archer horsewomen of the steppes and mountains of Eurasia. Yet the coins of Ankyra are not the only evidence for the idea of seafaring Amazons.2 The logistics and geography of several Greek myths about
Amazons require that the warrior women rowed or sailed ships and crossed not only rivers but large bodies of water. So far, we have already met two groups of mythic Amazons from Pontus who found themselves shipwrecked on foreign shores. The Amazon prisoners from Pon-tus took over the Greek ships, were swept by currents to the Azov Sea, and ultimately became the Sarmatians (chapter 3). According to legend, Penthesilea’s page Clete and her companions set out by boat after the Trojan War and were swept by storms to the toe of Italy (chapter 18). Other mythic accounts suggest more deliberate sea crossings. Orithyia’s Amazon army, according to some sources, traveled over the frozen Cimmerian Bosporus (Kerch) strait and the wide Danube to invade Greece. If, as other sources claim, her Amazon army came by the route taken by the historical Persian invasion armies of Darius and Xerxes in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, the women would have entered Thrace over the Bosporus Strait between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Historians tell us that Darius and Xerxes built bridges of boats. Such an engineering feat was never attributed to the Amazons of myth, but this narrow channel also freezes on occasion. Another
MAP 19.1. Amazon sea voyages. Map © Michele Angel.
Unexplained example occurs in the myth of the Battle for Athens (ChapTer 17). How did Antiope transport the wounded Amazons across the narrow but treacherous Euripus Strait to Chalcis, Euboea.?
World History
