Myth has an interesting and complex relationship to history.
Myth is part of the historical record of our species, and part of the history of a given people. And myth shapes history. Myth gives rise to the beliefs and point of view that create our world, determine the present, and influence the future. This blending of myth and history can lead to important revelations and new understanding, and it can create blind spots.
I started thinking about this after watching the movie “The Woman King,” inspired by the warrior women of Dahomey, the Agojie. Visiting Europeans called these women “Amazons.” I talk about the movie (no spoilers), Amazons, and some of the twists and turns of myth and history.
This episode gestated with me a while and I learned a few things putting it together for you. I hope it gives you food for thought and enhances your appreciation of the movie, which I recommend:).
Transcript of Myth, History, and the Woman Warrior
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and what myth can offer us today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
Myth has an interesting and complex relationship to history. Myth is part of the historical record of our species, of our beliefs and social structures past and present. Myth is part of the history of a people because it is the carrier of cultural identity. And myth shapes history.
Myth gives rise to the beliefs and point of view that create our world, determine the present, and influence the future. This blending of myth and history can lead to important revelations and new understanding, and it can create blind spots.
I started thinking about this after watching the movie “The Woman King.” I’m going to talk about the movie a bit but rest assured that I’ll avoid spoilers, and I hope that what I offer will enhance your appreciation for the story told.
“The Woman King” is a story about the women warriors or Agojie of Dahomey, a kingdom in West Africa that is now the country of Benin, and is based in the historical record of their existence. Although the characters and the story are of course fictionalized, the timing of the events (mid-1800s), King Ghezo, the country’s participation in the slave trade, the training and testing of the Agojie warriors, the palm oil trade, and other details in the movie are factual.
As depicted in the movie, the women who fought in this unit came from a range of backgrounds. Most were the rebellious or unlucky daughters of poor families, captives, or former slaves. Some were forced into military service. The Agojie were “wives” of the king. They lived at the palace with many privileges– and they couldn’t marry.
European colonizers referred to Dahomey as the Black Sparta, an African version of the ancient Greek state distinguished by its warrior culture, and they called the Agojie “Amazons.” I want to begin by taking a look at the Amazons, who were long assumed to be figments of the ancient Greek imagination, merely and only characters in that mythology. They weren’t.
Since I’ve revealed the punchline, let me tell you a little bit about the real, living and breathing Amazons, the ancient Scythian tribes of the Near East and Central Asia.
They were nomadic. The first people to ride horses as far as we know. They invented the composite bow, a weapon many times more powerful than the traditional bow and arrow, and attacked their enemies on horseback. The Scythians were formidable warriors who terrified and amazed the Persians, Assyrians, and Greeks.They left no written records, that have been recovered anyway, but we have historical accounts from a number of writers like Herodotus.
Until fairly recently, weapons discovered by archeologists were supposed to belong to males, but DNA testing reveals that at least a third of warriors were female, some as young as 10. The Scythians, male and female, drank alcohol and used strong plant medicines, tattooed their bodies, and fought their enemies.
Contemporary archeologists are turning up fresh evidence of warrior women and hunters in many ancient cultures, some if it new, and some of it misread by earlier scholars, who were blinded by their unquestioned assumption that men always have superior strength, must always be the hunters and fighters, and that males naturally dominate every culture.
In the case of the Scythians, their use of the horse and the crossbow obviously impacts the need for physical strength and yet the exclusion of women seemed “obvious,” not worthy of investigation despite accounts to the contrary by ancient historians.
In their myths, the ancient Greeks tell stories of the ancient Scythian tribes. They called these people Amazons, and developed a body of stories about a race of women warriors on horseback, skilled with the bow, who met (and usually fought) many of the Greek heroes: Theseus, Heracles, Jason and the Argonauts, and Achilles. These women they say, lived in a land of only women, a condition perpetuated by an absolute rejection of men. The Amazons slept with men to procreate, killing or banishing them after the act, and it was said, after they gave birth ,all male children were killed. These women removed a breast to facilitate their handling of the bow.
By virtue of their boldness, dedication to war, and hatred of men, the Amazons actively refused to take their assigned place in the natural order. A refusal that cost them, according to the Greeks, any real opportunity for a civilized society or for long term survival.
The possibilities, especially the erotic possibilities, contained in this image of the Amazons fascinated the Greeks (by which I mean, Greek men). In addition to the mythic stories, Amazons and Amazonomachies (battle scenes) were extremely popular in Greek art, public and private. The women are portrayed as courageous, athletic, and attractive.
There are several messages in these myths that I want to highlight. One, a woman who aspires to the independence and power of the Amazon must do things that women typically do not or cannot choose to do: break all ties with males, even cultivate a hatred of them. Live a largely celibate life, mutilate her body, and kill her children. These are extreme actions.
Two, in largely relegating the Amazon to the realm of myth and mythic action, and making them enemies of the mythic heroes, the Greeks suggest that the abilities and life of an Amazon can’t exist in the real world and are not available to a woman of ordinary talents. She must be extraordinary, championed as a hero by the gods, and this doesn’t happen. The gods come to mortal women to impregnate, torture, or kill them, which is the lot of women in myth and in the world. To suffer.
Finally, the Amazons are always defeated. They fight with great courage and skill which is readily acknowledged and even admired, and they always lose. In the end, the male is superior and will always come out on top.
Ancient Greek culture was virulently misogynist. Women were dismissed as less than human and also feared. Feared because they were unstable and easily driven mad, because they could prophesize, or use plants to make magical brews, or cast spells, the spell of sexual seduction in particular. So, Greek women were veiled, sequestered in their homes, and kept out of public and civic life. They interacted only with male family members and other women. They were not allowed to speak in public, unless, on rare occasion, they made complaints about the abuse they suffered and the plight of their children.
The Greek woman was a wife and mother and her sphere was her household. She could not hold or give voice to a serious opinion about any other matter. No doubt you recognize this legacy today.
There were dissenting voices among the ancient Greeks, including Plato. In The Republiche writes, “Then there is no pursuit of the administrators of a state that belongs to a woman because she is a woman or to a man because he is a man. But the natural capacities are distributed alike among both creatures, and women naturally share in all pursuits and men in all.” In Laws, his last dialogue, Plato argues for women’s full participation in all aspects of society, including warfare. Any state that does otherwise, he writes, “commits an astounding blunder” because it robs itself of half of its capacity.
Although Plato doesn’t mention the Scythians–that is the Amazons– directly, he was familiar with Herodotus and the Greek history of their existence, as were his readers. Alas, even someone as admired as Plato couldn’t change the paradigm.
I’m struck by the women characters in the surviving plays of Euripides, who created many strong female characters and was not a feminist by any stretch of the imagination. His Medea, the witch who takes revenge on her disloyal husband by killing their children, comes from Colchis, a barbaric land in the East associated with unnatural women like the Amazons, women who claimed powers that did not belong to their gender.
Control of narratives like the history of the Amazons, the Agojie, and many more has taken- continues to take– a tremendous amount of cultural energy, distorting the truth of our human being. I wonder about the suppression of facts surrounding the lives of women like the Amazons and the Agojie., and there’s an interesting story about the famous Amazon queen Penthesilea that suggests something crucial, I think, about this question.
In The Iliad, Homer describes the Amazon’s as “men’s equal.” Later, epic poets like Quintus of Smyrna, in the fourth century AD, used materials at hand to fill in some of the gaps in Homer’s narrative, the actual fall of Troy, for example, which occurs in between The Iliadand The Odyssey. In his poem, “The Fall of Troy,” Quintus tells us about the final battles that led to the sack of Troy.
After the death of Hector, the beloved Trojan prince and hero, Penthesilea and small group of skilled warriors ride out onto the battlefield to challenge the Greeks. Some say that Penthesilea came to Troy after accidentally killing her sister Hippolyta in a hunting accident. Penthesilea’s spear missed its mark and struck her sister instead. Penthesilea went to Troy to be purified of her blood-guilt by the Trojan king Priam. She and her warriors thanked Priam by helping him fight the Greeks.
Whatever the motivation, the Amazons went to the battlefield outside the city walls. For some time, perhaps a day, the Amazons and Penthesilea in particular, dominated the battle. They killed many Greek heroes and drove the Greek army to the brink of despair. Then Achilles arrived. Half god and half mortal, Achilles was the greatest soldier who ever lived, and he killed Penthesilea.
When Achilles removed her helmet, intending to take her armor as a trophy, and he saw her face he was so moved– some say that he fell in love– that he agreed to return her body unharmed to the Trojans for proper burial as a hero.
This was the end of the Amazon queen and a decisive victory for the Greeks. Note that Penthesilea is (has to be, I wonder?) beautiful and that the power of her attractiveness to inspire love is what endures…
Now, the Trojan women watched this battle from the walls of their city. Rape, enslavement, or death awaited them if the city fell. Among them was a woman named Tisiphone, who found inspiration and courage in the actions of the Amazons. “Friends,” she said, “let us find our courage. Let us be like our men, our fathers, husbands, and sons, and fight for our land, our home, and our children […] We are not inferior to men; we have the same eyes, our limbs are the same, we see one common light, breathe the same air, eat the same food… why then are we denied what is bestowed on men?”
Her words moved through the gathering until Theanos, a woman described by the poet as “wise,” counseled against fighting. The Trojan women were weak and untrained, and would simply be slaughtered, she argued. Her position prevailed and the women suffered their fate at the hands of the conquering Greeks.
What do you think about this quelling of bravery and inspiration? Was it wise not to fight? Must this always be the choice presented to women, and is the calculation for a woman always this simple?
Penthesilea has inspired poets, artists, and women for centuries. Virgil based his great female warrior, Camilla in the Aeneid, on her. In the Middle Ages, the name Penthesilea evoked the image of female strength. When Eleanor of Aquitaine, for example, accompanied her husband on the second crusade, she dressed herself Penthesilea. Eleanor was an important patron of the troubadours, by the way, whose songs and poems fed the emergence of the code of chivalry and of amor, the right of any two consenting persons to fall in love.
In the case of the Agojie, the establishment of an all-female cadre of warriors, an army of women, and the privileges afforded these warriors in Dahomey, was supported by their myths, specifically the twin deities called Mawu-Lisa. In the movie we’re told that king Ghezo is “beloved of the twin gods Mawu and her brother Lisa.” Because he honors them, the king plans to choose a woman to serve as his counterpart, the “Woman King” in the title of the movie.
In the Dahomean mythology, Mawu-Lisa is the creator of the universe and of humans, understood as an androgynous, self-fertilizing being or as a pair of twins, female and male. Between them, the twins contain all of the primary energies and forms in the cosmos, the sun and moon, for example, East and West, male and female. Their twinship reflects the dynamic equilibrium between opposing forces and their underlying unity. The paradox of our dual realities– that everything is simultaneously different, diverse, and unique and also part of the unified whole, reveals the fluid relationship between seeming opposites and their dependence on each other, which is expressed in the figure of Mawu-Lisa.
The people of Dahomey recognized the flexibility of gender and gender roles, and the need to balance what was defined as male or female within their society and within each individual. Everything expresses this fundamental duality; hence the King has a Woman King by his side, government ministers had female counterparts, the army was composed of men’s and women’s divisions. A male had his maleness and his femaleness, and vice versa. A man could be nurturing and a woman could be aggressive. The roles that you performed in the community were part of the creation of your gender; your gender alone didn’t presuppose or dictate which roles you could fill.
Now, this wasn’t a utopia. The king was the supreme power. Males and females were not equal, and yet the civil rights and respect enjoyed by women who played public roles was unusual, a source of pride to the people and of confusion to outsiders like European visitors, colonizers, and slave traders.
Written accounts by these visitors display a range of emotion: shock, incredulity, fascination, dismay, fear. Many were amazed to discover females who could retain details, make decisions, act with discipline, and provide common sense advice. Gender roles were organized in pursuit of a practical efficiency and harmony that made sense to the Dahomey, and the cultural difference s between them and the Europeans illustrate the fact that there is not one right and “natural” way for humans to live.
Cultural definitions of gender and gender roles are constructed ideas, ideas about the proper social order that are important and meaningful because they spring from beliefs about the natural, cosmic, and divine order. From myth.
Labeling other peoples “unnatural” and unfit to govern themselves is a primary tool of the colonizing mindset, used to marginalize, control, dehumanize, and justify exploitation, enslavement, and murder. I realize that I’m telling you something obvious, but the self-interested greed and quest for power behind this belief system can’t be overlooked. I think this awareness is a useful tool for parsing the validity of the stories that are emerging in this time and evaluating the resistance to them.
Who stands to gain from the suppression of historical facts? What do they gain? To cling to the myth of innocence through the denial of history is to be a prisoner of the past, to lose the truth and the power to see through the manipulation, to choose justice, to liberate yourself and others.
The “Woman King” is supported by hours and hours of historical research, has an amazing cast, and follows the success of “Black Panther” (the Agojie are a source for the women warriors in that movie too). Which would inspire Hollywood, or so you might think. But director Gina Prince- Bythewood, and her team had a difficult time selling this movie and securing the type of budget it required. As Prince-Bythewood observes, the story of the Agojie is a new story, a scary story, about dark women beating men.
Who do you listen to and what do you support through your participation as a citizen and consumer of culture? The stories and histories that receive your dollars and attention are the ones most likely to survive and prevail.
One other thought for you today, inspired by my favorite part of “The Woman King.” Nanisca, general and leader of the Agojie (played by Viola Davis), has a recurring nightmare. One night she shares the dream with her friend Amenza. Amenza consults Ifa, a divination tool that utilizes palm nuts. Ifa is a gift from the trickster Legba, also called Eshu or Eshu-Legba, that bridges the gap in understanding between humans and the gods. Through Ifa, an individual can see into the mind of the gods to understand the situation or problem at hand, and find the proper remedy.
At first, Amenza’s reading of Ifa predicts the revelation of an external enemy, an enemy warrior whom Nanisca must confront. Later, a deeper truth presents itself and Nanisca discovers an internal enemy. A denied aspect of herself, formed from her self-imposed silence and the denial of her pain. An aspect that has robbed her of her power and freedom. She reclaims this piece of herself through courage and love.
She becomes the woman king. I’m referring to a kingship even greater than that literally bestowed by king Ghezo. Nanisca is whole and she is free.
In the movie, Nanisca is initially skeptical of Ifa and ridicules the result, but Amenza tells her “If you don’t respect Ifa, respect your dream.” Both enemies, outer and inner, are part of the struggle, part of the story. In this I see the power of myth and of psyche’s logos, the symbolic language that animates our soul life and the world of meaning. This speaks to us on multiple planes– awareness, feeling, and action– to facilitate wholeness.
You are living a story. Your life is a story, a journey shaped by culture, by history and myth, and yet unique to you. Keeping the story of your lived experience alive is essential to living your own life. And you never know who will be saved or inspired by witnessing your caretaking of your freedom, or reading or listening to your story. In the present or in times to come.
Before we part ways, I want to give a big welcome to new subscribers: Dave, Shivam, Ananya, Susan, Ashley, and Tammie. Welcome to Myth Matters!
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If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just and sustainable world.
I invite you to email me with your thoughts and comments about this episode, as well as your questions about myth anytime.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.
Useful Links:
“The Real Warriors Behind ‘The Woman King’” Smithsonian magazine
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