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Encyclopedia entry: Amazons
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to the Body
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Copyright© The Oxford Companion to the Body 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information)
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Amazons
A legendary nation of female warriors, supposedly of Caucasian origin, living in Pontus near the shore of the Euxine Sea. The distinctiveness of the fabled Amazons lay in their being an all-female tribe who destroyed the right breasts of girls at puberty so as to permit them to draw a bow more easily – hence their Greek name:
mazon
(breast), and
a
(no). According to Herodotus they formed a separate realm under the government of their queen, their capital being Themiscyra in Cappadocia on the banks of the River Thermodon. From there they were said to carry out warlike raids into Scythia, Thrace, the coasts of Asia Minor, and the Aegean islands, penetrating as far as Arabia, ...