Adrienne Mayor, a research scholar at Stanford University’s departments of classics and history of science discovered an ancient Greek vase depicting the majestic painting of a woman warrior riding a horse.
The discovery was made while Adrienne Mayor was doing research for her 2014 book, “The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World.” According to the researcher the image was created between 480 and 450 B.C. in Athens, Greece.
Discovery News describes the woman as an ancient DC Comics’ Wonder Woman super heroine, preparing to throw her lasso over a Greek warrior crouching behind his shield. “It is the only ancient artistic image of an Amazon using a lariat in battle,” Mayor stated to Discovery news, stressing the vase’s significance.
It is painted on a white pyxis, a cylindrical vessel where women in ancient Greece used to keep their jewelry or cosmetic products. “The vase would have held a Greek woman’s intimate make-up or jewelry. The images on the box suggest that women enjoyed scenes of Amazons getting the best of male Greek warriors,” Mayor said.
Furthermore, the scholar noted that the picture has both erotic and subversive characteristics, while it also shows that the audience was familiar with descriptions of horse-riding Scythian warrior women using lariats in battle. Several ancient Greek and Roman historians have provided descriptions of Amazon warrior women in battle, using their lariats.
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