Periplus to the unknown. The Greek conquest of the Black Sea and the origin of the Amazon myths

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to address the colonisation of the Pontus in relation to the Amazon myths. An attempt will be made to clarify the difficulties in identifying both the initial contacts between the Greeks and the ancient steppe nomad peoples in that region and the origin of the Amazon myths on the basis of the apparently more egalitarian lifestyle of those societies 2 . Similarly, the intention is to offer an explanation for the presence of iconographic pieces of an Amazon character in that liminal space. The Amazon kingdom, regardless of whether it has been located preferably in the southern Pontus or less frequently in its northern or eastern reaches, was undoubtedly connected with the Black Sea. Even though those myths are rooted in a time long before the period in which theregion was colonised by the Greeks, they formed part of it, as occurred with many other accounts dealing with the Argonauts, Medea and so forth, with the mission of exploring those distant lands, bringing them closer to the Greek world and facilitating their control, as well as converting them into essential elements for identifying the ‘other’ and, by extension, Hellenicculture itself.