Image

The Amazon Women:
Is There Any Truth Behind the Myth?

(Title of article image is linked to)


The 2014 article by Amanda Foreman
released in the Smithsonian Magazine states "The origins of the debate can be traced back to a Swiss law professor and classical scholar named Johann Jakob Bachofen. In 1861."


Below I've sampled pages of a book published in 1752 which describes the complexities of a historic period in which the Amazons are depicted in a matter of fact way as having been a people that did exist.
Image

Chronological Antiquities:
of the Most Ancient Kingdoms

(Title of book image is linked to, see pages 346-50)


"Thus we see, that the history of the Amazonian Kingdom, from the Death of Tanaus , or Tanausis , fifteen years after the return of Sesostris from his Scythian Expedition into Egypt, to the time of the Amazonian War against the Athenians , which was reckoned about a hundred years, does exactly and remarkably fix his reign with the reign of Sethos in Manetho , who, no doubt, was no other than the famed Sesostris.

That the Amazons were famous for their warlike Expeditions and Conquests both in the lesser Asia and in Europe, is attested by all ancient Writers, Poets, and Historians, down from Homer. But yet it is not probable, that they were a Natron consisting of women only. They were most probably the Wives and Daughters of the Cimmerian Sauromatans, or Sarmatians, who dwelt on both Sides the Palus Maeotis and River Thermodon; and who were expert in Riding, Archery, and throwing the Dart" (Pg. 349)

From Reality to Myth to Reality

(Images linked to respective media)

General Excerpts

A General History of Ireland

John Huddlestone Wynn (1772)
And besides, as we often find Ireland expressly termed Scotia by ancient writers before Scotland was known by that name, there seems to remain no doubt but that the Scyths or Scots were first planted in the country which first bore that appellation.

( Pg. 12 )
Link to book

An Enquiry Into The Origin of The Constellations That Compose The Zodiac, John Barrett (1800)

And that they [Antediluvians] had made a great proficiency in astronomical knowledge appears from the curious fact that they were possessed of a cycle of 600 years.

( Pg. 15 )
Link to book

Atlantis: The Mystery Unraveled,
Jurgen Spanuth (1956)

In probably no other field of ancient history or geography is research seemingly so barren, but in reality so rewarding, as in that which deals with the problem of Atlantis. . . Eminent scholars have repeatedly claimed to have found the conclusive answer to the riddle and have said that nothing more could usefully be added to the vast literature on the subject; contributors to it have often been treated as cranks and their work dismissed as merely another fact to be chronicled in the history of human folly. . . It is not surprising, therefore, that reputable scholars have hesitated to tackle the problem and have left the field largely open to cranks and Atlantomaniacs. . .

This is the more regrettable since Atlantis offers one of the most fruitful fields of study in ancient history; it lifts the veil of obscurity from one of the most puzzling and eventful epochs in the history of the western world . The legend of Atlantis may be compared to that of the hidden treasure chamber in the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings. When the Earl of Carnarvon began his excavations the experts ridiculed the attempt and pronounced it futile; no undertaking seemed more hopeless. rubble that had been combed so often, Carnarvon found the entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamen, uncovered the fantastic riches of the treasure chamber, and made it possible to gain a wonderful insight into the customs of the rulers of Egypt more than three thousand years ago.

And so it is with Atlantis. The treasure within the legend has been buried under the rubble of misconceptions, follies and fantasies, the dead weight of prejudice and scepticism, and the ruins of wrong dating and faulty identifications that have accumulated around the legend in the two thousand five hundred years since Solon first heard it in Egypt .

(Preface)

How To Read
J.B. Kerfoot (1916)

There is a simple yet dramatic experiment in elemental physics with which we are all more or less familiar.

In it a beam of sunlight is passed through a prism and is thereby separated — like a fan that our hands have opened — into the rainbow-hued shafts of its component color rays. These are then caught upon a screen and the audience allowed to examine them — allowed to see for itself that here and no otherwhere is the magic paint-box from which the world is colored. And finally — that there may be no doubters — the experiment is proved by reversing it. The divergent rays are passed through a lens that bends them back into focused reunion; and behold, the white beam of the sunlight is itself again.

It is, in reality, a very similar experiment that we are engaged on in this book. We have passed our ability to read — that ability which, in these days of all but universal​ literacy, we have come to look upon as something almost as natural, almost as necessary, almost as much to be taken for granted at its face value, as sunlight itself — we have passed our ability to read through a prism of analysis and have separated it into the colorful factors of its component elements. We have next, so to say, thrown these elements on a screen and examined them separately. And we have discovered, to our initial surprise and to our subsequent enlightenment, that we are ourselves magic paint-boxes. We have discovered that our ability to read is made up of nothing less, and of nothing more, than of all the individual colorings, all the personal experiences, all the inborn impulses and unfolding forces of our individual lives.

And now it remains for us to prove the value of our experiment by reversing it; to reconstruct, that is to say, from the disunited elements of our ability to read and from the determined method of their proper employment, a single, illuminating entity — an attitude toward reading.

And the lens with which I have elected to do the necessary focusing — the phrase that I have chosen in which to sum up this attitude — is the title of this chapter.

You very likely feel that "the Cosmos d la carte" is a "hifalutin" phrase. It no doubt strikes some of you as — how shall I put it? — as a trifle "strong"; as "going some"; as, let us say, "a little bit of too much." Some of you are no doubt inclined to smile and politely pass it up as hyperbole. Some of you are no doubt inclined to frown and set it down as "hot air."

Let me be quite frank and say that I meant you to.

There is nothing like "stepping down a step that isn't there" for making us realize the levelness of a piece of ground.

There is nothing like being certain that we have caught some one in the very act of loose minded overstatement, and then finding that he is, after all, well within the facts, for jolting us into a recognition of neglected truth.

And this phrase isn't "hifalutin." It isn't hyperbolic. It isn't "hot air." It is merely a slightly fanciful way of calling attention to the most basic, the most primal, the most universally operative attitude of all life.

If you doubt this, allow me to introduce you to one of our poorest relations and most distant cousins, the amoeba.

(Chapter IX (9) The Cosmos a la carte, pg. 265-268)
Link to book

The Natural History of Pliny
John Bostock (1855)

We find, among the ancients, many traces of their acquaintance with the period of 600 years, or what is termed the great year, when the solar and lunar phenomena recur precisely at the same points. Cassini, Mem. Acad., and Bailly, Hist. Anc. Astron., have shown that there is an actual foundation for this opinion.

( Pg. 37 Footnote #3 )
Link to book

Linked Excerpts

Disclaimer: The information provided on this website, including links to external videos and free books, is intended for informational purposes only. While we believe the resources listed here are compelling and thought-provoking, we wish to clarify that we are not associated with the parties responsible for producing these materials. The opinions expressed in these resources are solely those of their respective authors or creators and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Shar. Shar strongly encourage visitors to conduct their own research and exercise critical thinking when interpreting the information presented. Shar assumes no responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the content provided by external sources.