While doing research for my second novel about a 2500 year old mummified and ornately tattooed Pazyryk “ice princess” and the archeological team that finds her at the borderlands straddling Mongolia, Russia, and China, I’ve come across some fascinating and timely reads.
Adrienne Mayor’s The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World is a foray into the ancient history of nomadic steppe cultures at the crossroads of Eurasia. Making new connections between the archeological record and writings of sources like Herodotus, Mayor sheds new light on “Amazons” – the fearless, tattooed Eurasian women on horseback who rode into battle from the east alongside their menfolk (and often without them) and challenged the social order and sensibilities of classical Greece, Rome, and China.
Set several centuries later, Jack Weatherford’s The Secret History of Mongol Queens bears witness to the role of Genghis Khan’s female descendants in saving a fractured nation and reestablshing humane cultural norms. Weatherford’s descriptions of these women and their leadership makes me wish I could vote for Queen Manduhai the Wise in 2020!
These are hopeful and inspiring reads in an increasingly uncertain world of shifting international allegiances and influence. The underlying message that the survival and flourishing of a people and culture is only guaranteed when their women hold equal sway, power, responsibilities, and rights as their men is a timeless lesson of history.
One of my favorite Spring-time rituals is making Pysanky Easter eggs. When the days begin to lengthen and the nights hang on to the last bites of frost, I pull out my dyes, waxes, and kitska tools. During most of the year, my creative energy is devoted to writing. But this one time each year, I indulge in the the calming effect of the scent of melting beeswax and a steady hand. I keep my designs simple with folk symbols and colors representing luck, the cycle of life, abundance, and strength. I usually make just one or two eggs each Spring. Although I take pride in my creations, I’ve found that making Pysanky is more about the process than the outcome – as I sketch the ancient patterns of waves, spirals, triangles, flowers, suns, and spiders on an egg in wax, I slow down, reflect, and recharge. In that space, I connect to a forgotten world explained through nature and bound to the rhythms of light and dark.
Judi Resick 