(Below the Eurasian Steppes, somewhere northeast of the Black Sea, 1243 BCE)

"Hippolyte-the-Younger" was wrapped tightly in decorative clothing for her burial within four days of her death. Such garments were made by the elder women of the clan specifically for a 'Daughter's' death. Woven horsehair, cured animal furs, and grass fibers were dyed with vegetal colors to spectacularly adorn the deceased 'Sisters' into the afterlife.

Prior to this custom, the female's naked body, which had been throughout her adult life lightly tattooed with elegant designs, was covered with a mixture of mountain honey and stringent root teas. Thick tree resin was heated and then added layer-upon-layer with broad leaves as a means to mummify her remains. Following this preparation, the Amazon deceased were placed in a cut and hewn section of a large tree trunk which had been hollowed out as a coffin. It was fitted with a tight wooden lid and sealed with tree resin, as well, to insulate her body as it waited indefinitely to enter the afterlife. This entire outer shell was wrapped with decorative leather ropes and covered with numerous coasts of tree resin once more before the final process of interment.

A grave pit of several meters deep was dug out on the barren northern plains to remain unmarked and, hence, not be easily found by grave robbers. According to the tradition of the 'Daughters of the Moon,'-begun many hundreds of years before when the nomadic clans formulated their early cosmology, the dead would be preserved for an eventual rebirth into an alternate world of no pain, no hunger or war. They would at some interminable point in the future be able to meet again and commune with all those who had previously entered this world through death.

Such a grave chamber, dug out in the upper-most region of their migratory territory was fortified inside with hewn wooden timbers as an interior frame to the crypt. There, once buried, the winters would provide a frozen encasement above and below ground for the Amazon warrior's preservation. Atop this site was the distinctive, hemispherical mound of earth covering resembling a small hill, which all the members of the clan would toil to create for three days from sunrise to sundown. They contributed to this earthen structure by carrying baskets of soil which had been separated from stones, and blessed by songs.

This seven-day collective industry of mummifying their fallen sister and placing her into a parabolic mound was inherent in their nomadic society and was one of its sacred mysteries. The domed earth structure acted as a feminine symbol. It suggested the women's unified efforts of support, and through the placement of the fertile earth and preservation of the woman's body as a seed, their lost sister's secure journey to an eternal world was insured. There she would prosper and live out her new life in peace and celebration amid all the generations of former 'Daughters of the Moon.'

Because of Hippolyte's royal lineage-half sister to Penthesilea, she was buried as a princess, wearing several of her mother Orithia's golden necklaces and a fine golden headband, sometimes worn by Penthesilea as a teen princess herself. Her final resting place also included ornamental objects which had been her favorites as a girl: A simple carved wooden ring-made for her by friends when they had all reached puberty. This was placed next to her in a small iron box incised with lions. Inside it were also several delicate bone earrings and hair ribbons of fine woven cloth. There was also a beaded gem bracelet of green stones tied in a leather bag. In addition to her personal bronze mirror, with a deer's likeness on the decorated handle, her iron sword, and strongest bow, many bronze tipped arrows were placed beside her body to show her courage and skills which she had acquired in her previous world.

Because Hippolyte was not killed in combat with an enemy, her horse was not sacrificed or buried with her, as according to custom. In such cases, her trained animal was be given to another eight year old girl of the clan-one most deserving in the 'Daughters of Moon's society. Nor would Hippolyte have placed at her feet the razor-sharp 'labrys'-a double bladed iron war axe, symbolic of the Amazons' sustainability, and a weapon so skillfully perfected by Penthesilea and the other superb warriors of her generation. This emblematic weapon, featured in all the girls' formal combat training, would later be seen through the many centuries of art as an Amazonian innovation of warfare, representative of their tribal cohesiveness and ferocity in matters of defense.

The guilt and sorrow Penthesilea continued to feel over her sister's death since its occurrence on the distant plains could not be consoled. She did not eat from her sadness and would ride out onto the plains alone for days at a time following the ceremonial burial. Neither her mother Orithia nor the other elder women in the society could break her of this curse of heartbrokenness. For according to their rigid laws, any woman who betrayed or failed to support her 'Sisters' in battle had to be submitted to a risk of death at the hands of an imposing enemy-an ordeal of redemption. It was intended to be a trial to determine guilt or innocence in the eyes of their great female goddess, Artemis.

Penthesilea had self-condemned herself to this impending judgment and expressed it to her mother and the elders as a matter of pride and duty. She told them she felt unworthy to ever adopt the reign of the 'Daughters of the Moon' if left un-cleansed without this grave ordeal. It could only be achieved as a test through the heat of battle.

None of the other women or girls in the clan who dearly loved Penthesilea could convince her of her innocence. They tried, to no avail, to convince her of the accidental nature of Hippolyte's death, and its inherent forgiveness by all. Penthesilea called several meetings together for the purpose of preserving, at all costs, the unity of the female society following the inevitability of her absence or death from the battle-trial she knew she must submit herself to.

At these nightly meetings before the fire, and in front of all, Penthesilea stressed how hard they had worked over the generations to build their small nation. She related how there would be other queens, stronger and more noble than herself. She reminded them of how their solidarity had always sustained their survival on or off the battlefield, and this in spite of the physical strength of men or their greater numbers.

There was a special gift inherent in their nature as females, she reminded them, which could always embolden them to endure pain and adversity. This, she said, would not die as long as they never let the knowledge or belief in it to leave their souls and kept it as a wish and a promise. She stressed how the males of all societies they had known, time before time, had dominated women, enslaved them, and provided them with treatment no better than the animals they tethered within their nomadic tribes. She reminded them of the incarcerated life they might have in the south and beyond, where the village-centered societies had grown up powerfully and expansive, but still not free with regards to their women. She finally stressed how their female spirit, imbued with a nurturing character, longed to be unfettered to create its own ways. It must be free to interact with nature, she said, as nature often whispers to us its secrets and wise ways.

These speeches by Penthesilea on five consecutive nights, around the ceremonial fires, became inspirational and were memorized long afterward by both the younger girls and the older women alike. It would not be many generations, however, that the brilliance of her wishes would dissipate and be threatened to expire into darker histories which awaited all nomadic nations at the hands of growing empires.

The transient habits of the 'Daughters of the Moon' as a horse culture, with no means of written communication, left no tangible trace of these memorable accounts other than to those who heard them and ephemerally passed them on by voice. Yet throughout the ensuing millennia, it would be the few who did manage to convey the ways and wishes of the Amazon women who kept the small flame of these sentiments and wishes alive.

Eventually over time, due to the society's attrition and the forces of outside violence, the Amazons themselves would become all but lost to the unyielding winds of change. Yet something of their ideological resilience did not perish completely. It was Penthesilea's grand wish that lived on as a small flame. In the face of being extinguished many times it was somehow resurrected again and again-mainly through the courageous voices of younger daughters and a consortium of latter-day queens. These women, as a secret society, promised to slowly revive her aspirations-eventually igniting them once again into an even brighter and eternal fire.

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