Aventinus 65

Johannes Turmayr's 1520 History of Bavaria, Chapter 65 - translated and annotated by Ras Feqade, AD 2020.

* Previous Chapter: Aventinus 64
* Next Chapter: Aventinus 66
* (To Table of Contents)

## 65. Of the war women.

The women who followed these knights also had a crowd. Their captain was Lady **Häcs**, the spouse of King Theuer mentioned above; she is said to have been a great doctor, hence the old sorceresses are still called Hecsen. They all had halberds, that King Boier had invented and given them, and named after them the Amazon axe. Most of them gathered in Bohemia, afterwards in the land under the Lech toward the rising of the sun, that one now calls Lower and Upper Bavaria. So sing, say and write our elders, and also Horatius indicates such things with short convincing words, but Servius says louder; Pindar, the funniest Greek poet, does the same, suggests that they come from the Danube and from Germany, called good riders. How many things that the people under the Lech have done (where Upper and Lower Bavaria are now and are called Vindelicia by the elders in Latin and Greek), which also happened almost everywhere in Germany, they attribute to the city of Augsburg and only to Swabia, all things they write about happened not in Augsburg, nor in Swabia, but under the Lech and on the Rhine against Cologne. At that time, the Swabians didn't even live in the area where they live now, they sat by the Elbe in Saxony, as I report in part above and afterwards in more places with reason. The unlearned I don't consider, I only wonder about the learned ones, they should look at Ptolemy; if you don't read it, just look at the painting on the fifth panel Europe, you would see at once that Vindelicia, the land under the Lech, lies toward the rising of the sun, between the Lech and the Danube, that is now Upper and Lower Bavaria; how much it may be that Augsburg belonged to, like Schonga now and how long ago Füessen, how much of it lies on the Rhine in Swabia. So quite a few write beforehand and say that Augsburg was the capital in former times of the Bavarians, I now accept that as much. But I know that well and will also prove from old letters that the bishop of Augsburg heard in the principality of Bavaria in the past, that the prince had to ride at the farm, as his court at Regensburg indicates; also lived in Bavaria on Staffelsee or in Neuburg on the Danube. I said nothing about the two lands above and below the Lech, that are now Swabian and Bavarian, the old Rhetia and the people call Rhetos: that was not German but Italian, born from the country where Hohensin and Florentz are now, as Livius, Justinus, Pliny, Stephen of Constantinople and others write. I can also find in the old description of the old Roman empire, that the said two lands were called Upper and Lower Rhetia in the Roman chancellery and were assigned to Italy. I have to let go of a whole book of these things, in them indicate the same irtum deron, which have no right reason and yet only ever want to write.

But now I leave it to return to the war amazons. They bolted after the men on the Danube, burned looted took stole, frightened hunted devastated more land and people then the men, brought under and made a large part of Europe accessible to them and then moved over the aforementioned narrow arm of the Black Sea, that the Kempfer called Ox-ford (Bosphorus), after all in Asia, did so there in Cappadocia around the same sea as far as Armenia, no guest dared come to them and their knights. It was said everywhere of them that they were all devils, ate the people, made drinking dishes out of their skulls or hung them up in a holy forest, like the bear and wolf heads now, the heads hang up to an eternal memory and they offer the gestures of the time, soon someone came up, to their goddess, called on Hecs with many words. When the men cast their king Theuer as a god of war, the women likewise made a goddess and administrator of the war out of his housewife the queen Hecs, called Hersgeleit Hersschlag. They consecrated to her all there in the narrow way, so in the au and werd walked, a large forest, in which they let the gestund come to sacrifice. Painting with a lot of words, they said that such a image came from heaven; called Diana by the Latins, Artemis Taurica by the Greeks.

This service was called Theuerswal, that is the god Theuers' church journey. Thus the same sea was further called Pontus Euxinus, the sea, as it will be good hostel and gestures will be offered. So you still call it in Latin and Greek, we call it the Black Sea; the Danube falls therein.

Over time, the war women mentioned above overran the country and people in Asia, also many powerful and well-known cities; they built among other cities the great famous city of Ephesus, where Paul preached for three years in a row, also where the Apostle John died. In this city, the above-mentioned Amazons established a large, costly temple (it is listed among the seven wonders of the world) for the said queen and goddess with many words, not Diana the huntress, as the poets write of much, as Jerome indicates; Then St. Luke also reports about this goddess and this image, in the other part of his Gospel, when he describes the sermon of Paul and the uproar of the painters, carvers and the goldsmiths against Paul. And these of the German and Windish servant women then forced the whole of Asia Minor to submit, that it must be profitable. There were several old fortune tellers among them called the Altraun, who, as they said, pulled them up, they girded themselves, they were barefoot and barelegged, let their gray hair flutter, put on a white corrock or long pfaid, pantens and little one with bridle, took mere knife in hand, so quite a few of the enemy, who were pounded and trapped, pushed to the ground, then moved to a copper basin, lifted above themselves, stabbed like a calf or pig, caught that bleeding into the basin and then said true, how your war and battle should end. Other Altrauns cut the prisoners open and as far as they could see predicted and proclaimed the outcome of the war. And as they clashed with the enemy, they spun over the wagons (as they delivered with them and put their rubbish and trash on it and loaded the wagon castle with it) today and hit hard and steadfastly, that made a great horrible clatter to the enemy. So came from these war women the halberds and army.

[Queen Hacs or Hecs and her forces began pouring into Asia Minor and founded Ephesus, probably by 1730 BC. They would not take the whole of Anatolia or reach Armenia in Hacs' time, though at one time or another over the centuries, they would control every country near the Black Sea. Inside the Halys bend at this time were the Hattian or Hurrian city states of Zalpua, Hattusash, Kanesh, Kushara, Burushanda, while the Luwians were the native power in the South. By 1654 BC, Kushara had a Hittite-speaking ruler, Pithana, who then conquered Kanesh. Pithana's successor Anitta unified the other city states, beginning the Hittite Empire. The Luwian language is closely related to Hittite, but we can only try to estimate how primitive or like Anatolian the ancestor of Proto-Germanic would have been at that stage, when the only known records are Anatolic. The Hittites considered the tribes to their north and northwest less civilised and barbarian, though they must have been fellow Indo-European speakers more recently arrived from Europe.

The grotesque idol of Diana of Ephesus, is thought to be made from meteoric iron that fell and struck King Uhha Ziti of Arzawa in 1318 BC, maiming him, according to the annals. Thus the story that it fell from heaven, though not in Hacs' time.]

The knights called this crowd of women the Mazens, the Greeks call them Amazones, that is in our speech (as I also said above) without breasts, that they burnt, that they do not grow, that they might draw bows thereby. So several write. But Stephan of Constantinople in the book that he wrote to Emperor Justinian about the well-known cities around the world, says they got this name from one of their queens who was called Amazon. Our old German scholars want to call them 'ohne mann mazen'; The common man made one word of these three words, in short Amäzen, that is the matrons or women without men. Quite a few think that the word Amazn came from the three words, namely âmatten âmeissen ânmans. This is what Strabo writes. But also what Cornelius Tacitus writes about manhood and virtue of our women, like Lucius Florus, Valerius Maximus, Mamertinus and Hieronimus, because I think it goes well with these histories and is entertaining and useful to hear, I want to hear in its time in this and the following book, where the subject matter is discussed, not leave unmarked. I've already shown it up in King Herman's life.

[Mazen can mean mean matron in German; the etymologies of 'Without breast' or 'without man', may refer more to the much earlier Palatuan Amazons of Myrina from Libya. It is clear that these mostly Germanic warrior women (kriegsfrauen), who existed continuously around the Black Sea for many generations, from this time until the time of Alexander, were not 'without men', as they were called the wives of the Cimbri / Cimmerians, as well as of the Getae or external Goths who a little later allied with the Cimbri.]

The old people said and sang quite much about these men, the Kemphers, and their wives, the Mazens, that more poetry adventures is equal to green histories and true stories. All poëts and historians, Greek and Latin write much about this people. Quite a few name them Cimbri or Cimmerians, the others Daci Daos Danaos, Goths and Getae, the third Scythians and Sarmatians, the fourth Galatians, the fifth Thracians, each with a name that he knew best. But the matter is established, as I have now briefly indicated. It was a German, bridled red, man and woman; they called our war people in the community kempher like some now call Swiss landsknecht. And as Pauls Warnfrid, emperor Charlemagne's chaplain, writes, there were such war matrons in his days remaining in Germania and German lands.

At Regensburg in the cathedral library I found the old origin of the Bavarians, also artificially abbreviated in parchment and much better in Latin, than it was used a hundred years ago; but whoever wrote it doesn’t name himself or is unwilling, how much more has happened, his name has been lost. This says how the Bavarians are here from Hercules and have been called Alemanni, from then on all Germans were so called, and as far as the sun rise in Asia to Armenia and India through the country, now called Tartary, there still quite a few lived in his time; he says he has found out, sings like this and one still says it must have been drawn. The Greeks want to write the same thing, because they call the people according to their kind not Bavarians but Scyths (in our language, Schyther or Schützen). I will describe more of the name. Also further touched, as the Bavarians were also named the Trojans; Stephen of Constantinople also reports this.