Welcome to Derinkuyu, an underground city that once housed up to 20,000 people. In the Cappadocia region, famous for its cave dwellings and underground villages, Derinkuyu stands out for sheer size and complexity. Locals began digging in the 500s BCE. The city consists of over 600 doors, each of which can be closed from the inside. Each floor could be closed off as well. And just to make attacking completely impossible, the entire city was deliberately built without any logic. Its maze-like layout makes navigating the city nightmarish for unfamiliar invaders.
“At first glance, she [Gülnüş] seems to be completely adverse to any affair but in reality with her arts, deceptions and flatteries with which she bends the Gran Signore’s will, she has a large share in deliberations and graces. From this stems the most pungent jealousy of the Queen Mother, now 60 years old, who, having governed the empire with despotic power during her son’s minority, bitterly resents seeing the other being preferred in esteem and confidence.”
“With great pride, she shows respect and devotion to the Queen mother-in-law, she pretends to be adverse to any affair; at the same time she uses all the arts, her intellect and flatteries, not only to have a share in deliberations but to keep herself alone in command with the Sovereign.” — Giovanni Morosini di Alvise (1680)
Armenian guerrilla fighters who opposed Ottoman soldiers during the Hamidian massacres, 1895. The woman on the right is known to be Eghisapet Sultanian, the other woman is unidentified.
Zozo Dalmas, the beautiful Greek diva with whom Kemal Ataturk fell in love and became the face of the emblematic greek “Sante” cigarettes.
Zozo Dalmas was one of the first Greek divas. She was born in Contantinople (now Istanbul) in 1905, started her career in the Greek city of Salonika back in the 1920s and she soon became an important actress and well-known operetta singer. But above all Zozo was one of the most beautiful women who lived in the Mediterranean area back then and her beauty helped her to become famous in Greece, Turkey, Syria, Cyprus and Egypt over the years. When she was 20 years old she appeared in a central theater in Constantinople. One night Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the famous founder of the Turkish Republic and its first President, happened to be in the audience and immediately fell in love with her. He courted her with flowers and gifts and they soon became a couple. Kemal spent a lot of money to please Zozo but the truth is she was more interested in the man than his power and wealth. Once she took a pair of scissors and cut-off the picture of Kemal’s face out of each and every Turkish banknote that he dared given her because as she told him “it is the only thing worth keeping out of this stuff!!”. Their affair was kept a secret because political relationships between Greece and Turkey were at an all-time low back then. Zozo lived an extraordinary and glamorous life in her youth; in the mid-1930s a painted picture of a smiling blonde woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to her appeared on the packages of the popular Greek brand of cigarettes “Sante”(as a matter of fact, the brand still uses the very same picture on their products till now-days); in the 40s she was even the inspiration for a couple of Greek rebetiko songs including the legendary in Greece “Derbenterissa” written by the master singer/composer Vasilis Tsitsanis.
Her stormy relationship with Kemal Ataturk along with her friendship with Greek governor Eleftherios Venizelos had it’s consequences on public. Rumor had it that she was a double spy, spying on Kemal at the behest of Eleftherios Venizelos.
She had said to Dimitris Liberopoulos, however. “I was not a spy, just a Greek patriot… And all my diamonds given to me by Egyptian princes and pashas I gave to poor girls and family members …”
She continued to appear on stage till the 50s but unfortunately old-age found her totally penniless and forgotten by most, living in a miserable hovel; she continued however to be a coquette and a flirt till her final days!
Between 88 BCE and 63 BCE, king Mithridates IV ofPontus, in present-day Turkey, fought against the Roman Empire. One of his most stalwart companions was the warrior woman Hypsicratea.
According to Roman writer Valerius Maximus, Hypsicratea was Mithridates’ official wife. Out of love for her husband she:
“(…)was happy to trade her splendid beauty for a masculine style, for she cut her hair and accustomed herself to riding horses and using weapons so that she could participate in the king’s toils and share his dangers. Indeed, when Mithradates was cruelly defeated by [the Roman general] Pompey and fleeing through the lands of wild peoples, Hypsicratea was his unflagging companion in body and soul. For Mithradates, her extraordinary fidelity was his greatest solace and most pleasant comfort in those bitter times and hardships. He considered that even while he was wandering in adversity he was always at home because Hypsicratea was in exile along with him.”
Plutarch gives a slightly more different version of her story. According to him, Hypsicratea was a concubine. She “rode a Persian steed and was dressed and armed like a Persian man. She never tired of rough riding and combat”and cared for Mithridates’ horse. The king apparently liked to call her by the masculine version of her name, Hypsicrates, because of her daring disposition.
Hypsicratea’s existence and rank are confirmed by archeology. An ancient Greek inscription recovered from the Sea of Azovsays: “Hypsicrates, wife of Mithradates Eupator. Love and Respect”. Which means that she was indeed his wife and not a concubine.
It’s likely that Hypsicratea joined Mithridates’ cavalry around 68-67 BCE. Indeed, the king recruited many fighters from the nomad tribes of Armenia, Colchis, Caucasia, and the Caspian Sea region. Some of these warriors were female, so Hypsicratea may have been one of them. Or maybe she was among the fighters for Thermodon who joined Mithridates’ army in 67 BCE.
In 67 BCE, Hypsicratea contributed to Mithridates’ victory at Zela. She was by his side when Pompeyattacked his camp in 66 BCE. Mithridates charged at the Romans with his horsemen, but they were soon dispersed and he found himself with three companions, including Hypsicratea, left. They endured a long winter march and were finally sheltered by neighboring tribes.
In the meantime, the Romans were attacked by hostile tribes on the borderland of Iberia and Albania (near Tbilisi, Georgia). Among them were reportedly warrior women since Appian wrote that Pompey’s soldiers discovered “many women”on the battlefield and among the prisoners and that “the women’s wounds showed that they had fought as vigorously and courageously as the men”. Graves of warrior women were indeed excavated in this area.
Mithridates and Hypsicratea survived this dangerous journey and Mithridates’ regained his throne. In 63 BCE, a revolt led by his son allied with Pompey forced him to commit suicide. Hypsicratea’s fate remains mysterious, but she may have survived. Indeed, her name was extremely rare and there were only two occurrences of it, the two being contemporary. The first was the queen herself, and the other a shadowy prisoner of war named Hypsicrates. This Hypsicrates was a war prisoner freed by Julius Caesar in Pontus in 47 BCE and later served him as an historian. This person was reportedly an expert on two subjects: fortifications of the Borporan Kingdom and the Amazons of the Caucasus region. Could this Hypsicrates be, in fact, Hypsicratea? If this was the case, she would have lived up to 92 years old.
Bibliography:
Mayor Adrienne, The Amazons, Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World
