The body of a warrior woman who may have inspired the Greek myth of the Amazons was found in Armenia. The woman from the iron age was between 20 and 29 years old, had several injuries, and was buried in a way that showed that she was a high-ranking member of her society.

The woman was from the Kingdom of Urartu that existed between 9^th to 6^th centuries B.C and overlapped with most of modern-day Armenia, Eastern Turkey and parts of northern Iran. The region had contact with what is now India and the Mediterranean and was known as a particularly violent part at that time.

Archaeologists who originally found the body argued that she was of high-status because of the jewelry that was found in her grave. She had wounds from two separate battles that had healed by the time of her death, including an arrow head that was stuck to the back of her femur.

She was also described as having bone that showed signs of stress from a heavy muscle structure, implying that she was used to strenuous activity.  

The woman found in the Lori Province of modern-day Armenia in 2017. She is just one of four warrior women found in Caucasus from the same period. The other bodies were found in Tbilisi, the Terek River and in the Shirak region in Armenia.

One body found near the Terek River had armour and weapons buried with her body. 

Anahit Khudaverdyan wrote an article about the woman for the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology . She argued: "the female warrior burials discovered in the Caucasus up to now have not yet been comprehensively explored.”

The archaeologists speculate that these women might have been what inspired the Greek myth of the Amazons. These woman were first reference in Homer's Iliad, written in the 8^th century, around the time this warrior woman would have lived.

The Amazons were a race of warrior women that were supposed to have lived in the outskirts of what the Greek's called the 'known world.' Strabo, a Greek geographer, said that these Amazons lived in what is referred to as the Caucasus today, a mountainous range that stretches from Northern Iran to the south of Russia.

Khudaverdyan added: "Early and ongoing discoveries do suggest the subsistence of real women warriors whose lives matched the descriptions of Amazons in Greek myths.

"In essence, the Greeks were not the only people to spin tales on Amazon-like warrior women ranging over the vast regions east of the Mediterranean.”