Pele
Pele is the living, breathing volcano goddess of Hawaii. Her home is Kilauea, which is also her body. The name "Pele" means molten lava; the mountain's flanks are her flanks, the drops of airborne lava are her tears, and the shreds of volcanic glass that form are the strands of her hair. The red-blossomed ohia, which is one of the first plants ...
Athena
Athena is easily the best-known and most popular Greek goddess. Yet none of the so-called "Athena" costumes for sale out there look remotely like her. Come on, people! She's Athena! Helmet! Shield! Spear! There were two very important statues of Athena on the acropolis in ancient Athens. The colossal statue inside the Parthenon was 38 feet ...
Nzinga
Nzinga (1582-1663) was the queen of Ndongo and Matamba, historical states in what is now Angola. This altogether remarkable woman seized the throne and held it for 40 years, successfully resisting Portuguese colonialism. She also created a crack army, waged war and fomented rebellion, played the European powers off against each other, kept male ...
Ada Lovelace
Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852) was one of the most remarkable visionaries in the history of science. Her friend Charles Babbage invented the Analytical Engine to crunch numbers; it was Ada who realized that it could do much more. She saw that a mechanical device---a computer, if you will---could solve all kinds of analytical problems, as long as ...
Lise Meitner
You would think that the person who discovered nuclear fission would be one of the most famous scientists of the 20th century. You would think she'd be a household name. But unless you're a geek or a history buff, it's possible that you've never even heard of Lise Meitner (1878-1968). Meitner was born in Austria at a time when it was ...
Madam C.J. Walker
Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) was America's first great female entrepreneur. Her rags-to-riches story still mesmerizes: born Sarah Breedlove, the daughter of slaves, she built a business empire by developing and marketing a line of hair care products for African-American women. (She did not invent the hot comb or chemical straighteners, as is ...
Emma Goldman
"If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." Did Emma Goldman (1869-1940) really say that? In a word, no. The sentiment was certainly hers, and in her memoirs she told of being admonished for dancing when she was a young radical; but the actual words? No. The quote (or rather, misquote) is best thought of as a paraphrase of ...
Jezebel
The pop culture image of Jezebel bears almost no resemblance to the woman who was queen of Israel in the 9th century BCE. There is nothing remotely sexy about Jezebel in the Bible; she's just mean. By the same token, the biblical account was written by people who utterly loathed Jezebel and everything she stood for (Baal, Astarte, foreigners, ...
Sor Juana
In the relentlessly patriarchal society of New Spain, there was no place for a girl genius. Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695) was a prodigy: she could read and write by the age of three, was fluent in Latin by the age of ten, and by her late teens was famous for her brilliance in mathematics, theology, Greek logic, and history. Yet there was ...
Minoan Queen
We don't know her name. And unless somebody deciphers Linear A, we probably never will. All we know is that she existed, and that her world was beautiful. Our illustration above features an artist's recreation of life in the queen's apartments at the Palace of Knossos around 1500 BCE (bottom center). Note, however, that we've had to modify it ...
Demeter
Demeter is the Greek goddess of agriculture. It is she who makes the crops grow---except for those months when her daughter Persephone is in the Underworld, for then Demeter weeps and leaves the earth bare. Together Demeter and Persephone symbolize the cycle of life and death, and their saga was the basis of the Eleusinian mysteries. Frequently ...
Carlota of Mexico
Empress Carlota (1840-1927) is one of the most intriguing and tragic figures in Mexican history. Born Charlotte of Belgium, she married the Hapsburg Archduke Maximilian of Austria when she was seventeen. In 1863 the young couple were invited to become Emperor and Empress of Mexico. Unfortunately, the person doing the inviting was Napoleon III ...
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the longest-ruling female monarch in history. We often think of her as the elderly widow of her later years, but the movie "The Young Victoria" reminded us that she was frisky once. It also reminded us (if we needed reminding) that being Queen of England involves some absolutely gorgeous clothes and jewelry. ...
Asase Yaa
Asase Yaa is the earth goddess of the Asante people in Ghana. She created human beings and receives them back into her body when they die; she is also the mother of the gods. There are no temples to her, for the earth itself is both her body and her temple. There are also no standard anthropomorphic depictions of her, which means we're free to ...
Persephone
Persephone was a pre-Greek goddess who got drafted into the Olympic pantheon along with her mother Demeter. It's a fair bet that she was the Queen of the Underworld long before the Greeks, with their usual penchant for male supremacy, added Hades to the mix and changed the story around. The Greek version is of course familiar: Persephone is the ...
Hatshepsut
Hatshepsut (ca. 1508-1458 BCE) was an extremely successful pharaoh whose reign was full of accomplishments: important trade missions, gorgeous architecture, a booming economy. But the thing she's most famous for, at least nowadays, is that she had herself depicted as male on her monuments. There she is, King Hatshepsut, striding across the ...
Isis
Isis is the Egyptian goddess of magic and motherhood, but putting it that way rather understates the case. Isis is simply one of the all-time great goddesses of world civilization. Worshiped by the Egyptians for thousands of years, she also became supremely important in the Hellenistic world. She was everything: mother, savior, redeemer; ...
Queen of Sheba
The Queen of Sheba (ca. 950 BCE?) is claimed by both Ethiopia and Yemen. It’s not impossible that both are right; the ancient realm of Saba (Sheba) may have spanned the Red Sea. Or perhaps she was really the Queen of Meroë, and the name "Sheba" referred to something else entirely. The chronology is also rather difficult...but then again, ...
Lady Six Monkey
Lady Six Monkey (11th century) was a Mixtec warrior queen whose story is known from the Mixtec Group Codices. She and her arch nemesis, Lord Eight Deer, loomed large in the legends of Oaxaca for many centuries. (People were named after their birthdates, by the way.) Mixtec society was remarkably gender-equal, and both males and females could ...
Mama Quilla
Mama Quilla is the Inca goddess of the moon. Married to Inti, the sun god, she is the female half of the divine equation. Before the Spaniards got to work smashing and melting things, Mama Quilla was worshipped in temples with walls of pure silver. Silver is her metal: in Inca mythology, silver is the "rain of the moon" (or tears of the moon), ...
Brighid
Brighid was one of the most prominent Celtic goddesses in the pre-Christian era. Fundamentally a fire-and-sun goddess, she was also associated with springtime and fertility; with poetry, healing, and smithery; and with water, nature, and the land itself. She was so important that rather than abolish her, the Church simply incorporated her as ...
Ix Chel
Why yes, that is a snake on her head. Ix Chel is the Mayan goddess of the moon and medicine, water and weaving. Called the "Lady of the Rainbow" as well as the "Lady in Red," she is depicted as a crone pouring out the waters of life. In her more youthful aspect she is shown weaving or sitting in the moon (or both). She's also the jaguar ...
Chalchiuhtlicue
Chalchiuhtlicue, whose name means "She of the Jade Skirt," is the Aztec goddess of rivers, lakes, seas, springs, and all running water. She is traditionally depicted as an elegant woman in blue-green clothes, with her skirt flowing out to form the river of life---and of death, for Chalchiuhtlicue also presided over the fourth sun of creation, ...
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) devoted her life to the cause of women's suffrage, toiling for over 50 years in the face of incredible opposition (not to mention ridicule). As the de facto "Napoleon" of the 19th century women's movement, she marshaled forces from all over the country into a huge national campaign. Sadly, she did not live to see ...
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