A few last reflections for the next fortnight.

I started this project needing to write much, having had little time to do so with my studies being so utterly all-consuming of late. I must return to them tomorrow, and seek my sleep now. Still, some important things have been written and I may hope they are read and understood with the meanings which I have desired to impart: Sometimes the understanding of my words seems much less clear to others, which I do so regret.

 For the moment, then, the last point I would wish to make is in reference to the title. The Massagetae, the tribe of which Tomyris was Queen, defeated the Persian Army of Cyrus--and killed the Shah of Shahs who founded the Achaemenid Empire--with the open plains tactics which would characterize many of the peoples who had strong women in their numbers in the Central Asian plains. I, too, am of a heritage grown up in that region of the world, though a much later one, best exemplified thus:

 And so it is finding myself with very, very few myths and legends of women that we can take pride in, that I find myself with the need to provide some for my daughters. That this accomplishment should be undertaken responsibility will necessarily mean the work of many decades, probably only culminating in my retirement. The subject is already clear--the Thassalocracy of the Minoans in which women appear to have been equal to men, and whose stories we will not know short of the translation of Linear A--but the mental maturity and time to commit to the effort will be a long time coming.

 Until then, the stories of brave warrior Queens of old, and especially of Tomyris who dispatched Cyrus honourably for the rather treacherous provision of the Massagetae with strong drink (which t'would have been quite hopeless against these Cossack women!) are the legends in which we must take pride and teach to our daughters, and the myths we must discern from the older stories of the Goddesses, of India, the west, and all the world, before they were shackled by men or swamped under the tide of Christendom. In this little task, I am surely more confident, for the motivation of imparting wisdom in one's young is a mercifully strong one, indeed.