I just purchased this coin
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-169079, which depicts an Amazon warrior on horseback, an more or less historically accurate reflection of the Scythian mounted women warriors who were the original Amazons.
AE20,
Lydia, Mostene, ca 100 BC
Laureate
head of
Zeus right
ΛYΔΩN MOΣTHNΩN, Amazon on horseback right, holding
bipennis axe over shoulder; EP (or EB) to left,
monogram to right
SNG Copenhagen 284,
Waddington 5101 (if EB)
Adrienne Mayor, in "The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World," records the following:
"In a
legend preserved by Plutarch, when
Heracles took [Amazon Queen] Hippolyte's golden belt, he also carried away her battle
axe, which he presented to another powerful mythical queen,
Omphale of
Lydia. . . . Queen Hippolyte's
axe, says Plutarch, was handed down from
Omphale to the kings of
Lydia. That is, until
King Candaules (d. 718 BC) disrespected the Amazon's
axe and carelessly gave it away. Hippolyte's precious
axe ultimately ended up in the Temple of
Zeus at Labranda in
Caria. The original
axe shape was not specified in the tale, but by the time it was placed in Zeus's temple it was described as a solid gold labors, the symmetrical double-headed ritual
axe traditionally associated with
Zeus and Minoan goddesses. . . . (219-220.)"
As Mayor points out, the actual Scythian women
horse warriors, who were the original amazons, did not use such and
axe in battle, but rather the single-headed sagaris. But the double-headed
axe appears on various
ancient coins depicting amazons. The coin is historically accurate, however, in portraying the amazon as a horse-mounted warrior.
Given the Lydian origin of the coin, the
obverse of
Zeus, and
reverse of an amazon with an
axe shaped like the one at Zeus's temple, it is reasonable to suggest that she is
Omphale.
