“The Amazon Warrior Women fought with United Greek armies under the command of Agamemnon in the battle of Troy in 1200 BC and they defended the Anatolia with Troy people under the command of their beautiful Queen Penthesilea. This, at least, is the mythical version of events, which a sign at the quay informed us about in Turkish and English.

At the time, I was researching a novel on Amazons, the fierce warrior women who came to Troy to defend the city against the Greeks after the death of Hector, the Trojan prince. This, the sign on the quay told me, was the Magnificent Amazon Warrior Sculpture, and I was standing on her platform. A seagull had taken up residence on her head. With her bare legs, pleated skirt (sometimes referred to as a fustanella) and sleeveless breastplate, she looked like a felicitous mixture of Wonder Woman and Brad Pitt’s Achilles in the 2004 Hollywood movie “Troy.” She bore a fierce expression, holding a spear in one hand and a crescent shield (called a pelta) in the other. Instead, I had come to see one of Samsun’s biggest landmarks: the titanesque statue of a warrior woman, taller than a house, with a spear and shield, towering over the quay. However, I had not come out to the promenade to spend a pleasant day by the seaside. When Homer spoke of the wine-dark sea in the “Iliad,” this was not what he had in mind. It certainly wasn’t particularly hospitable on the day I visited: It was windy, drizzly and the water was the unflattering color of lead. It sits on the shore of the Black Sea, which the Ancient Greeks called Euxeinos, the hospitable sea. Samsun is a metropolis of more than 660,000 inhabitants in the north of Turkey.

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