Three and a half millennia ago, the people of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization revered the double-headed ax, which is conventionally known today as a labrys (plural form: labryes), as a religious symbol associated with powerful goddesses. Over a thousand years later, the historical Greeks and Romans often depicted Amazons, mythical female warriors who lived in a society without men, as wielding the labrys in battle. Today, the labrys has become a prominent symbol associated with lesbian feminism and female power. This post will tell the strange, extraordinary story, spanning nearly four millennia across four continents, of how a Bronze Age religious symbol became a defining symbol of queer women’s liberation.
If you’re new to this blog, I hold a master’s degree in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies and bachelor’s degrees in history and classical studies, and I’ve been writing about ancient history online for the past ten years now. I am also a trans woman who is attracted to women and who is personally quite fond of the labrys as a queer and feminist symbol—despite people who use it to represent trans-exclusionary ideas and movements. I’ve been working on this post on-and-off for the past four years, and, unusually for one of my blog posts, I believe it actually breaks new historical ground by identifying the precise avenue of how the labrys crossed over from an archaeological find known only to scholars to a mainstream queer feminist symbol.
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