Goddesses in the Dust: Girls Sparring at a Museum - Then and Now

An archaeologist unearths the divine feminine, one archetype at a time...

As I was wandering through the galleries of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, I stopped to admire this fresco of children boxing. It was excavated on the island of Santorini at the settlement at Akrotiri, a site buried in ash from a volcanic eruption of ca. 1600 B.C., preserving these exquisite paintings. The gender of the children is often described as male, because the prevailing sentiment is that girls don't spar, right? In all honesty no one really knows and it's equally possible the children depicted could be girls... 

...so you can imagine my surprise that as I walked outside the gallery almost immediately I saw this:

Without a video, it's hard to portray the action - but these two girls were actually engaged in a game involving vigorous hand slaps and punches that looked to me like pattycake meets boxing. I couldn't figure out if they were bored after being dragged through endless galleries of Greek art by their parents, or if they had found inspiration in the painting right around the corner. 

Either way, it's proof that girls like to play at sparring, just like boys, and it seems not much has changed in 3600 years...