Born: 500 BCE (circa), Iran
Died: 540 BCE (circa)
Country most active: Iran
Also known as: NA
This biography was originally published in the World History Encyclopedia and was written by Joshua J. Mark. It is shared in line with the Encyclopedia’s policies under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
A Lieutenant Commander of the army under Cyrus the Great. Artunis is said to have been the daughter of one of Cyrus’ generals, Artebaz, but may have also (or only) served during the reign of Darius I. Nothing is known of her life or service record outside of her name, but she has come to be representative of the many women now understood to have served in the Persian military. Scholar Kaveh Farrokh notes examples of grave goods from excavated tombs which provide ample evidence of women warriors in the Persian army including one woman’s tomb from the Achaemenid Period containing a javelin, spear, bow and arrows, and a knife which were clearly her own (128). Persian tradition also cites another famous woman, Pantea Arteshbod, who served as a military commander under Cyrus the Great and played a pivotal role in the Battle of Opis in 539 BCE (later assisting her husband in the formation of the 10,000 Persian Immortals), but there is as little information on her as there is on Artunis. Even so, these women’s names represent the many other anonymous female warriors who held high rank in the military.