In 2018, archaeologists gathered around an excavated burial from 9,000 years ago in Peru’s Andes Mountains. Along with a human adult’s bones, they found an extensive kit of stone tools that an ancient hunter would require to take down big game, from engaging the hunt to preparing the hide, including a colorful array of 24 stone tools when excavating the burial. Large rocks for cracking bones or stripping hides; small, rounded stony bits for scraping fat from pelts; tiny flakes with extra sharp edges that could have chopped the meat; and red ocher nodules that could have helped preserve the hides of Animal bones, including those of ancient llamas and deer, were also discovered.

Initially, the team assumed that this was the grave of a great hunter and a prominent member of society. Further investigation revealed that the remains discovered alongside the toolkit belonged to a biological female. Furthermore, it is unlikely that this ancient female hunter was an outlier as, when the individual cases were examined as part of a more extensive data set, they discovered that of the 27 burials of individuals with known gender buried with hunting tools, 11 of them were female while 16 were male. Following this discovery, a review of previously studied burials of similar age across the Americas revealed that thirty to fifty percent of big game hunters may have been biologically female. With this in mind, the hunting goddesses in mythology do not seem to be such a far-fetched idea, do they?

Berchta, Leader of the Wild Hunts and Guide to the Underworld

The Wild Hunt is first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, one of the oldest sources of Anglo-Saxon history, in 1127 AD. The Wild Hunt is a  folk myth in Central, Western, and Northern Europe, which depicts a ghostly leader with a band of hunters and hounds flying through the cold night sky with the howling wind. The supernatural hunters may be described as the dead, elves, or fairies. The concept of the soul of the dead being carried away in the Wild Hunt was popularised in 1835 by author and mythologist Jacob Grimm (1785 – 1863) in his book Deutsche Mythologie, in which he combined folklore with textual evidence from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern period in his interpretation of the story. He believed the myth had pre-Christian origins and that its leader was based on the darker aspects of Odin’s legends. He also suspected the hunt’s leader was a woman, possibly the Germanic heathen Goddess Berchta.

A well-loved goddess who protected babies, children, and women, Grimm depicted Berchta as a guide to the afterlife, caring especially for the souls of babies and children just as a mother would. In Berchta’s stories, a grieving mother sees her recently deceased son following a group of children along a hillside. The children are following a motherly woman dressed in a white gown. The boy breaks away to speak to his distraught mother. He holds up a bucket of water which he claims is his mother’s tears, before he tells her not to cry for him because he is safe and sound under the watchful eye of the White Lady. The white lady was Berchta.

Berchta became less and less god-like after the Church rose to power in the Middle Ages. She was no longer revered as she once was. Because of her widespread cult, the Church was forced to demonize her. They reduced her status from Goddess to a witch and, in later tales, Berchta appears as a hag or crone, an elderly woman in a dishevelled dress.

Artemis, the Vengeful Virgin Goddess of the Hunt

Artemis, the ancient Greek Goddess of the Hunt, is perhaps the most well-known of all the hunting goddesses. She would frequently roam the Greek forests leading her large entourage made up of nymphs, mortals, and hunters, all of whom were virgins. She is also the Goddess of the wilderness, wild animals, nature, childbirth and virginity.

Artemis’ virginity was an essential aspect of her persona and worship. Her status as a virgin goddess is likely linked to her primary role as a huntress. Hunters have traditionally abstained from sex before hunting as a form of ritual purity because the scent might scare away potential prey. The ancient cultural context in which Artemis was worshipped also held that virginity was required for marriage and that once married, a woman became subservient to her husband. Thus as Artemis remained a virgin, she retains her independence and answered no man.

Artemis thoroughly enjoys her independence that comes with her virginity and fiercely defends it. When she suspects that the river god Alpheus is in love with her, on her visit to his domain with her companions, she covers her face in the mud so he does not recognize her. When the Titan Iapetus’ son, Bouphagos, sees Artemis, he also considers raping her. After understanding his intention, Artemis strikes him down on Mount Pholoe.

According to a version of the story told by Ovid, Actaeon, a hunter, was returning home from a long day of hunting in the woods when he came across Artemis bathing with her retinue of nymphs. Panicking, the nymphs rushed to cover Artemis’ naked body with their own, while Artemis splashed some water on Actaeon, telling him he was welcome to tell everyone about seeing her naked as long as he could tell it at all. He was transformed into a deer in an instant and fled in terror. But he did not get very far because he was pursued, apprehended, and devoured by his own fifty hunting dogs, who could not recognize their own master.

Artemis’ relationship with children is concerned not only with birth but also with death. The story of Niobe, queen of Thebes and wife of Amphion, who boasted that she was superior to Leto is a very ancient one. Homer was evidently aware of it and wrote that Niobe had given birth to twelve children, six sons and six daughters, equally divided. Pleased with her fertility, Niobe claimed to be a better mother than Leto as she had many more children.

Enraged at the queen’s arrogance, Leto called her children and charged them with exacting vengeance on her. Apollo and Artemis arrived in Thebes quickly. Apollo crept up on the sons while they were out hunting and killed all six or seven of them with his silver bow and send their corpses back to their father’s palace. Seeing them, Niobe cried. However, not learning her lesson, she insisted that she was still better than Leto because she had seven daughters.

Hearing this, Artemis started shooting each of Niobe’s daughters one by one. Artemis dispatched her final bow as Niobe begged for her youngest daughter to be spared. As her last bitter tear fell, Niobe was turned into a rock. After seeing his dead sons, Niobe’s husband king Amphion committed suicide. Thus Apollo and Artemis brought destruction to a whole royal family.

Diana, the Roman Goddess of the Hunt, the Moon and the Underworld

Although, like Artemis, Diana was regarded as the patroness of childbirth and a virgin goddess, Diana’s persona is more complex with several archaic traits. In early Roman inscriptions, Diana was primarily celebrated as a huntress and patroness of hunters, but later Diana came to be revered as a goddess of the “tame” countryside, or villa Rustica.

Beginning in the late 6th century AD, at her sacred grove on the shores Diana was worshipped as a triple goddess known as Diana triformis. The three aspects of the triple Goddess are Diana, Luna, and Hecate. In fact, trivia was Diana’s first epithet, and she was addressed as such by Virgil and Catullus. The term “trivia” comes from the Latin trivium, which means “three ways,” and refers to Diana’s authority over roadways, specifically or three-way crossroads. Because it symbolically pointed the way to the underworld, this role had a dark and dangerous connotation. In his 1st-century AD play Medea, Seneca’s titular sorceress summons Trivia to cast a magical spell. She invokes the three goddesses Diana, Selene, and Hecate, claiming that she needs Hecate’s abilities.

The huntress aspect of Diana is also heavily reliant on the crossroads symbol as it can represent the paths hunters may encounter in the forest that are only illuminated by the full moon; making decisions “in the dark” without the light of guidance. A pit and tunnel in her sanctuary at Lake Nemi made it easy for actors to descend on one side of the stage and ascend on the other, implying a connection between the phases of the moon and the moon goddess’ descent into the underworld.

Neith and Paket, the Terrifying Goddesses of the Hunt in Egyptian Mythology

Neith ,or nrt, which means “she is the terrifying one”, was an early ancient Egyptian deity. As a goddess of war, Neith was said to oversee the creation warriors’ weapons and guard the warriors’ bodies when they died. Neith is typically depicted as a deity with the scepter (a symbol of rule and power) and the ankh (a symbol of life) to show her strength. She is known as the “Cow of Heaven,” a sky-goddess similar to Nut, who gives birth to the sun daily. She was also the personification of creation’s primordial waters as the bringer of the Great Flood, which associates her with both the creation of primeval time and the daily “re-creation” of these forms.

Another depiction of Neith was that of a woman nursing a baby crocodile, and she was known as the “Nurse of Crocodiles.” This refers to southern provincial mythology in Upper Egypt, where she was the mother of Sobek, the crocodile god. She was also known as the “Great Cow who gave birth to Ra .” As a maternal figure, aside from being the birth mother of the sun-god Ra, Neith is associated with Sobek as her son. However, no male deity is consistently identified with her in a pair in later religious conventions that paired deities. Therefore, she is frequently represented without a partner, indicating her independence from men.

As the Goddess of War, Neith shot her arrows into the enemies of the dead and thus came to be regarded as a protector of the dead, frequently appearing as a uraeus snake to ward off intruders and those who would harm the deceased. She is also portrayed as the protector of one of Horus’ four sons, specifically Duamutef, the deity of the canopic jar containing the stomach because the abdomen was one of  the most vulnerable part of the body and a prime target during battle.

Another ancient Egyptian war goddess is Paket. She is most likely a regional deity related to those who hunted near water at the desert’s edge. Like Neith, one of her titles is “She Who Opens the Ways of the Stormy Rains .”This perhaps refers to the flash floods caused by storms in the area. She was also a huntress, possibly as a caracal, who roamed the desert alone at night in search of prey, earning her the title “Night huntress with a sharp eye and pointed claw.”