Good morning everyone,

I hope everything is great and that you are looking forward to a Fem Fri of links sent to me following my newsletter about women of the steppes! Turns out the caucasus is absolutely full of interesting women, let's read about them today. Many thanks also if you sent me one of these articles. It is always so nice to read about new things.

Let's start with some mythology in the form of Lady Satanaya. Her name means "mother of 100 sons" (all giants) and she is a key figure in the "Narts" myth cycle. Sort of an Aphrodite figure. Enjoy a gloss on this story about her competence, lots more in the linked PDF:

In the myth 'Why the Sun Pauses on the Horizon at Sunset' (Hadaghat’la 1967, 1:266), Satanaya presents a theme of competence, in this case competence in weaving and sewing. Weaving itself has an almo st magical connotation for female figures fro m Ireland to India, but in the case of Satanaya appears chiefly to be an exemplification of her competence in womanly activity. To finish her work in time she must ask a boon of the sun. She is granted her wish that the sun pause before sinking below the horizon.

http://www.circassianworld.com/pdf/Satanaya_Cycle.pdf

Moving on to more recent legends, here's Barbare Jorjadze, "Georgia’s […] Mary Wollstonecraft, but also its Mrs. Beeton". There is a fantastic story in this article about how one of her cookbooks was found after many years and what it tells us, and also:

Barbare spent much of her time circuiting the provinces, trying to help her feckless husband and then her hapless son salvage catastrophic careers. She was shaky on the finer points of composition—she depended on her older brother, who had been formally educated, to punctuate her texts—but she had a drive to communicate, to enter the public arena at a time when women, as she once wrote, were told, “You must always keep silent; you must not raise your eyes at anybody, you must not go anywhere, you must block your ears, close your eyes, and sit back.” Jorjadze participated in debates about the modernization of the Georgian language, wrote popular plays and poems, and lobbied for educational reforms.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/29/the-culinary-muse-of-the-caucasus

Maybe you, like me, are really fancying some khachapuri right now. Here is a recipe for you, if you make one you are particularly proud of please send a photo!

Serving: The Ajarian khachapuri is served hot and traditionally served with butter. The butter and egg are mixed together with a knife and fork and eaten together with little pieces of the bread part of the khachapuri.

https://georgianrecipes.net/2013/03/29/acharuli-ajarian-khachapuri/

ნახვამდის,

Alex xx.