Female Bull Jumper. circa 1600 BC: carved ivory; Minoan.

Shakespeare's women often show such daring, on the battlefield at least: the Countess of Auvergne and Joan of Arc in Henry VI, Part 1 and Queen Margaret in Part 3, not to mention Cleopatra:

. . . . . . . . . . next morn,
Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed;
Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst
I wore his sword Philippan.(2.4.20-3)

Toronto. Royal Onterio Museum. ©Kathleen Cohen: World Images (California State University): under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.