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Bartie Spalitto
Athena[b] or Athene,[c] often given the epithet Pallas,[d] is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft[4] who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva.[5] Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name.[6] The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. Her major symbols include owls, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion. In art, she is generally depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear.
From her origin as an Aegean palace goddess, Athena was closely associated with the city. She was known as Polias and Poliouchos (both derived from polis, meaning "city-state"), and her temples were usually located atop the fortified acropolis in the central part of the city. The Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis is dedicated to her, along with numerous other temples and monuments. As the patron of craft and weaving, Athena was known as Ergane. She was also a warrior goddess, and was believed to lead soldiers into battle as Athena Promachos. Her main festival in Athens was the Panathenaia, which was celebrated during the month of Hekatombaion in midsummer and was the most important festival on the Athenian calendar.
In Greek mythology, Athena was believed to have been born in Lake Tritonis in North Africa (Modern day Algeria and Tunisia) where she is considered native to the land [7], in this version of the story she is the daughter of Poseidon and Tritonis a Lybian lake nymph, in another version of the story in the same source, they say that she was daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis, and that, being for some reason angry at her father, she gave herself to Zeus, who made her his own daughter, on the other hand some say that she sprang from the forehead of her father Zeus in the same location in north africa[8]. In some versions of the story, Athena has no mother and is born from Zeus' forehead by parthenogenesis. In others, such as Hesiod's Theogony, Zeus swallows his consort Metis, who was pregnant with Athena; in this version, Athena is first born within Zeus and then escapes from his body through his forehead. In the founding myth of Athens, Athena bested Poseidon in a competition over patronage of the city by creating the first olive tree. She was known as Athena Parthenos "Athena the Virgin". In one archaic Attic myth, the god Hephaestus tried and failed to rape her, resulting in Gaia giving birth to Erichthonius, an important Athenian founding hero. Athena was the patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason. Along with Aphrodite and Hera, Athena was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War.
She plays an active role in the Iliad, in which she assists the Achaeans and, in the Odyssey, she is the divine counselor to Odysseus. In the later writings of the Roman poet Ovid, Athena was said to have competed against the mortal Arachne in a weaving competition, afterward transforming Arachne into the first spider; Ovid also describes how Athena transformed her priestess Medusa and the latter's sisters, Stheno and Euryale, into the Gorgons after witnessing the young woman being raped by Poseidon in the goddess's temple. Since the Renaissance, Athena has become an international symbol of wisdom, the arts, and classical learning. Western artists and allegorists have often used Athena as a symbol of freedom and democracy.
That is a graver matter, and there, my friend, the modern interpreters of Homer may, I think, assist in explaining the view of the ancients. Most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert that he meant by Athena "mind" [νοῦς, noũs] and "intelligence" [διάνοια, dinoia], and the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion about her; and indeed calls her by a still higher title, "divine intelligence" [θεοῦ νόησις, theoũ nēsis], as though he would say: This is she who has the mind of God [ἁ θεονόα, a theona]. Perhaps, however, the name Theonoe may mean "she who knows divine things" [τὰ θεῖα νοοῦσα, ta theia noousa] better than others. Nor shall we be far wrong in supposing that the author of it wished to identify this Goddess with moral intelligence [εν έθει νόεσιν, en thei nesin], and therefore gave her the name Etheonoe; which, however, either he or his successors have altered into what they thought a nicer form, and called her Athena.
A Mycenean fresco depicts two women extending their hands towards a central figure, who is covered by an enormous figure-eight shield; this may depict the warrior-goddess with her palladium, or her palladium in an aniconic representation.[24][25] In the "Procession Fresco" at Knossos, which was reconstructed by the Mycenaeans, two rows of figures carrying vessels seem to meet in front of a central figure, which is probably the Minoan precursor to Athena.[26] The early twentieth-century scholar Martin Persson Nilsson argued that the Minoan snake goddess figurines are early representations of Athena.[14][15]
Nilsson and others have claimed that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself or a bird goddess in general.[27] In the third book of the Odyssey, she takes the form of a sea-eagle.[27] Proponents of this view argue that she dropped her prophylactic owl mask before she lost her wings. "Athena, by the time she appears in art," Jane Ellen Harrison remarks, "has completely shed her animal form, has reduced the shapes she once wore of snake and bird to attributes, but occasionally in black-figure vase-paintings she still appears with wings."[28]
It is generally agreed that the cult of Athena preserves some aspects of the Proto-Indo-European transfunctional goddess.[30][31] The cult of Athena may have also been influenced by those of Near Eastern warrior goddesses such as the East Semitic Ishtar and the Ugaritic Anat,[13] both of whom were often portrayed bearing arms.[15] Classical scholar Charles Penglase notes that Athena resembles Inanna in her role as a "terrifying warrior goddess"[32] and that both goddesses were closely linked with creation.[32] Athena's birth from the head of Zeus may be derived from the earlier Sumerian myth of Inanna's descent into and return from the Underworld.[33][34]
Plato notes that the citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped a goddess known as Neith,[e] whom he identifies with Athena.[35] Neith was the ancient Egyptian goddess of war and hunting, who was also associated with weaving; her worship began during the Egyptian Pre-Dynastic period. In Greek mythology, Athena was reported to have visited mythological sites in North Africa, including Libya's Triton River and the Phlegraean plain.[f] Based on these similarities, the Sinologist Martin Bernal created the "Black Athena" hypothesis, which claimed that Neith was brought to Greece from Egypt, along with "an enormous number of features of civilization and culture in the third and second millennia".[36][37] The "Black Athena" hypothesis stirred up widespread controversy near the end of the twentieth century,[38][39] but it has now been widely rejected by modern scholars.[40][41]
In a similar manner to her patronage of various activities and Greek cities, Athena was thought to be a "protector of heroes" and a "patron of art" and various local traditions related to the arts and handicrafts.[42]
Athena was known as Atrytone (Άτρυτώνη "the Unwearying"), Parthenos (Παρθένος "Virgin"), and Promachos (Πρόμαχος "she who fights in front"). The epithet Polias (Πολιάς "of the city"), refers to Athena's role as protectress of the city.[43] The epithet Ergane (Εργάνη "the Industrious") pointed her out as the patron of craftsmen and artisans.[43] Burkert notes that the Athenians sometimes simply called Athena "the Goddess", hē thes (ἡ θεός), certainly an ancient title.[6] After serving as the judge at the trial of Orestes in which he was acquitted of having murdered his mother Clytemnestra, Athena won the epithet Areia (Αρεία).[43] Some have described Athena, along with the goddesses Hestia and Artemis as being asexual, this is mainly supported by the fact that in the Homeric Hymns, 5, To Aphrodite, where Aphrodite is described as having "no power" over the three goddesses.[44]
In one version of the myth, Pallas was the daughter of the sea-god Triton,[57] and she and Athena were childhood friends. Zeus one day watched Athena and Pallas have a friendly sparring match. Not wanting his daughter to lose, Zeus flapped his aegis to distract Pallas, whom Athena accidentally impaled.[58] Distraught over what she had done, Athena took the name Pallas for herself as a sign of her grief and tribute to her friend and Zeus gave her the aegis as an apology.[58] In another version of the story, Pallas was a Giant;[59] Athena slew him during the Gigantomachy and flayed off his skin to make her cloak, which she wore as a victory trophy.[59][15][60][61] In an alternative variation of the same myth, Pallas was instead Athena's father,[59][15] who attempted to assault his own daughter,[62] causing Athena to kill him and take his skin as a trophy.[63]
The palladium was a statue of Athena that was said to have stood in her temple on the Trojan Acropolis.[64] Athena was said to have carved the statue herself in the likeness of her dead friend Pallas.[64] The statue had special talisman-like properties[64] and it was thought that, as long as it was in the city, Troy could never fall.[64] When the Greeks captured Troy, Cassandra, the daughter of Priam, clung to the palladium for protection,[64] but Ajax the Lesser violently tore her away from it and dragged her over to the other captives.[64] Athena was infuriated by this violation of her protection.[65] Although Agamemnon attempted to placate her anger with sacrifices, Athena sent a storm at Cape Kaphereos to destroy almost the entire Greek fleet and scatter all of the surviving ships across the Aegean.[66]
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