The gate of the year

Painting on a wine cup (kylix), dating to 550 B.C., now in the British Museum, London. The scene shows the birth of Athena from Zeus’s head. After having defeated the Titans, Zeus had as his first wife the goddess Metis, daughter of Oceanus, who personified wisdom and cunning intelligence, and was the one who “of the gods and mortal human beings knows the most” (Hesiod, Theogony, 887). But, according to a prophecy, Zeus knew that the child generated with Metis should become wiser and more powerful than his father: so he decided to swallow his spouse. In this way, the supreme god of Olympus acquired for himself the qualities of Metis: wisdom and ruse. From Metis, who was pregnant when she was swallowed, Athena was born. She came out, fully armed, from the head of Zeus, opened with a stroke of Hephaestus’s ax.
Athena was a very ancient divinity, perhaps worshiped since the Bronze Age, as a goddess of war and of the arts. In particular, she was regarded as the protectress of the city of Athens, where, on the Acropolis, was the great temple dedicated to her as the Virgin Goddess, the Parthenon. The goddess’s attribute of Parthenos, “Virgin”, was not a reference to the physical integrity of the woman but to the social condition of young woman in marriageable age (as opposed to gyne, the married woman) (Dowden 1989, p. 2).

[Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]




Female Symbols

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Painting on a wine cup (kylix), dating to 550 B.C., now in the British Museum, London. The scene shows the birth of Athena from Zeus’s head. After having defeated the Titans, Zeus had as his first wife the goddess Metis, daughter of Oceanus, who personified wisdom and cunning intelligence, and was the one who “of the gods and mortal human beings knows the most” (Hesiod, Theogony, 887). But, according to a prophecy, Zeus knew that the child generated with Metis should become wiser and more powerful than his father: so he decided to swallow his spouse. In this way, the supreme god of Olympus acquired for himself the qualities of Metis: wisdom and ruse. From Metis, who was pregnant when she was swallowed, Athena was born. She came out, fully armed, from the head of Zeus, opened with a stroke of Hephaestus’s ax. Athena was a very ancient divinity, perhaps worshiped since the Bronze Age, as a goddess of war and of the arts. In particular, she was regarded as the protectress of the city of Athens, where, on the Acropolis, was the great temple dedicated to her as the Virgin Goddess, the Parthenon. The goddess’s attribute of Parthenos, “Virgin”, was not a reference to the physical integrity of the woman but to the social condition of young woman in marriageable age (as opposed to gyne, the married woman) (Dowden 1989, p. 2). [Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]