The gate of the year

Red-figure painting on a small vase, dating to the V-IV century B.C., now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. The image represents one of the rare pictures of the goddess Athena shifting her shape into that of an owl, or vice versa. Generally, the Olympian deities were represented only in human appearance. The epithet commonly employed for Athena, Glaukópis (literally “with glaring eyes”), contains an implicit reference to the owl (glaux), so called for its eyes glittering in the darkness. An allusion to the name of the goddess is still present today in the scientific denomination of the owl, Athene noctua. If the bird appears frequently as an attribute or emblem of the goddess, it can be surmised that in more ancient times the animal was regarded as a manifestation of the deity. In Homer one can still find the description of Athena and Apollo who perch on an oak “like birds of prey” (Iliad, VII, 59-60).

[Source: http://iconotheque.univ-paris1.fr/displayimage.php?pid=2065]




Human-Animal Transformation

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Red-figure painting on a small vase, dating to the V-IV century B.C., now in the Louvre Museum, Paris. The image represents one of the rare pictures of the goddess Athena shifting her shape into that of an owl, or vice versa. Generally, the Olympian deities were represented only in human appearance. The epithet commonly employed for Athena, Glaukópis (literally “with glaring eyes”), contains an implicit reference to the owl (glaux), so called for its eyes glittering in the darkness. An allusion to the name of the goddess is still present today in the scientific denomination of the owl, Athene noctua. If the bird appears frequently as an attribute or emblem of the goddess, it can be surmised that in more ancient times the animal was regarded as a manifestation of the deity. In Homer one can still find the description of Athena and Apollo who perch on an oak “like birds of prey” (Iliad, VII, 59-60). [Source: http://iconotheque.univ-paris1.fr/displayimage.php?pid=2065]