Athena and Medusa

I have applied to be an Exegetai of Athena through Neokoroi. Part of the process of admittance includes the submission of two articles to their newsletter He Epistole. I shared my first article, Virgin Athena, here. Included below is the second article, with many inspirational thanks to the divine Thalia Took, who just happened to draw Medusa as the Goddess of the Week!

Athena and Medusa

In most myths Athena comes across as a gentle Goddess whose punishments are rare and just. This is not the case with the tale of Medusa. On the surface Athena's relationship with Medusa seems cruel and self-serving, very different from her relationships with other figures of mythology, but further investigation proves there is more going on between the two figures than the myth readily admits.

Medusa's story is a sad one. She was a lovely girl, often compared favorably to the goddess Athena. Medusa's beauty drew the unfortunate and unwanted attention of Poseidon. Medusa fled to a temple of Athena seeking sanctuary from the sea god's advances through prayers to virginal Athena. Poseidon found Medusa in the temple and raped her. As punishment for this desecration of her temple Athena transformed Medusa into a gorgon, a hideous creature with snakes for hair whose gaze turned men to stone. Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus with the assistance of Athena. From her body sprung forth her sons by Poseidon, Pegasus the winged horse and Khrysaor. Athena then gathered blood from Medusa's corpse and placed the head of Medusa, the Gorgoneion, prominently upon her breastplate, the aegis.

Who was Medusa and why is her myth so entwined with that of Athena, who seems to only want to punsish her for a crime that she was not at fault for? Pausanias points out that Medusa was said to have been from Lake Tritonis in Libya, which was also sometimes cited as the birthplace of Athena under her epithet Athena Tritogeneia, or Triton-born. This same epithet, along with that of Athena Glaukopis, has been cited as evidence that Athena's father was in fact Poseidon, not Zeus. Pausanias states:

"When I saw that the statue of Athena had blue eyes I found out that the legend about them is Libyan. For the Libyans have a saying that the Goddess is the daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis, and for this reason has blue eyes like Poseidon."

So, we have links to two mythological figures of Libyan origin near Lake Tritonis with links to Poseidon. Athena and Poseidon have a famous rivalry concerning patronage of Athens, but Athena was never raped by Poseidon, was she?

Amazingly enough, there is a story of Athena being raped by her father. Although he is not named Poseidon, a story by Lycophron states that Athena was the daughter of the winged giant Pallas who attempted to rape his lovely offspring. Athena defended herself against his advances and slew him. She flayed the giant, taking his wings for her own use and his skin as her aegis. Here it is the fatherly male and not the transformed young woman whose visage becomes the basis for the aegis.

What of Pallas's wings? In early depictions of Athena she is shown winged, notably in Sparta. These wings would later be placed on the shoulders of Nike, goddess of victory, who accompanied Athena and was sometimes referred to as Athena. The Gorgons were also winged, shown with the same curling quadrupled wings as early black-figure-vase images of Athena. Medusa famously gave birth to the winged horse Pegasus, who myth states that Athena bridled and tamed. Suidas makes the connection between Athena, daughter of Poseidon and tamer of horses clear:

"Hippeia Athene (Athena-of-Horses) : They say she is a daughter of Poseidon and Polyphe, daughter of Okeanos; she was the first to use a chariot and was called 'of-Horses' because of this."

Athena was raped by her father, who may have been Poseidon, just as Medusa was. These events took place on the shores of Lake Tritonis in Libya and lead to associations with wings and winged horses by both Medusa and Athena. Both transformed a mutilated piece of themselves or their attacker into the aegis. There are clear connections here between Medusa and Athena, but what about Medusa's most notable feature, that of her snaky hair? Does Athena have connections to snakes also, and if so, do they bear any echo of Medusa?

Athena's associations with snakes are second only to her legendary affinity for owls. She wears the snake-tasseled aegis, and was said to be the mother of Erikhthonios, who was either part or all snake. So damning was her association with the snake that she forbid anyone to look upon her serpentine son, lest they recognize that she was its mother. The Arrephoria ritual of Athens commemorates these events. Anciently the snake in Greece was seen as the protector of the home. It guarded the grain, much in the way a housecat would in later Europe. Several deities with home protection roles had serpent associations, such as Zeus Kestos. Athena was so associated with the protection of cities that she was viewed in abstract terms as a great serpent. Her aegis is covered in scales and ringed with snakes to reenforce this association.

Barbara Walker states in her Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets under the entry Gorgon that “Gorgo, Gorgon, or Gorgopis... was the title of Athene as a death goddess.” She links the name Medusa with that of Athena's mother Metis and states that she believes that Athena was worshiped as Medusa/Metis in Libya where she was the destroyer aspect of the Egyptian goddess Neith who was called Anath among the Phoenicians and Ath-enna in Libya and North Africa.

Jane Ellen Harrison argues that the Gorgoneion is nothing more than a ritual mask, perhaps worn by Libyan priestesses in rites related to wisdom and the moon. The Orphics refer to the moon as “The Gorgon's Head”. Amazingly, an ancient image of Athena shows her winged and holding a crescent moon.

The similarities between Athena and Medusa weave an obscured but revealing pattern. Athena could no more punish Medusa than she could punish herself. Medusa, it seems, is only another older face of the complex Goddess known to us under the names Anat, Neith, Metis, Medusa, and Athena.

Sources Cited:

Theoi Project: Athena
Theoi Project: Medusa & Gorgons
Gimbutas, Marija: The Language of the Goddess.
Walker, Barbara: The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets: Athena, Gorgon, Medusa
Wikipedia: Gorgoneion

Virgin Athena

I have applied to be an Exegetai of Athena through Neokoroi. Part of the process of admittance includes the submission of two articles to their newsletter He Epistole. I thought that the first one might be of interest to the blogosphere, so I am sharing it here.

Virgin Athena

Athena is famous in Greek mythology for being one of only three Goddesses who were considered “virgin”. It was said in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite that alone of all creation these three Goddesses, Hestia, Artemis, and Athena, were immune to the arrows of Eros and the seductive spell of Aphrodite. But for Athena being a virgin ran deeper than simple immunity to romance. Athena was, rather surprisingly, a mother figure in Classical Athens, and is linked to Hephaestos in what could be an ancient heiros gamos festival.

Athena's legendary virginity begins with conflicting stories of her birth. In the most famous version, attributed to Apollodorus, Athena is born fully grown from the head of her father Zeus. Zeus had been warned that his bride Metis, wise counsel, would bear him a child greater than himself, so he chose to swallow Metis whole. Nine months later he was stricken with a terrible headache that served as the birth pangs which brought Athena into existence. Just as later Catholics would claim that their divine virgin Mary was conceived Immaculately by the will of the Father God, so was Athena born, not of a womb or woman, but from the perfect mind of Zeus.

A second and less well known birth story comes to us from Lycophron, in which Athena was fathered the winged giant Pallas. This Pallas later attempted to rape his daughter. In a rage the young Athena killed her father and flayed him, taking his skin for her breastplate – the aegis – and his wings for her own use. In the oldest known depictions of Athena, such as at Sparta, she is shown winged. This was the first, but not the only threat to Athena's chastity in myth.

When Zeus ached and moaned with the labor pains that would bring forth Athena we are told that Hephaestos took up a labrys and split mighty Zeus's head asunder in order to release the pain. Thus, Hephaestos was the first of the theoi to catch a glimpse of the newly formed Athena. We can only guess from later events what Hephaestos must have thought when he saw the radiant goddess for the first time. Perhaps Eros launched one of his famous arrows at the lame craftsman. Maybe he was taken in by the earth-shaking war dance she performed immediately upon her birth. As a smith, he may have just been impressed with her excellent taste in armor, since she was born fully armed. In any case, Hephaestos desired Athena and contrived to win her for his wife.

After Hephaestos set out to trap his mother Hera in a golden throne he fashioned for her he demanded the prize of either Athena or Aphrodite as his wife, according to many sources, notably Hyginus. If Athena rejected his proposal it is not recorded. Regardless, Hephaestos won Aphrodite as his bride rather than Athena and according to Homer [Odyssey 8.267] he regretted the decision. Aphrodite proved to be a lovely but unfaithful wife and Hephaestos harbored secret lust for Athena.

Athena came to the forge of Hephaestos seeking arms. What she received instead, according to Apollodorus, was an attempted rape by Hephaestos. In disgust it was said that Athena wiped Hephaestos's semen from her thigh with a fillet of wool that she then flung to the ground. The fertile earth, Gaia, became pregnant by this seed and bore the child Erikhthonios, king of Athens. Gaia gave the boy to Athena, who she claimed was his true mother. Ashamed, Athena hid the growing child in a kista, or chest, that she kept in the folds of her aegis.

Why was Athena ashamed of Erikhthonios? Why would she keep his existence a closely guarded secret? Erikhthonios was said to have the form of a serpent from the waist down. Is this deformity alone enough to cause Athena to shut away her fosterling, and, where did Erikhthonios gain this peculiar serpentine aberration?
Since the earliest recorded times Athena has been identified with the snake. This is demonstrated in her serpent-tasseled aegis, and in her special role as the guardian of the city, just as the snake served in ancient Greece as a symbol for the guardian of the home. Athena has deep roots in the prehistoric craftswoman serpent and bird goddesses that Marija Gimbutas documented in her work. Just as Gaia claimed that Athena was the true mother of Erikhthonios, so do Erikhthonios's defining features point to Athena having been his mother.

Athena guarded Erikhthonios with obsessive caution. It was said by Pseudo-Apollodorus that she sent the kista he was kept in to Pandrosos, the daughter of Kekrops, forbidding her to open the chest. With curiosity that echoes the fall of Pandora – who Athena had a hand in making – Pandrosos opened the chest and beheld Erikhthonios, at the sight of which Athena drove Pandrosos mad. Pandrosos then flung herself to her death from the Acropolis. These horrible events were commemorated each year at the Athenian festival of the Arrephoria. During the Arrephoria maidens were given a secret kista at the temple of Athena on the Acropolis filled with “unspoken things”. The maidens were strictly admonished not to look inside of the kista but to deliver it to the garden shrine of Aphrodite, below the Acropolis. The maidens then returned to the temple of Athena bearing a second kista, also filled with secret contents, from the garden of Aphrodite. I have concluded that the kista bore knowledge of Erikhthonios as the son of Athena and Hephaestos, just as it held Erikhthonios himself when Pandrosos kept it. It is telling that Athena sends knowledge of Erikhthonios to Aphrodite, the wife of Hephaestos, whose charms and seductions she was supposed to be immune to.

Thus I have deduced that, just as Gaia claimed, Athena is the true mother of Erikhthonios, making her one of the number of that fabulous mythic trope of virgin mothers. But how chaste was Athena's relationship with Hephaestos? Were they ever linked beyond one incident of attempted rape? To answer these questions I look again to the festival cycle of Athens, this time to the festival of the Khalkeia, which translates to “bronze chamber”. The Khalkeia was a festival of Hephaestos and Athena as patrons of craftsmanship. Throughout Athens Athena and Hephaestos were paired. Athena has a statue in the Athenian temple of Hephaestos that overlooks the agora, while the ever-burning lamp in the temple of Athena Polis is regarded by Burkert and others as the presence of Hephaestos.

Karl Kerenyi deduces in his Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion that during the Khalkeia festival Athena and Hephaestos joined in a heiros gamos, or sacred marriage rite, in a bronze chamber. The month leading up to the Khalkeia was a time for young Athenians to prepare themselves for marriage. Athena even takes her “husband's” name in Robert Parker's Polytheism and society at Athens which lists Hephaisteia as one of Athena's epithets, specifically related to the Khalkeia festival.

The marriage of Athena and Hephaestos bore rich fruit depending on which sources are sought. Both Apollon [Müller, Dor. ii. 2. § 13.] and Lychnus [Spanheim, ad Callim. p. 644.] are cited as being sons of the union of Athena and Hephaestos. I find that the idea of Apollon, Lord of the Arts, being the son of the theoi of craftsmanship to be an inspiring and illuminating twist in their collective mythologies.

Even with her yearly Athenian marriage to Hephaestos and a proliferation of sons, Athena still remains virgin. She is a virgin in the oldest sense of the word: ever a maiden beholden to no man. It was this virginity that allowed Athena to exist in realms outside of those typically open to Greek women. Now that we live in a society where women and men are recognized as equals it is time to restore Athena's roles beyond that of the eternally chaste daughter.

Sources Cited:

Theoi Project: Athena
Theoi Project: Hephaestos
Burkert, Walter: Greek Religion.
Gimbutas, Marija: The Language of the Goddess.
Kerenyi, Karl: Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion.
Parker, Robert: Polytheism and Society at Athens.