The Ancient Greek goddess Athena / Athene / Pallas-Athene, known as Minerva by the Romans, was the goddess of war, but also of wisdom.
In early, archaic portraits of Athena in black-figure pottery, the goddess retains some of her Minoan-Mycenaean character, such as great bird wings, although this is not true of archaic sculpture such as those of Aphaean Athena, where Athena has subsumed an earlier, invisibly numinous—Aphaea—goddess with Cretan connections in her mythos.
In classical depictions, Athena is usually portrayed standing upright, wearing a full-length chiton. She is sometimes dressed in armor, and is often represented wearing a Corinthian helmet raised high atop her forehead. Her shield bears at its centre the aegis with the head of the gorgon (gorgoneion) in the center and snakes around the edge. It is in this standing posture that she was depicted in Phidias’s famous lost gold and ivory statue of her, 36 m tall, the Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon.
A hardstone cameo ring The oval stained agate cameo carved to depict the goddess Athena in her crested helmet, to a mount with ropetwist and bead detail, between flared shoulders, ring size L.
Sold for £305 inc. premium at Bonhams in 2007
A ROMAN CORNELIAN INTAGLIO WITH ATHENA AND WARRIOR CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D. With the standing figure of Athena wearing crested helmet, holding spear and shield, facing the armed figure of a warrior, perhaps Mars, holding a wreath in raised right hand, in later gold ring setting Intaglio: ½ in. (1.3 cm.) long
Sold for GBP 938 at Christies in 20
A 14k yellow gold cameo brooch/pendant of Athena, the Goddess of wisdom, craft and war. 42mm x 34mm overall dimensions. Suspended on a 14k yellow gold 14″ bar link chain. 9.61 dwt.
Sold for $275 at Cowan’s Auctions, Inc. in 2017
Glass cameo: bust of Athena Period: Late Republican or Imperial Date: 1st century B.C.–3rd century A.D. Culture: Roman
Reference: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Cameo with Athena Greco-Roman Late Republican or Early Augutan Period late 1st century B.C.–1st century A.D.
Oval blue glass cameo fragment. Upper half of Athena, seen frontally with head in three-quarter to right, brandishing a spear and raising a shield. She wears a girdled chiton and crested Corinthian helmet. Only upper half preserved. Pitted and iridescent surface.
Reference: Museum of Fine Arts Boston
A hardstone cameo ring The oval stained agate cameo carved to depict the goddess Athena in her crested helmet, to a mount with ropetwist and bead detail, between flared shoulders, ring size L.
Sold for £305 inc. premium at Bonhams in 2007
Intaglio of the Head of Athena
The intaglio showing the goddess of wisdom is inscribed in Greek with the signature of Luigi Pichler, the third son of Johann Anton Pichler (1697-1779), the founder of a dynasty of gem engravers in Rome.
Reference: The Walter Art Museum
