dChan
Anonymous ID: 523609 May 26, 2021, 6:39 p.m. No.13762568   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2587

>>13762397

>>13762425

The mythology depicted on Owls is equally interesting. Athena was goddess of both wisdom and warfare, combining within herself two qualities we find incompatible today but the ancients didn't, a telling difference between their world and ours. She was the patron goddess of Athens, one of the greatest cities of all time.

 

According to ancient Greek mythology, Athena was the daughter of Zeus and his first wife, Metis, whose name meant "wisdom." Metis warned Zeus that their first son would be more powerful than Zeus himself, which agitated Zeus so much that when Metis became pregnant he swallowed whole Metis and their unborn child. This gave him a headache, which he cured by splitting his head open with an axe. (Zeus may have been powerful but he wasn't necessarily smart.) From the wound came forth Athena, fully grown.

 

One of Athena's precursors was the Eye Goddess of Neolithic peoples. The wide staring eyes of the Eye Goddess were all-seeing and all-knowing. Along with being the goddess of wisdom and warfare, in ancient Greece Athena was also known as an eye goddess and was described as the "flashing eyed." The large almond-shaped frontal eye on early Owl coins may thus have religious significance. Some disagree, pointing to Attic and Egyptian art and pottery of the same period with the same frontal eye on human figures.

 

The owl is Athena's attribute or mascot. According to the mythology, Athena at times also took the very form of her owl. The owl species depicted on Athenian Owls is the Athena Noctua, also called the Little Owl or Minerva Owl. Standing 6 to 8 inches and weighing 2.5 to 4.5 ounces, they range from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. The owl then as today was a symbol of wisdom. At different places and in different times, however, owls have symbolized other things, including dread and death.

 

http://rg.ancients.info/owls/