Statue of Athena Parthenos

The monumental statue is, as indicated also by the attributes, a scaled-down version of the famous Athena Parthenos by Phidias from the mid-5th century that served as a cult effigy in the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens. Frontally oriented, with a standing right and free left leg, the figure wears a girded peplos and, over the shoulders down to the bosom, a collar-like aegis with a Gorgoneion. The head with the hair parted in the middle and hanging down the back in a long thatch is protected by a helmet. Indentations seem to indicate the mounting of three crests (?). The position of the arms cannot be conclusively reconstructed. The Athenian prototype held the missing lance with its raised left arm. Whether the right arm carried, like that of the prototype, a Nike in its extended hand cannot be determined. If it did, the arm would have been raised in an angle. The Pergamene Athena wears a helmet that does without the trappings of the original, such as the Sphinx, the two Pegasoi, the deer on the face plate and the griffins on the insides of the cheek plates. However, three indentations in the helmet point to mountings (a crest?). By the same token, the Hellenistic sculptor deliberately omitted some attributes, such as, perhaps, the Nike with the column on the right, the shield and the snake of the acropolis on the left. The missing serpent suggests that Athena does not appear here as the protectress of the Athenian Acropolis. [...] Athena appears here primarily as the goddess of wisdom, the sciences and the arts.