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The new building was not intended to become a temple, but a treasury meant to house the colossal chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos. [1] It is even likely that the statue project preceded the building project. [9] This was an offering from the city to the goddess, but not a statue of worship: there was no priestess of Athena Parthenos. [7]
The pediments of the Parthenon included many statues. The one to the west had a little more than the one to the east. [8] In the description of the Acropolis of Athens by Pausanias, a sentence informs about the chosen themes: the quarrel between Athena and Poseidon for Attica in the west and the birth of Athena in the east.
She was known as Athena Parthenos "Athena the Virgin". In one archaic Attic myth, the god Hephaestus tried and failed to rape her, resulting in Gaia giving birth to Erichthonius, an important Athenian founding hero. Athena was the patron goddess of heroic endeavor; she was believed to have aided the heroes Perseus, Heracles, Bellerophon, and Jason.
Christopher Pelling asserts that the name "Parthenon" means the "temple of the virgin goddess", referring to the cult of Athena Parthenos that was associated with the temple. [19] It has also been suggested that the name of the temple alludes to the maidens (parthénoi), whose supreme sacrifice guaranteed the safety of the city. [20]
The Varvakeion Athena is a Roman-era statue of Athena Parthenos now part of the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. It is generally considered to be the most faithful reproduction of the chryselephantine statue made by Phidias and his assistants, which once stood in the Parthenon . [ 1 ]
Athena, central figure of the pediment of the temple, Acropolis Museum, Akr. 631. The Old Temple of Athena or the Archaios Neos [1] (Greek: Ἀρχαῖος Νεώς) was an archaic Greek limestone Doric temple on the Acropolis of Athens probably built in the second half of the sixth-century BCE, and which housed the xoanon of Athena Polias. [2]
The Older Parthenon (in black) was destroyed by the Achaemenids in the Destruction of Athens, and then rebuilt by Pericles (in grey).. The Older Parthenon or Pre‐Parthenon, as it is frequently referred to, [1] constitutes the first endeavour to build a sanctuary for Athena Parthenos on the site of the present Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens.
The shield of Athena Parthenos, sculpted by Phidias, depicts a fallen Amazon. Athena Parthenos was a massive chryselephantine sculpture of Athena, the main cult image inside the Parthenon at Athens, which is now lost, though known from descriptions and small ancient copies.