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THE BIRTH OF ATHENE

ATHENE
According to the Pelasgians, the goddess Athene was born beside Lake Tritonis in Libya, where she was found and nurtured by the three nymphs of Libya, who dress in goat- skins. As a girl she killed her playmate, Pallas, by accident, while they were engaged in friendly combat with spear and shield and, in token of grief, set Pallas's name before her own. Coming to Greece by way of Crete, she lived first in the city of Athenae by the Boeotian River Triton.
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1. Plato identified Athene, patroness of Athens, with the Libyan goddess Neith, who belonged to an epoch when fatherhood was not recognized. Neith had a temple at Sais, where Solon was treated well merely because he was an Athenian (Plato: Timaeus). Virgin- priestesses of Neith engaged annually in armed combat (Herodotus), apparently for the position of High-priestess. Apollodorus's account of the fight between Athene and Pallas is a late patriarchal version: he says that Athene, born of Zeus and brought up by the River-god Triton, accidentally killed her foster-sister Pallas, the River Triton's daughter, because Zeus interposed his aegis when Pallas was about to strike Athene, and so distracted her attention. The aegis, however, a magical goat-skin bag containing a serpent and protected by a Gorgon mask, was Athene's long before Zeus claimed to be her father. Goat-skin aprons were the habitual costume of Libyan girls, and Pallas merely means 'maiden', or 'youth'. Herodotus writes: 'Athene's garments and aegis were borrowed by the Greeks from the Libyan women, who are dressed in exactly the same way, except that their leather garments are fringed with thongs, not serpents.' Ethiopian girls still wear this costume, which is sometimes ornamented with cowries, a yonic symbol. Herodotus adds here that the loud cries of triumph, ololu, ololu, uttered in honour of Athene above (Iliad) were of Libyan origin. Tritone means "the third queen": that is, the eldest member of the triad - mother of the maiden who fought Pallas and of the nymph into which she grew - just as Core-Persephone was Demeter's daughter.
2. Pottery finds suggest a Libyan immigration into Crete as early as 4000 BC; and a large number of goddess-worshipping Libyan refugees from the Western Delta seem to have arrived there when Upper and Lower Egypt were forcibly united under the First Dynasty about the year 3000 BC. The First Minoan Age began soon afterwards, and Cretan culture spread to Thrace and Early Helladic Greece.
3. Among other mythological personages named Pallas was the Titan who married the River Styx and fathered on her Zelus ('zeal'), Cratus ('strength'), Bia ('force'), and Nice ('victory') (Hesiod: Theogony and 383); he was perhaps an allegory of the Pelopian dolphin sacred to the Moon-goddess. Homer calls another Pallas 'the father of the moon' (Homeric Hymn to Hermes). A third begot the fifty Pallantids, Theseus's enemies, who seem to have been originally fighting priestesses of Athene. A fourth was described as Athene's father.
THE BIRTH OF ATHENE



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