Fragments from the statue of Athena. Preserved are parts of the head and the neck, the right shoulder, the aegis, the right calf and part of the left foot with a sandal.
Athena strides to the viewer’s right possibly holding a spear in her right hand and a shield in her left. She turned her head towards her opponent, Poseidon. Her neck and head were worked separately from the remaining statue. The goddess wore an aegis and Attic-type helmet which as the drills suggest was adorned with a Sphinx in the centre and griffins on the sides like the helmet of the chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos by Pheidias. Metallic ornaments were inserted in the statue’s ear holes and metal hair locks on the side of its neck.
The head appears to have been removed from the pediment perhaps during the conversion of the Parthenon into a Christian church. It escaped thus ravaging by Thomas Bruce, lord of Elgin, who was in Greece between 1801-1804, when the country was still under Ottoman rule, and forcibly detached most of the sculptures of the pediment still in their original position. It was found in 1908 on the Acropolis rock and was adjusted into the plaster cast of the torso housed today in the British Museum in London.
The west pediment of the Parthenon portrays the dispute between Athena and Poseidon regarding who would become the divine protector of Athens. The contest was held on the Acropolis in the presence of the city’s mythical kings Kekrops and Erechtheus and other local heroes, who as judges decided the outcome in favour of Athena, preferring her gift, the olive tree, to the salty water offered by Poseidon. The centre of the scene is occupied by the two protagonists and their chariots whereas the pediments' corners contain the personifications of two rivers that flowed in ancient Athens, Ilissos and Kephissos. Due to the misadventures suffered by the monument over the following centuries many sculptures have been lost, some survive in mutilated form whereas others are represented only in small fragments.
The two Parthenon pediments are adorned with about fifty oversized statues. The sculptures, perfectly worked even on their unseen, rear sides, present scenes from the myths of the goddess Athena.
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