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Owl-Headed Minerva

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

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The idea of this goddess is due to the imaginative enthusiasm of Dr. Schliemann, who believed that he saw an owl-headed Athena in the rude attempts at the imitation of the human face on vases and other objects discovered by him at Hissarlik. The faces of certain images of Apollo, found on the coasts of Asia Minor, and now in the British Museum, are ruder than those of the Hissarlik antiquities. Similar faces are also found on the Etruscan blackware from Chinsi, where the spout of the vase serves as a nose, and it is probable that the ornamentation originated in two eyes being set on each side of a vessel's spout or mouth, to ward off the evil eye. Two large eyes are sometimes introduced on Greek vases in the midst of a group of figures. (See MINERVA).