Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes (Cambridge, 1940)

834 The owl of Athena

goddess en face, with bird's wings, claws, and spurs, but makes her
stand on two goats and omits the two owls.

It is not easy to give a name to this singular personage. Her
nudity suggests a goddess akin to Aphrodite or Astarte or Istafc
Her lions recall Kybele, the mountain-mother of Asia Minor; and
we observe that the ground beneath the lions is marked with the
regular conventional design for mountains. A nude goddess stand-
ing erect on a lion occurs in Hittite art1 and—since she suckles an
infant—must be regarded as maternal. I am therefore emboldene°
to surmise that in this unique, or all but unique, Mesopotam1311
type we have—incredible as it sounds—the remote ancestress °
Athena, half-bird half-goddess, thea glaukopis as Homer's forebear5
called her2.

To this venturesome view Mr Sidney Smith demurs. In a recei^
letter to me (June 25, 1936) he puts forward a less precariouS
hypothesis :

' The plaque presents some very interesting problems in Sumerian relig10^
The goddesses are very difficult to place, and many of the names mel ^
represent different aspects of one and the same conception—given at diffe1^
points in a ritual, or at different times of the day, or on different occasions,
point is to decide the class of deity represented on the plaque; and this, I
can be done with some certainty. The claw-feet and the spur on the leg (a ^
feature) place her in the demon class. Her obvious beauty consorts with ^
She is the kind which ravishes young men, in lonely places, by night, lea .
them unsexed3. Finally, her association with the lions points to a conne
with the celestial Ishtar, the morning- and evening-star: and Ishtar "'afgjy
ravisher of men, see the Gilgamesh epic. What then are the owls (an entll£ejj
new feature)? They are, as I guess, her night servants: they serve 'iel
purpose as watchers.

1 E. Meyer Reich und Kidtur der Chetiter Berlin 1914 p. 109 pi. 11, 2, H- ^"j-rioP
in D. H. Haas Bilderatlas zur Religionsgeschichte Leipzig—Erlangen 1925 v ' , , i#
der Hethiter) p. n with fig. 7, a and b, O. Weber in P. Westheim Orbis
(Die Kunst der Hethiter) p. 17 figs. 8 and 9 bronze statuette of c. 1750 B.C. at
height o'i85m. 2 Supra p. 781. <pie

3 Analogous Greek and Roman beliefs are very fully investigated by O. O'asi^.tjiillts

Epiphanie der Sirene' in Philologns 1891 1. 93—107 with pi., W. H. Roscher ^^3,

(Abh. d. sacks. Gesellsch. d. Wiss. Phil.-hist. Classe 1900 xx. 2) Leipzig 1900 PP' ^ i"

H. W. Stoll and W. Drexler in Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 1818—1821, F. Sch«'e

Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. xii. 544—546. ([,at

A relief in Greek marble, which passed from the collection of I. Greau illt0 „{ &

<nUSe

W. Frohner, shows a Nightmare of the sort, assaulting her victim, in the ^^ej0i1'
nude woman with a bird's wings and talons (T. Schreiber Die hellenistischen Re ^ j8i
Leipzig 1889—1894 pi. 61 ( = my fig. 648), Harrison Proleg. Gk. Re/.2 p. 202 it1'
G. Weicker Der Seelenvogel in der alten Litteratur und Kunst Leipzig 1902 P?'
id. in Roscher Lex. Myth. iv. 609 with fig. 8). det$c

For Germanic parallels see F. Ranke 'Alp' in the Handwdrterbuch des
Aberglaubens Berlin—Leipzig 1927 i. 281—305 (especially p. 294 f.).