Over a thousand ancient artifacts excavated from the prehistoric city of Troy likely represent an owl goddess.

Troy is on the west coast of Turkey near the Aegean Sea.

Most people of Heinrich Schleimann's time thought the city of Troy was a myth.

He had believed in its existence since childhood, perhaps due to vivid depictions in a book.

After he made his money as a banker during the California Gold Rush, Heinrich headed for Hissarlik, the hill in Turkey that he thought might hide Troy.

To his amazement and vindication, his theory had been correct. Schleimann discovered Troy. But he did not just discover the burned layer that he identified as the iteration of Troy that was destroyed by Agememnon and his Mycenaean Greeks allegedly after their Trojan Horse trick succeeded. The Gold Rush banker also discovered layers of the hill/mound dating to thousands of years prior to the fall of Homer's Troy.

Deep within those far earlier eras, held within the layers of earth that proved each human occupation, Schleimann found owl goddess figurines.

Consider this described them:

"These owl-faced female figures, which occur so frequently upon the cups, vases and idols, can be none other than Athena, the tutelary goddess of Troy."





This bowl with owl-like eyes and pregnant figure was found in the middle of Turkey, at one of the oldest human cities, a place still under excavation by an international team of archaeologists, Catal Huyuck. By the very fact that it was found at this site, where the earliest know domestication of wheat and cattle took place, it can be dated to around 9000 years ago.

"With the progress of (Hellenic Greek) civilization, Athena received a human face, and her former owl's head was transformed into her favourite bird, the owl."



Troy-finder Heinrich Schleimann continued, "My friend Professor Otto Keller has concluded with certainty "the existence of a Phrygian goddess, Ate, her worship on the hill of Hissarlik (Troy) as well as on a second hill on the River Rhyndacus, and her idol which fell from heaven. The Ilian Athene, who originated from the Ate on a medal I discovered, appears to be an especially Phyrygian goddess, wearing the Phrygian cap.

She is not the common Greek Ate, or infatuation, who is a mere abstraction. Probably she is related to the Phrygian god Attis. Owing to the similarity in the sound of their names, after the conquest of the land by the Greeks, Attis and Athene were combined, and thus originated the peculiar Hellenic goddess."