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The Owl Goddess of Troy and the Wise Goddess of Athens
"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."
With these words the archaeologist who finally found Troy, after hundreds of years during
which the city had simply been considered an ancient legend, left no doubt what
his thoughts were about the ubiquitous owl figures he discovered. Many people don't think much about Troy, beyond notions of a big Trojan horse and beautiful Helen of Troy. Take a look at the map on the upper right side of this article to see where the site is situated. Troy's location on the west coast of Turkey, is near one of history's most strategic straights, leading from the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas to and from the Black Sea. Troy existed for thousands of years prior to the fateful day talked about by the poet Homer, which resulted in a burned layer that Heinrich discovered and identified as being most likely the city of Troy in Turkey burned by Agamemnon and his marauding Mycenaean Greeks. Owl goddess figurines have also been found at sites that existed far earlier than the eras excavated at Troy. |
The figure at right is one of many found near Konya in Turkey, at one of the oldest human cities, occupied 9000 years ago. The ancient city of Catal Huyuck is under excavation by an international team of well-funded archaeologists. This site, where the earliest know domestication of wheat and cattle took place, has been a special gift to Neolithic (new stone age) archaeologist and also a special interest of goddesses.com. We developed the earliest 3D visualizations of the site, a process continued by others since.
"With the progress of civilization, Athena received a human face, and her former owl's head was Athena is well-known as the goddess for whom Athens, Greece is
named. Her temple was the Parthenon, where she stood 40-feet tall clad in gold. Everywhere depictions of Athena are found, the owl goddess is
always with her. Most often the owl rests on her shoulder. Sometimes the owl
is held in her hand, other times it appears on her shield. The owl is, and always was, the symbol or
wisdom, which is Athena's trademark virtue. Today we still use wise old owl
imagery and mythology, often for marketing products. |
Heinrich's friend, Professor Otto Keller concluded that the owl goddess figures were similar to the Phyrygian goddess Ate. The Phyrygian kingdom was a neighbor of the Trojans, in the central western portion of Turkey and was the original home of our stories about the Gordian knot and King Midas with his golden touch. As Otto put it in a letter to his friend Heinrich: "Ate, on a medal I discovered, appears to be an especially Phyrygian goddess, wearing the Phyrygian cap." In travels in the United States reporting for goddesses we have seen owl figurines that share remarkable attributes with the owl goddess figures of Troy and Catal Huyuck. This article's author arrived before dawn one summer morning at the 3300 year old site in Louisiana called Poverty Point. "Whoo, whoo," were the first sounds to greet him. The sound led him in the dark to beneath a tree. The author looked up into the darkness within the tree. The sound stopped. When the author's eyes adjusted to the darkness and the dawn crept closer, the author saw the owl silhouetted on a branch. Later, in the museum at the Poverty Point archaeological site, he was excited by abundant figurines that he deemed were clearly intended to depict owls, or perhaps an owl deity. Here at goddesses the owl is theorized to be one form of a possible bird goddess revered during human prehistory. And one last detail. We haven't mentioned the name of Athena's favorite owl. She was known as Nike. |
transformed into her
favorite bird, the owl."