Pausanias, the travel writer of the second century CE, describes a sculpture of Athena that he saw on the Acropolis. Although, when it was found in 1823, this female figure was part of a later wall below where Pausanias had located his goddess, it may well be the same statue.
We know that the figure represents Athena because of the roundel on her chest. This would have had the head of the Gorgon on it, one of the attributes of the goddess. Dated on stylistic grounds, she is the earliest surviving sculpture of the goddess from Athens, the city of which she was protector and benefactor
Athens, Acropolis Museum 625
Purchased 9 Oct 1880 by the Fitzwilliam and transferred to the Museum in 1884
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 75, (n.1), pl. 21, 2
Schrader, Archaischen Marmorbildwerke des Akropolis (1939), 109-111, pl. 85
Payne & Young, Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Acropolis, 46-
Dickins, Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum I, 160-163
Walston, Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 19, no.53
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 891, no.44
Marx: Hesperia 70 (2001), 221-354
Hurwit: The Athenian Acropolis (1999), 125
Found on north slope of Acropolis, Athens
