The so-called Mourning Athena is an

Athenian Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

marble

relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the ...

dated circa 460 BC. The relief is 0.48 m high and made of

Parian marble Parian marble is a fine-grained semi translucent pure-white and entirely flawless marble quarried during the classical era on the Greek island of Paros in the Aegean Sea. It was highly prized by ancient Greeks for making sculptures. Some of the ...

. It is displayed at the

Acropolis Museum The Acropolis Museum ( el, Μουσείο Ακρόπολης, ''Mouseio Akropolis'') is an archaeological museum focused on the findings of the archaeological site of the Acropolis of Athens. The museum was built to house every artifact found on ...

in Athens, inventory no. 695.

Description

The

goddess A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of s ...

, marked by her helmet of the Corinthian type, wears a

peplos A peplos ( el, ὁ πέπλος) is a body-length garment established as typical attire for women in ancient Greece by circa 500 BC, during the late Archaic and Classical period. It was a long, rectangular cloth with the top edge folded down a ...

, clasped at the shoulders and cinched at the waist. She rests her right hand on her hip and crosses her left leg over her right. Her left hand grasps a spear on which she leans, and her head is inclined. The meaning of her bowed head has been a matter of debate since the relief's excavation from the

Acropolis of Athens The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. Th ...

in 1888. As the conventional name suggests, many have taken the posture to indicate sadness or pensiveness, and thus to interpret the rectangular object on the viewer's right as a

stele A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...

, a stone slab that serves as a grave marker. Others see an 'exhausted Athena', and others still see no such emotion. The exact nature of the rectangular object, too, is unclear – some suggest that an object was perched atop it (e.g., the infant Erichthonius) – others that it is a marker from a race-course.

External links

Acropolis Museum's database entry.
5th-century BC Greek sculptures Sculptures of Athena Marble sculptures in Greece Acropolis Museum Marble reliefs Sculptures in Athens 1888 archaeological discoveries