Mourning Athena
Shallow relief.
Athena is shown with her military helmet and spear, and looks down at a pillar. Her pose seems sorrowful, and it has been suggested that the pillar represents a memorial or list of Athenian dead. Perhaps Athena is contemplating the soldiers who have died in the name of her city.
Athens was almost constantly at war with her rival city-states at the time that this relief was made. At some point it was knocked down, forgotten and re-used
Athens, Acropolis Museum 695
Purchased 1922
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 110 (n.2), pl. 35.1
Richter: Sculpture & Sculptors of the Greeks (1950), 169, fig.206
Lawrence: Classical Sculpture (1928), 182
Lippold G: Brunn-Bruckmann, Denkmäler Griechischer und Römischer Skulptur, pl. 783, text vol. 6 (1947)
Picard: Archéologie Grècque; Sculpture I (1935), fig.101
Dickins: Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum I, 259-
Hurwit: The Athenian Acropolis (1999), 150
Found in 1888 built into the wall of a building south of the Parthenon