Ergane

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Ergane ( ancient Greek Ἐργάνη , "Werkerin") is an epiclesis (invocation epithet) of the Greek goddess Athena , with her as protector of the craft , especially the weaving was revered.

Athene is already described as a worker in Homer , for example by weaving and teaching the art of weaving or generally emphasizing her work. In ancient literature she appears as the goddess of craftsmen or specifically as the goddess of weaving art. As the goddess of the working people, she is well-disposed towards those who get up early, which is why Pausanias understands the rooster as the sacred animal of Athena.

The epithet was also traced back to the numerous inventions and skills that were ascribed to Athena as a bringer of culture .

cult

Athene Ergane was venerated in the Hephaistion on the agora

An important place of worship of the Ergane was Athens , on whose acropolis several dedicatory inscriptions and votive offerings were found. According to the inscriptions, the donors of these consecration offerings were both women and men. In addition, the Hephaistion on the agora, dedicated to the blacksmith god Hephaestus , was also used as the temple of Athene Ergane, a cult statue of her was next to the statue of Hephaestus. It has also been suggested that Peplos , consecrated to Athene Polias as part of the Panathenaia , was dedicated to her in the capacity of “worker”. After Pausanias, the Athenians were the first to worship Athena with this epiclesis, but this is unlikely due to the spatial distribution of the epithet.

In Delphi she had her own temple and in Sparta a sanctuary. In Thespiai there was a statue of Athena Ergane next to one of Plutus , and in Megalopolis there was one of the statues of the " Ergatai " named deities below the temple of Asclepius. It is also inscribed in Epidauros and Delos , and in late antique grammarians there are also references to a cult on Samos . In the shrine of Zeus in Olympia she finally had an altar at which monthly sacrifices were made. In the chronological order of the acts of sacrifice, Pausanias names the altar of the Ergane between a double altar of Hera Laoitis and Athene Laoitis on the one hand and the altar of an Athena without a nickname on the other.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Homer, Iliad 14, 178 ; Odyssey 7, 110 .
  2. ↑ Homer Iliad 9,190 .
  3. ^ Sophocles , fragment 760, in: August Nauck : Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta , 2nd edition, 1889.
  4. ↑ Aelian , De natura animalium 1, 21; 6, 57; Varia historia 1, 2; 3, 24.
  5. ↑ Plutarch , Quaestiones convivales 3, 6, 4.
  6. ↑ Pausanias 6:26 , 3 .
  7. ↑ Diodorus 5, 73 ; Pausanias with Eustathios of Thessalonike , Commentary on Iliad and Odyssey 1437, 48.
  8. ^ Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, Adolf Furtwängler : Athene . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, column 681 ( digitized version ).
  9. ↑ Pausanias 1, 24, 3 .
  10. ↑ Pausanias 3:17 , 4 .
  11. ↑ Pausanias 9:26 , 8 .
  12. ^ Pausanias 5:14 , 5 .