BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Medusa-clad Athena Statue Unearthed

Statue shows ties to Cleopatra and Rome’s mythic world

The 6.5-foot-tall marble statue of Athena wearing a Medusa breastplate (aegis), found in Laodicea. Courtesy Celal Şimşek.

A press release issued by the Republic of Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced the excavation of a 6.5-foot-tall marble statue of Athena in Laodicea (southwestern Turkey). Discovered in the site’s Western Theater, the Athena statue was found face down in rubble near the stage building with its head and portions of its arms missing. Nonetheless, its body, which excavators characterize as being of high artistic quality, preserves fascinating iconographic details: a finely carved peplos (a traditional female garment), a cloak, and an aegis (a protective breastplate) decorated with a scaled bodice, snakes, and the head of Medusa.

Stylistically, archaeologists associate the piece with the Augustan period (27 BCE–14 CE). This places the statue within a pivotal historical moment involving none other than Cleopatra VII: the transformation of Rome from a republic to an empire. Augustus (formerly Octavian) rose to power after the civil wars that followed Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE. Octavian’s chief rival, Mark Antony, aligned with Cleopatra and together they controlled much of the eastern Mediterranean. When Octavian defeated them at the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, he eliminated the last major opposition to his power. Octavian then  consolidated control over the Roman world, established the Principate, and inaugurated the period known as the Pax Romana (“Roman Peace”).

By the time of Augustus, Rome had already conquered the Greek world militarily, yet, as the Roman poet Horace famously put it, “captured Greece captured her conqueror.” The presence of Athena—an Olympian deity rendered in a classical style and displayed in an early Roman imperial context—attests to how profoundly Greek culture shaped Roman identity. The Western Theater itself was originally built in the Hellenistic period (second century BCE) and contained sculptures from Homeric myths as well.

Close-up shot of Athena’s aegis, showing a scaled bodice, snakes, and Medusa’s head. Courtesy the Republic of Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The inclusion of Medusa on Athena’s aegis is expected (and in large part what identifies the headless statue as Athena) but is nonetheless fascinating. Medusa belongs to the Greek myth cycle of Perseus, which has multiple ancient versions.

In earlier Greek tradition (e.g., in references from Homer or Hesiod), Medusa appears as a monstrous figure without a backstory. In later Greek and Roman-era versions—most famously in Ovid’s Metamorphoses—she is reimagined as a once-human woman who is sexually assaulted by Poseidon (Roman Neptune) in a sanctuary of Athena (Roman Minerva). In keeping with the poem’s broader theme of transformation, Athena responds by turning the woman into a Gorgon, a figure whose gaze transforms onlookers to stone. The victim, in other words, is transformed into a monster, who in-turn transforms others to stone. Later, Athena gives Perseus reflective equipment that allows him to avert Medusa’s gaze and approach. He beheads her then presents the severed head to Athena, who transforms this being once more, this time into a protective emblem on her aegis (hence the easy identification of the statue as Athena at Laodicea).

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Laodicea connects directly to the biblical world. Paul mentions the community at Laodicea several times, e.g., Colossians 2:1, suggesting a Christian community was already established there by the mid-first century CE. In Revelation 3:14–22, Laodicea is one of the “Seven Churches of Asia” criticized for its wealth and spiritual complacency (Asia was the name of a Roman province in Turkey, not the modern continent).

The statue of Athena found in the Western Theater at Laodicea—along with the statues depicting episodes from Homer’s epics—helps to reconstruct the cultural environment in which early Christians lived. This was a world saturated with Greek mythology, where mythological imagery was not unusual but a fact of public space. For the inhabitants of Laodicea, including emerging Christian communities, it would have been an everyday experience to look upon such statues. One might even say these viewers could look upon Medusa without the fear of ever turning to stone.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

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