An Athena Parthenos from Cilicia

Abstract

In the winter of 1974 farmers working in their fields near the village of Selimiye about fifteen kilometres south-east of Ceyhan uncovered a small round limestone altar bearing an image in relief of the goddess Athena (Pl. XVII a). The form and attributes of the figure—left hand on shield, left leg slightly bent, Nike on right hand, aegis on breast—clearly indicate that the relief owes much to Pheidias' great chryselephantine statue in Athens. It may thus be added to a considerable number of representations dating back to Hellenistic times that show the interest in Pheidias' masterpiece in southeastern Asia Minor. In itself it is important as an addition to the handful of reliefs depicting one of the most famous monuments of antiquity.The altar joins a number of other similar monuments, mostly funerary in nature, of varying dimensions in the Adana regional museum. Its height is 0·64 m., its diameter at the base 0·38 m. It consists of a flat round base supporting a series of mouldings (torus, cyma reversa, fillet—Fig. 1a), a central drum divided unequally into a lower and a slightly projecting upper section, a further series of mouldings (fillet, ovolo—Fig. 1b) above which rises a biconical rim with flattened edge, a short continuation of the drum and finally a capping moulding (much mutilated in our specimen). The top is slightly convex with a shallow, rough depression in the middle 0·011 m. deep and 0·11 m. in diameter. Except for the relief and surrounding area the whole stone is dressed down with a claw chisel. There is some entasis apparent in the central portion of the drum.