Athena

Athena - Minerva

Minerva was a Roman goddess on the brighter side of living, and a counterpart to Greek Athena. It is assumed that in Etruscan mythology, Minerva was the patron goddess of wisdom, war, art, schools and commerce - also of medicine and doctors - and Minerva's festival was celebrated from March 19 to March 23.

From the 2nd century BCE, Romans regarded her as equivalent with the Greek goddess Athena. In Britain, Minerva was conflated with the local wisdom goddess Sulis. Ancient Greeks identified Athena with the ancient Egyptian goddess Neith, who in some ways resembled the ancient Berber goddess Tanit.

Athena of the Greeks is a goddess of wisdom, of household arts and crafts, of spinning and weaving, and of textiles. Athena is also inventor of the flute, the plough and the ox-yoke, the horse bridle and the chariot. Identified as Athena Nike (Victory) she is usually depicted with wings as the goddess of victory. Athena is not known to have a bellicose nature, nor does she bear arms except when her country is threatened or attacked. Then she fights well and helps or saves her champions too.

Her companion is the intellectual and civilized side of living and the goddess of victory. Her sacred bird is the owl, which is why wisdom is associated with that bird in our culture. She has some other symbols associated with her too. ◊

A "Minerva guy" is someone who "resonates" in the fields or on the wavelengths of Minerva, whether they be arts, domestic arts, city planning, certain kinds of music, victorious literature, and ploughing through books in (higher) study -

There are very many outlets and combinations of them and of our civilization too, it seems safe to say.

A tour through a goddess history

The Greek historian, Herodotus (c. 484-425 BC), noted that the Egyptian citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped Neith and that they identified her with Athena. The Timaeus, a Socratic dialogue written by Plato, mirrors that identification with Athena, possibly as a result of the identification of both goddesses with war and weaving.

In Egyptian mythology, Neith (also known as Nit, Net, and Neit) was an early goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. She was the patron deity of Sais, where her cult was centered in the Western Nile Delta of Egypt and attested as early as the First Dynasty. In the history of Egyptian myths, she became a goddess of weaving who wove all of the world and existence into being on her loom. Neith was considered to be a goddess of wisdom. As a goddess of weaving and the domestic arts she was a protector of women and a guardian of marriage, so royal women often named themselves after Neith, in her honour.

Proclus (412–485 AD) wrote that the adyton of the temple of Neith in Sais carried the following inscription: "I am the things that are, that will be, and that have been. No one has ever laid open the garment by which I am hidden. The fruit I brought forth was the sun."

Neith may correspond to the goddess Tanit, worshipped in north Africa by the early Berber culture. Tanit is a virginal mother goddess and nurse, and a symbol of fertility. Her symbol is quite like the Egyptian ankh.

[Wikipedia, s.v. "Minerva," Athena," and "Neith"]