Aegis

The aegis (/ˈiːdʒɪs/ EE-jis;[1] Ancient Greek: αἰγίς aigís), as stated in the Iliad, is a device carried by Athena and Zeus, variously interpreted as an animal skin or a shield and sometimes featuring the head of a Gorgon.

"[2] Virgil imagines the Cyclopes in Hephaestus' forge, who "busily burnished the aegis Athena wears in her angry moods—a fearsome thing with a surface of gold like scaly snake-skin, and the linked serpents and the Gorgon herself upon the goddess's breast—a severed head rolling its eyes",[6] furnished with golden tassels and bearing the Gorgoneion (Medusa's head) in the central boss.

13), Zeus is said to have used the skin of a pet goat owned by his nurse Amalthea (aigis "goat-skin") which suckled him in Crete, as a shield when he went forth to do battle against the Titans.

[7] The aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over Athena's shoulders and arms, occasionally with a border of snakes, usually also bearing the Gorgon head, the gorgoneion.

[7] A vestige of that appears in a portrait of Alexander the Great in a fresco from Pompeii dated to the first century BC, which shows the image of the head of a woman on his armor that resembles the Gorgon.

"[13] Robert Graves in The Greek Myths (1955) asserts that the aegis in its Libyan sense had been a shamanic pouch containing various ritual objects, bearing the device of a monstrous serpent-haired visage with tusk-like teeth and a protruding tongue which was meant to frighten away the uninitiated.

One current interpretation is that the Hittite sacral hieratic hunting bag (kursas), a rough and shaggy goatskin that has been firmly established in literary texts and iconography by H.G.

The aegis on the so-called Athena Lemnia , a Roman statue type often identified as a copy of a work by the Classical Greek sculptor Pheidias (Dresden Skulpturensammlung)
Athena's aegis, with Gorgon, here resembles the skin of the serpent who guards the golden fleece (regurgitating Jason); cup by Douris, early fifth century BC ( Vatican Museums )
First century BC depiction of Alexander wearing the aegis on the Alexander Mosaic , Pompeii ( Naples National Archaeological Museum )
Augustus shown with an aegis thrown over his shoulder as a divine attribute in the Blacas Cameo ; the hole for the head appears at the point of his shoulder. [ 12 ]