Aegis

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"Aegis" is a large collar or cape worn in ancient times to display the protection provided by a high religious authority or, it is the holder of a protective shield signifying the same, such as a bag-like garment that contained a shield. Sometimes the garment and the shield are merged, with a small version of the shield appearing on the garment. It originally was derived from the protective shield associated with a religious figure when related in myths and images. The wearing of the aegis and its contents show sponsorship, protection, or authority derived from yet a higher source or deity. The name has been extended to many other entities, and the concept of a protective shield is found in other mythologies, while its form varies across sources.

The concept of doing something "under someone's aegis" now means doing something under the protection of a powerful, knowledgeable, or benevolent source. The word aegis is identified with protection by a strong force with its roots in Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
and adopted by the Romans; there are parallels in Norse mythology

Norse mythology

Norse, Viking or Scandinavian mythology comprises the beliefs, myths and legends of the Norse paganism of the North Germanic language people, including those who settled on Faroe Islands and Iceland, where most of the written sources for Norse mythology were assembled....
and in Egyptian mythology

Egyptian mythology

Ancient Egyptian religion encompasses the various religious beliefs and rituals practiced in ancient Egypt over at least 3,000 years, from the Predynastic Egypt until the adoption of Coptic Christianity in the early centuries Common Era....
as well, where the Greek word aegis is applied by extension.

In Greek mythology

The aegis (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
?????), already attested in the Iliad

ILiad

The iLiad is an electronic handheld device, or e-book device, which can be used for document reading and editing. Like the Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, the iLiad makes use of an electronic paper display....
, is the shield

Shield

A shield is a protective device, meant to intercept attacks. The term often refers to a device that is held in the hand, as opposed to armour or a bullet proof vest....
or buckler

Buckler

A buckler is a small shield, 15 to 45 cm in diameter, gripped in the fist; it was generally used as a companion weapon in hand-to-hand combat during the Middle Ages, as its size made it poor protection against missile weapons but useful in deflecting the blow of an opponent's sword or Mace ....
of Pallas Athena or of Zeus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
, which according to Homer

Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
was fashioned by Hephaestus

Hephaestus

Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan . He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculpture, metals, metallurgy, Fire and volcanoes....
. Virgil imagines the Cyclopes

Cyclops

In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, a cyclops , is a member of a primordial race of giant , each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead....
in Hephaestus' forge, who "busily burnished the aegis Athene wears in her angry moods--a fearsome thing with a surface of gold like scaly snake-skin, and he linked serpents and the Gorgon herself upon the goddess’ breast--a severed head rolling its eyes." -- furnished with golden tassels and bearing the Gorgoneion (Medusa

Medusa

In Greek mythology, Medusa was a gorgon, a chthonic female monster; gazing upon her would turn onlookers to stone. She was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon until giving it to the goddess Athena to place on her Aegis....
's head) in the central boss. Some of the Attic

Attica

Attica is a Peripheries of Greece in Greece, containing Athens, the capital of Greece. Attica is subdivided into the prefectures of Greece of Athens Prefecture, Piraeus Prefecture, East Attica and West Attica....
vase-painters retained an archaic tradition that the tassels had originally been serpents

Serpent (symbolism)

Serpent is a word of Latin origin that is commonly used in a specifically mythology or religion context, signifying a snake that is to be regarded not as a mundane natural phenomenon nor as an object of scientific zoology, but as the bearer of some symbolic value....
in their representations of the ægis. When the Olympian deities overtook the older deities of Greece and she was born of Metis (inside Zeus who had swallowed the goddess) and "re-born" through the head of Zeus fully clothed, Athene already wore her typical garments.

When the Olympian shakes the aegis, Mount Ida

Mount Ida

In Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the "Mountain of the Goddess": Mount Ida, Crete, and Mount Ida, Turkey, known as Mount Ida, Turkey in Classical times....
is wrapped in clouds, the thunder rolls and men are struck down with fear. "Aegis-bearing Zeus", as he is in the Iliad, sometimes lends the fearsome goatskin to Athena

Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
. In the Iliad when Zeus sends Apollo to revive the wounded Hector of Troy, Apollo, holding the aegis, charges the Achaeans, pushing them back to their ships drawn up on the shore. According to Edith Hamilton

Edith Hamilton

Edith Hamilton was an United States educator and author, and was "recognized as the greatest woman classicist." She was 62 when she published her first book, The Greek Way, in 1930....
's Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes , the Aegis is Zeus

Zeus

Breastplate

A breastplate is a device worn over the torso either to protect the torso from injury, or as an item of religious significance, or as an item of status....
, and was "awful to behold."

Locating the aegis

]]

Greeks of the Classical age

Classical Greece

Classical Greece was a culture that was highly advanced and which heavilly influenced the cultures of Ancient Rome and much of the Western World....
always detected that there was something alien and uncanny about the aegis. It was supposed by Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedy of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias....
(Ion, 995) that the Gorgon

Gorgon

In Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a vicious monster with sharp fangs. She was a protective deity from early religious concepts. Her power was so strong that one attempting to look upon her, would be turned to stone, therefore, such images were put upon items from temples to wine kraters for protection....
was the original possessor of this goatskin, yet the usual understanding is that the Gorgoneion was added to the aegis, a votive gift from a grateful Perseus

Perseus

Perseus , the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Mycenae there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits in defeating various archaic monsters provided the founding myths in the cult of the Twelve Olympians....
.

There also is the origin myth that represents the ægis as a fire-breathing chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Ancient Greek religion.Greek khthon is one of several words for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the Landscape or the land as territory ....
monster similar to the Chimera, which was slain and flayed by Athena

Athena

In Greek mythology, Athena is the shrewd companion of Hero and the goddess of Hero endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens, which built the Parthenon to worship her....
, who afterward wore its skin as a cuirass

Cuirass

Cuirass , the plate armour, is formed of a single piece of metal or other rigid material or composed of two or more pieces, which covers the front of the wearer's person....
(Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus , was a Roman Greece historian who flourished in the 1st century BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agira in Sicily ....
iii. 70), or as a chlamys

Chlamys

The chlamys was an ancient Greece piece of clothing, namely a cloak. The chlamys was typically worn by Greek soldiers from the 5th century BC to the 3rd century BC....
. The Douris cup shows that the aegis was represented exactly as the skin of the guardian serpent, with its scales clearly delineated. Often the aegis is described as the bag in which Athene carried her shield and the serpent who was her son.

John Tzetzes

John Tzetzes

John Tzetzes , was a Byzantine Empire poet and grammarian, known to have lived at Constantinople during the 12th century.Tzetzes was Georgians on his mother's side ....
says that it was the skin of the monstrous giant Pallas

Pallas (Giant)

In Greek mythology, Pallas was one of the Gigantes born of the blood which spilled onto Gaia when Cronus castrated his father Uranus . Pallas confronted Athena during the Gigantomachy, where she killed him and turned his skin into a shield . Pallas is sometimes referred to as being goat-like....
whom Athena overcame and whose name she attached to her own.

In a late rendering by Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus

Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, though whether a native of Spain or of Alexandria it is not clear, a pupil of the famous Alexander Cornelius, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus, by whom he was made superintendent of the Palatine library, according to Suetonius' minor works, De Grammaticis, 20....
, (Poetical Astronomy ii. 13) Zeus is said to have used the skin of the goat

Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep: both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae....
deity Amalthea

Amalthea (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Amalthea or Amaltheia is the most often mentioned among foster-mothers of Zeus. Her name in Greek is clearly an epithet, signifying the presence of an earlier nurturing goddess, whom the Hellenes, whose myths we know, knew to be located in Crete, where Minoan civilizations may have called her a version of "Dikte"...
(aigis "goat-skin") which suckled him in Crete

Crete

Crete is the largest of the Greek islands and the List of islands in the Mediterranean largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? ....
, as a shield when he went forth to do battle against the titan

Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans ; were a race of powerful deities that ruled during the legendary golden age. Their role as Elder Gods was overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Twelve Olympians, effected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks borrowed from the Ancient Near East....
s. She is thought to bear the name of the deity who was derived from Libya, where known as Neith, the same source sometimes identified as the parallel for Athene.

In accordance with this double meaning, the aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over the shoulders and arms, and sometimes as a cuirass, with a border of snakes corresponding to the tassels of Homer, usually with the Gorgon head, the gorgoneion, in the centre.

It often is represented on the statues of Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
emperors, heroes, and warriors as well as on cameos and vases. A vestige of that appears in a portrait of Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great , also known as Alexander III of Macedon was an ancient Greeks King of Macedon . He was one of the most successful military commanders of all time and is presumed undefeated in battle....
in a fresco from Pompeii dated to the first century B.C., which shows the image of the head of a woman on his armor that resembles the Gorgon.

A current modern interpretation is that the Hittite

Hittites

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a Hittite language of the Anatolian languages of the Indo-European languages family, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia ca....
sacral hieratic hunting bag (kursas), a rough and shaggy goatskin that has been firmly established in literary texts and iconography by H. G. Güterbock, as the most likely source of the aegis..

Origins

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
(Histories iv.189) thought he had identified the source of the ægis in Libya

Libya

Libya , officially the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya , is a country located in North Africa. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Libya lies between Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
, which was always a distant territory of ancient magic for the Greeks:

Athene's garments and ægis were borrowed by the Greeks from the Libyan women, who are dressed in exactly the same way, except that their leather garments are fringed with thongs, not serpents.

Robert Graves

Robert Ranke Graves was an England poet, translator and novelist. During his long life, he produced more than 140 works. He was the son of the Anglo-Irish writer Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke, a niece of the famous German historian Leopold von Ranke....
in The Greek Myths (1955; 1960) asserts that the ægis 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. In this context, Graves identifies the aegis as clearly belonging first to Athena.

Another version describes it to have been really the goat's skin used as a belt to support the shield. When so used it would generally be fastened on the right shoulder, and would partially envelop the chest as it passed obliquely round in front and behind to be attached to the shield under the left arm. Hence, by metonymy

Metonymy

Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept....
, it would be employed to denote at times the shield which it supported, and at other times a cuirass

Cuirass

Cuirass , the plate armour, is formed of a single piece of metal or other rigid material or composed of two or more pieces, which covers the front of the wearer's person....
, or chlamys

Chlamys

The chlamys was an ancient Greece piece of clothing, namely a cloak. The chlamys was typically worn by Greek soldiers from the 5th century BC to the 3rd century BC....
, the purpose of which it in part served. In accordance with this double meaning, the ægis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over the shoulders and arms, and sometimes as a cuirass, with a border of snakes corresponding to the tassels of Homer, usually with the Gorgon's head, the gorgoneion, in the centre. It is often represented on the statues of Roman

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
emperors, heroes, and warriors, and on cameos and vases.

A current modern interpretation is that the Hittite

Hittites

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a Hittite language of the Anatolian languages of the Indo-European languages family, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia ca....
sacral hieratic hunting bag (kursas), a rough and shaggy goatskin that has been firmly established in literary texts and iconography by H.G. Güterbock, is the most likely source of the aegis..

Etymology

Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
????? has three meanings:

"violent windstorm", from the verb 'aïss? (stem 'aï?-) = "I rush or move violently"
The shield of a deity as described above
"goatskin coat", from treating the word as "something grammatically feminine pertaining to goat
Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep: both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae....
(Greek a?? (stem a??-))"

The original meaning may have been #1, and ?e?? '???????? = "Zeus who holds the aegis" may have originally meant "Sky/Heaven, who holds the storm". The transition to the meaning "shield" may have come by folk-etymology among a people familiar with draping an animal skin over the left arm as a shield.

In Egyptian and Nubian mythology

The aegis also appears in Ancient Egyptian mythology

Egyptian mythology

Ancient Egyptian religion encompasses the various religious beliefs and rituals practiced in ancient Egypt over at least 3,000 years, from the Predynastic Egypt until the adoption of Coptic Christianity in the early centuries Common Era....
. The goddess Bast sometimes was depicted holding a ceremonial sistrum

Sistrum

A sistrum is a musical instrument of the percussion instrument family, chiefly associated with ancient Egypt. It consists of a handle and a U-shaped metal frame, made of brass or bronze and between 10 and 30 cm in width....
in one hand and an aegis in the other – the aegis usually resembling a collar or gorget

Gorget

File:Gorget .pngA gorget originally was a steel Collar designed to protect the throat. It was a feature of older types of armour and intended to protect against swords and other non-projectile weapons ....
embellished with a lioness head. Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
drew a parallel between Athene and the ancient Libyan and Egyptian goddess Neith

Neith

In Ancient Egyptian religion, Neith was an early goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. She was the patron Deities#Egyptian mythology of Sais, Egypt, where her cult was centered in the Western Nile Delta of Egypt and attested as early as the First Dynasty.....
, a war deity

List of war deities

"War Gods" redirects here. For the video game, see War Gods .The following is a list of war deities....
who also was depicted carrying a shield.

Ancient Nubia

Nubia

Nubia is a region in Southern Egypt along the Nile and in what is now northern Sudan. Most of Nubia is situated in Sudan with about a quarter of its territory in Egypt....
shared many aspects of its mythology with ancient Egypt and there is debate about the original source of some religious concepts that the two cultures share and, whether the assimilation was from Nubia to Egypt, the reverse, or through continuing exchanges. At one time the Kush of Nubia ruled ancient Egypt.

The image to the right was discovered in Sudan

Sudan

Sudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest in the African continent and the Arab World, and List of countries and outlying territories by total area by area....
, which is the contemporary name for the territory of Nubia during the period in which the artifact was made, during the 300s BC. The figure is that of Isis

ISIS

ISIS is an industry standard interface for technologies, developed by Pixel Translations in 1990 .ISIS is an open standard for scanner control and a complete image-processing framework....
and she is wearing an aegis. It is likely to be an artifact of the flourishing culture of Meroë

Meroë

Mero? is the name of an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east of the Kabushiya station near Shendi, Sudan, approximately 200 km north-east of Khartoum....
, successors to the culture of Kush, because of the use of Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements....
and cartouche

Cartouche

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oblong inclosure with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a pharaoh name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth dynasty of Egypt under Pharaoh Sneferu....
s.

In Norse mythology

Norse mythology

Fafnir

In Norse mythology, F?fnir or Fr?nir was a son of the Norse dwarves king Hreidmar and brother of Regin and ?tr. In the Volsunga saga, F?fnir was a dwarf gifted with a powerful arm and fearless soul....
(best known in the form of a dragon slain by Sigurðr) bears on his forehead the Ægis-helm (ON ægishjálmr), or Ægir's helmet, or more specifically the "Helm of Terror". (However, some versions would say that Alberich was the one holding a helm, named as the Tarnkappe, which has the power to make the user invisible. It may be an actual helmet or a magical sign with a rather poetic name. Ægir is an Old Norse word meaning "terror" and the name of a destructive giant associated with the sea; ægis is the genitive (possessive) form of ægir and has no direct relation to Greek aigis.

Aegis

In Greek mythology

Locating the aegis

Origins

Etymology

In Egyptian and Nubian mythology

In Norse mythology

External links