Cultural depictions of spiders of weaving. Eventually, she began to consider herself to be a greater weaver than the goddess Athena herself, and challenged the goddess to a weaving contest to prove her superior skill. Athena wove the scene of her victory over Poseidon that had earned her the patronage of Athens, while Arachne wove a tapestry featuring many episodes of infidelity among the Gods of Olympus, which angered Athena. The goddess conceded that Arachne's weaving was flawless, but she was infuriated by the mortal's pride. In a final moment of anger, Athena destroyed Arachne's tapestry and loom with her shuttle and cursed Arachne
Athena rare for personal names. Testimonies from different cities in ancient Greece attest that similar city goddesses were worshipped in other cities and, like Athena, took their names from the cities where they were worshipped. For example, in Mycenae there was a goddess called Mykene, whose sisterhood was known as "Mykenai", whereas at Thebes an analogous deity was called Thebe, and the city was known under the plural form "Thebai" (or Thebes, in English, where the ‘s’ is the plural formation). The name "Athenai" is likely of Pre-Greek origin because it contains the presumably Pre-Greek morpheme "*-ān-". In his dialogue "Cratylus",