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 warrior-goddess with her "palladion", or her palladion in an aniconic representation. In the "Procession Fresco" at Knossos, which was reconstructed by the Mycenaeans, two rows of figures carrying vessels seem to meet in front of a central figure, which is probably the Minoan precursor to Athena. The early twentieth-century scholar Martin Persson Nilsson argued that the Minoan snake goddess figurines are early representations of Athena. Nilsson and others have claimed that, in early times, Athena was either an owl herself or a bird goddess in general. In the third book of the "Odyssey", she takes the form of a sea-eagle.