The

excavation essay opened in the southeastern corner of Temple D in the Valley of the Temples,

hitherto attributed to the Greek goddess Hera (Juno for the Romans), returning

the first helmeted head of Athena (Minerva for the Romans) - datable to the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century BC -

and an arm with the aegis and a clenched fist in an attacking attitude (a unique example in the panorama of the representations of the goddess in Akragas), according to archaeologists, reveals - albeit as a circumstantial element -

a new piece in the religious scenario of the city in the archaic and classical age.  

"If supported by other archaeological evidence - says Professor Gianfranco Adornato, associate of Classical Archeology at the Scuola Normale of Pisa to whose team the discovery is due -

the cult of Athena in the sanctuary of temple D on the southern hill will definitively replace the title of the temple to Hera Lacinia

, proposed by Tommaso Fazello in 1558 in “De Rebus Siculis Decades Duae”, the first printed book on the history of Sicily.

Attribution still in use today in manuals, but based on a literary source of dubious interpretation and not on material evidence ".

The head was presented today in a press conference at the headquarters of

the Archaeological and Landscape Park of the Valley of the Temples

, and was found as part of the

third excavation campaign of the

Scuola Normale Superiore with its Saet Laboratory in

Agrigento

, under scientific supervision. by Professor Gianfranco Adornato and Maria Concetta Parello, archaeologist officer.