Talismans and Trojan Horses: Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual

References abound in Greek legends and historical accounts to special statues or images upon whose presence the continued safety or livelihood of a city or house depended. These images include statues of predatory beasts or destructive insects, plague gods, dangerous goddesses, and the like. Faraone describes the variety and range of these images and uses them to provide new interpretations of early Greek myths about Pandora, the Trojan Horse, and the living statues created by Hephaestus. He sets the Greek evidence in a wider eastern-Mediterranean context by detailed discussions of similar Near Eastern and Egyptian practices, and closes with a re-evaluation of the traditional scholarly approach to religious art as purely representational.