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Plate 1 A crested Greek helmet in profile with a spear standing behind it, the arms of Athena

Goddesses of war

Goddesses of war include Athena in Greece, Inanna (Ishtar) in Mesopotamia, the lioness Sekhmet in Egypt, Durga in Hindu tradition and the Morrígan in Irish myth. Each fought in her own way: Athena with strategy, Sekhmet with the sun’s fire, Durga against a demon no god could kill.

Symbols across cultures. Also called goddess of battle, goddess of war, war goddess, warrior goddess.

Meaning

Athena is the war goddess of Greek myth, born in armour from the head of Zeus; Britannica calls her a goddess “of war, handicraft, and practical reason” who stood for “the intellectual and civilized side of war”. Inanna, whom the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project calls “equally fond of making war as she is of making love”, was the war goddess of Mesopotamian kings. Sekhmet, a lioness, destroyed the enemies of the sun god Re. Durga, a principal form of the supreme goddess in Hinduism, slew the buffalo demon Mahishasura, and is worshipped every year at Durga Puja. The Morrígan of Irish literature urges the gods to battle and announces their victory. War was a second power for several love goddesses: Freyja chose half the slain, and Britannica records that Aphrodite was honoured as a war goddess at Sparta and Thebes.

Origin and history

The Homeric Hymn to Athena describes her birth: “From his awful head wise Zeus himself bare her arrayed in warlike arms of flashing gold”, and she “sprang quickly from the immortal head … shaking a sharp spear”, so that Olympus reeled. In the Iliad, Britannica writes, she fights beside the Greek heroes, and “her aid is synonymous with military prowess”. The Romans identified her with Minerva. Her Greek page is Athena.

Inanna’s warrior side, Yağmur Heffron writes, does not appear before the Old Akkadian period, when King Naram-Sin often invoked “warlike Ištar”; in Assyria it became tied to the king himself. Britannica suggests that her power in war may have come from her link with storms, and notes that she is often shown with the lion, “whose roar resembled thunder”. Her page is Inanna and Ishtar.

Sekhmet’s name, E. A. Wallis Budge explained in 1904, comes from the root sekhem, “to be strong, mighty, violent”, and she was “the personification of the fierce, scorching, and destroying heat of the sun’s rays”; one of her commonest names was Nesert, “Flame”. Britannica describes her as a lioness, or a woman with a lioness’s head under the sun disc and the cobra, and adds that she brought disease and also healing. Like other fierce goddesses she was called the “Eye of Re”, which links her to the Eye of Ra.

Durga, in Britannica’s account, was created by the male gods to kill the buffalo demon Mahishasura, “who was invincible against male opponents”, and each god gave her a weapon: the trident from Shiva, the Sudarshana discus from Vishnu, the thunderbolt from Indra, the spear from Agni. She rides a lion or a tiger. W. J. Wilkins, writing in 1882, called her “a most powerful warrior”, incarnate under many names to destroy demons.

The Morrígan at Moytura

Britannica glosses her name as “Queen of Demons” and calls her a Celtic war goddess. In the Irish saga of the Second Battle of Moytura, as Whitley Stokes translated it in 1891, “the Morrigan, daughter of Ernmass, came, and was heartening the Tuatha Dea to fight the battle fiercely and fervently”; and when the battle was won and the dead cleared away, it was the Morrígan who went “to proclaim that battle and the mighty victory” to the royal heights of Ireland.

Love goddesses who went to war

War and love sit together in several goddesses, the reverse of the modern picture of a gentle goddess of love. Freyja, Britannica writes, had the privilege of choosing “one-half of the heroes slain in battle” for her hall, and the Prose Edda quotes the older poem: “Half of the slain She chooses each day; The other half is Odin’s.” Aphrodite, best known for love, was honoured as a war goddess at Sparta, Thebes and Cyprus. The goddesses of love page has the other side of each.

See also

Goddesses of love, Sekhmet, Eye of Ra, Tree of life, Labyrinth, Crescent moon.

Sources

  1. Athena (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Athena”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 18 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  2. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White), Hesiod, Theogony; Shield of Heracles; The Homeric Hymns, translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Loeb Classical Library, 1914), Project Gutenberg eBook #348, Project Gutenberg, Homeric Hymn 28, To Athena
  3. Inana/Ištar (goddess) (Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses), Yağmur Heffron, “Inana/Ištar (goddess)”, Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy (2019), Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses (Oracc, University of Pennsylvania Museum), character
  4. Ishtar (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Ishtar”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 20 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  5. Sekhmet (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Sekhmet”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 22 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  6. The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. 1 (E. A. Wallis Budge), E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, or Studies in Egyptian Mythology, vol. 1 (1904), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, pp. 514–515, “Sekhet”
  7. Durga (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Durga”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 25 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  8. Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purāṇic (W. J. Wilkins), W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology, Vedic and Purāṇic (Thacker, Spink & Co., 1882), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, pp. 247–248, “Durga”
  9. Morrígan (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Morrígan”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 1 August 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  10. The Second Battle of Moytura (Cath Maige Tuired), tr. Whitley Stokes, Whitley Stokes (ed. and tr.), “The Second Battle of Moytura”, Revue Celtique 12 (1891), Internet Archive full text, Internet Archive, §§ 137, 166
  11. Freyja (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Freyja”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 8 September 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article
  12. The Younger Edda (Anderson translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, 1880, Project Gutenberg, Gylfaginning, ch. 24, quoting Grímnismál 14
  13. Aphrodite (Encyclopaedia Britannica), “Aphrodite”, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Internet Archive copy, 6 October 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica, article

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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research

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