Hera queen of gods

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Hera queen of gods.In ancient Greek religion, Hera (/ˈhɛrə, ˈhɪərə/; Greek: Ἥρα, translit. Hḗrā; Ἥρη, Hḗrē in Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women

and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she is queen of the twelve

Olympians and Mount Olympus, sister and wife of Zeus, and daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. One of her

defining characteristics in myth is her jealous and vengeful nature in dealing with any who offend her, especially

Zeus’ numerous adulterous lovers and illegitimate offspring.

Her iconography usually presents her as a dignified, matronly figure, upright or enthroned, crowned with

a polos or diadem, sometimes veiled as a married woman.[1] She is the patron goddess of lawful marriage. She

presides over weddings, blesses and legalises marital unions, and protects women from harm during childbirth. Her

sacred animals include the cow, cuckoo and the peacock. She is sometimes shown holding a pomegranate, as an

emblem of immortality. Her Roman counterpart is Juno.

Hera may have been the first deity to whom the Greeks dedicated an enclosed roofed temple sanctuary,

at Samos about 800 BCE. It was replaced later by the Heraion of Samos, one of the largest of all Greek temples

(altars were in front of the temples under the open sky). There were many temples built on this site, so the evidence

is somewhat confusing, and archaeological dates are uncertain.

The temple created by the Rhoecus sculptors and architects was destroyed between 570 and 560 BCE. This was

replaced by the Polycratean temple of 540–530 BCE. In one of these temples, we see a forest of 155 columns.

There is also no evidence of tiles on this temple suggesting either the temple was never finished or that the temple

was open to the sky.

Earlier sanctuaries, whose dedication to Hera is less certain, were of the Mycenaean type called “house

sanctuaries”.[12] Samos excavations have revealed votive offerings, many of them late 8th and 7th centuries BCE,

which show that Hera at Samos was not merely a local Greek goddess of the Aegean: the museum there contains

figures of gods and suppliants and other votive offerings from Armenia, Babylon, Iran, Assyria, Egypt, testimony to

the reputation which this sanctuary of Hera enjoyed and to the large influx of pilgrims. Compared to this mighty

goddess, who also possessed the earliest temple at Olympia and two of the great fifth and sixth-century temples

of Paestum, the termagant of Homer and the myths is an “almost… comic figure”, according to Burkert.[13]

The Temple of Hera at Agrigento, Magna Graecia.Hera queen of gods

Though the greatest and earliest free-standing temple to Hera was the Heraion of Samos, in the Greek mainland

Hera was especially worshipped as “Argive Hera” (Hera Argeia) at her sanctuary that stood between the former

Mycenaean city-states of Argos and Mycenae,[14][15] where the festivals in her honor called Heraia were

celebrated. “The three cities I love best,” the ox-eyed Queen of Heaven declares in the Iliad, book iv, “are Argos,

Sparta and Mycenae of the broad streets.” There were also temples to Hera

in Olympia, Corinth, Tiryns, Perachora and the sacred island of Delos. In Magna Graecia, two Doric temples to Hera

were constructed at Paestum, about 550 BCE and about 450 BCE. One of them, long called the Temple of