The original gold-and-ivory Athena Parthenos does not survive intact. A responsible gallery must distinguish the lost original, ancient copies, later artistic interpretations and contemporary reconstructions.
Pausanias describes the goddess standing in a long garment with the head of Medusa on her breast. He also describes the Victory in her hand, the shield and a serpent beside the spear. These details provide a textual witness to the image as he understood it.
Identifying an attribute is only a first step. A Gorgon ornament can belong to a particular iconographic programme; it should not automatically be assigned one universal symbolic meaning across centuries.
This is a textual object study. No museum photograph is attached to this record until its object identification and image rights have been checked.