Boeotia
Goddess with feathered headdress and antlers, flanked by lions, on a pithos circa 700 bce. Her wide body is robed in a cloth woven in the seed-in-field pattern, and two young people embrace her. Beneath her walks a line of deer.
Why Hera and not Artemis? Goddesses in this era often share attributes, partly because of massive borrowing from west Asian styles. She is wearing the archaic feathered headdress which originated with Ashtart in western Asia and migrated to Greece via Cyprus. Chrysoula Kardara has shown* that this headdress is an attribute of Hera, though it's also seen on female sphinxes. And, "The supreme goddess of Boeotia was Hera..."*Chrysoula Kardara, "Problems of Hera's Cult Images," in American Journal of Archaeology, Vol 64, No 4 (Oct. 1960)
Argos
The other great sanctuary of Hera in historic times was in Argos. This was her oldest temple in Greece, followed by the Olympian Heraion that predated the temple of Zeus by centuries. This Roman-era coin shows Hera enthroned before a wheel, which appears on many coins depicting this goddess.
Sparta
This ivory plaque is one of thousands of offerings from the Sanctuary of Ortheia in Sparta in archaic times. It probably shows Hera with Zeus, both grasping a tree or staff. Again she is shown with the feather headdress.
Limestone head of Hera from Olympia. Hers was the first temple on this mountain sanctuary that later became the bailiwick of Zeus, whose own temple was not built until centuries after that of Hera.Another example of the feathered headdress and other stylistic similarities to west Asian sculpture, especially in the brow.
Classical vase showing Hera enthroned with staff and one of her sacred animals, the cuckoo. By this time she has lost her headdress.
