<P> The aegis appears in works of art sometimes as an animal's skin thrown over Athena's shoulders and arms, occasionally with a border of snakes, usually also bearing the Gorgon head, the gorgoneion . In some pottery it appears as a tasselled cover over Athena's dress . It is sometimes represented on the statues of Roman emperors, heroes, and warriors, and on cameos and vases . A vestige of that appears in a portrait of Alexander the Great in a fresco from Pompeii dated to the first century BC, which shows the image of the head of a woman on his armor that resembles the Gorgon . </P> <P> Herodotus thought he had identified the source of the ægis in ancient Libya, which was always a distant territory of ancient magic for the Greeks . "Athene's garments and ægis were borrowed by the Greeks from the Libyan women, who are dressed in exactly the same way, except that their leather garments are fringed with thongs, not serpents ." </P> <P> Robert Graves in The Greek Myths (1955; 1960) asserts that the ægis in its Libyan sense had been a shamanic pouch containing various ritual objects, bearing the device of a monstrous serpent - haired visage with tusk - like teeth and a protruding tongue which was meant to frighten away the uninitiated . In this context, Graves identifies the aegis as clearly belonging first to Athena . </P> <P> One current interpretation is that the Hittite sacral hieratic hunting bag (kursas), a rough and shaggy goatskin that has been firmly established in literary texts and iconography by H.G. Güterbock, was a source of the aegis . </P>

Who created the aegis breastplate for the greek god zeus