Athena and Africa
[Or almost every source with Athena being associated with Africa, it doesnt include sources where they just called her Tritogenia or Tritonis, this is just for fun btw.]
Libyan Athena and Lake Tritonis (Modern Tunisia or Algeria)
Next to these Machlyans are the Auseans. These and the Machlyans dwell round the lake Tritonis, and the river Triton is the boundary between them: and while the Machlyans grow their hair long at the back of the head, the Auseans do so in front. At a yearly festival of Athene their maidens take their stand in two parties and fight against one another with stones and staves, and they say that in doing so they are fulfilling the rites handed down by their fathers for the divinity who was sprung from that land, whom we call Athene
They say moreover that Athene is the daughter of Poseidon and of the lake Tritonis, and that she had some cause of complaint against her father and therefore gave herself to Zeus, and Zeus made her his own daughter.
-Herodotus, Histories
The following is the manner of sacrifice which the nomads have: they cut off a part of the animal's ear as a first offering and throw it over the house, and having done this they twist its neck. They sacrifice only to the Sun and the Moon; that is to say, to these all the Libyans sacrifice, but those who dwell round the lake Tritonis sacrifice most of all to Athene, and next to Triton and Poseidon.
-Herodotus, Histories
It would appear also that the Hellenes made the dress and the aigis of the images of Athene after the model of the Libyan women; for except that the dress of the Libyan women is of leather, and the tassels which hang from their aigis are not formed of serpents but of leather thongs, in all other respects Athene is dressed like them. Moreover the name too declares that the dress of the figures of Pallas has come from Libya, for the Libyan women wear over their other garments bare goat-skins (aigeas) with tasselled fringes and coloured over with red madder, and from the name of these goat-skins the Hellenes formed the name aigis.
-Plato, Timaeus
In this Syrtis was the island and lake called Tritonis and the river Triton, hence the sanctuary of Athena Tritonis.
-Pseudo Scylax, Periplous
And there all would have parted from life without a name and unknown to mortal men, those bravest of heroes, with their task unfulfilled; but as they pined in despair, the heroine-nymphs, warders of Libya, had pity on them, they who once found Athena, what time she leapt in gleaming armour from her father's head, and bathed her by Trito's waters.
-Apollonius Rhodes, Agronautica
Often in the fatal struggles of war, Mars, or swift Minerva the lady of Lake Tritonis, or virgin Artemis appeared to exhort the crowds of armed men.
-Catullus, Poems
On its shoreline a huge swamp receives the Triton River; the swamp itself is Lake Triton, that is, the lake of Minerva, who, as the locals think, was born there, whence it was given her epithet. They give some credibility to that legend, because they celebrate the day they think is her birthday with contests of virgins, who compete among themselves.
-Pomponius Mela, Chorographia
So he guessed that a woman wandered from them, reached Lake Tritonis, and harried the neighbours until Perseus killed her; Athena was supposed to have helped him in this exploit, because the people who live around Lake Tritonis are sacred to her.
-Pausanias, Description of Greece
But when I saw that the statue of Athena had blue eyes I found out that the legend about them is Libyan. For the Libyans have a saying that the Goddess is the daughter of Poseidon and Lake Tritonis, and for this reason has blue eyes like Poseidon.
-Pausanias, Description of Greece
TRITONIA: either because she is, as it were, terrifying, from trein, that is, “to fear”; or from the river Triton in Boeotia; or from the Triton marsh in Africa, beside which she is said to have been born, according to Lucan: “and she called herself beloved by the waters of Tritonis”
-Servius, COMMENTARY ONVIRGIL'S AENEID
Ogygus founded Eleusis in Attica, which anciently used to be called Acte, and very many other communities. In his time a virgin appeared at Lake Triton, whom the Greeks named Minerva.
-Jerome, Chronicon
"Destroy not my canes, the growth of my streams, which grow up to support the shoots and grapes of your vine! Do not the reeds tied together carry your well-watered fruit? Burn not my reeds, which make your Mygdonian hoboys, or your musical Athena may reproach you one day: she who invented the Libyan double pipes, to imitate with their tootle the voices of the Gorgons' grim heads.
-Nonnus, Dionysiaca
But Harmonia's mate held his shield before her, grasping in hand the spear of Libyan Athena to defend his beloved wife, and put to flight the whole nation of western Ethiopians, with armed Zeus as ally, with Ares and Cythereia.
-Nonnus, Dionysiaca
“Thrice-born” is Athena mythically because she was born in the Triton river of Libya as Homer says, and even if not mythically, “Daughter of Zeus, most glorious, Tritogeneia” and Aeschylus mythically says “then about the pouring of the birth seed in the place of Triton” in Libya
-Tzetzes, Ad Lycophronem
Athena and Egypt
Let these matters then be as they are and as they were at the first: but as to the sources of the Nile, not one either of the Egyptians or of the Libyans or of the Hellenes, who came to speech with me, professed to know anything, except the scribe of the sacred treasury of Athene at the city of Sais in Egypt.
-Herodotus, Histories
The chief city in this district is Sais — the home of King Amasis — the founder of which, they say, is a goddess whose Egyptian name is Neith, and in Greek, as they assert, Athena. These people profess to be great lovers of Athens and in a measure akin to our people here.
-Plato, Timaeus
According to the Egyptians, Athena is called Sais, as Charax says.
-Tzetzes, Ad Lycophronem
