iNIKE - The Goddess Fact File

'Nike' [Νίκη] is a Greek word pronounced 'Nee-key' and it is synonymous with the word 'Victory'. Its origins are rooted in proto-Indo-European languages to mean 'first', 'victor' and 'afore' from 'Nikh', pronounced 'neekh'.

It is postulated that 'Nikh' may have been combined with 'skei', to cut or split, to allude to the idea that a victor is separated from all others; or that 'Nike' comes from 'Nei', to be excited or to shine, and 'kigh', fast or violent.

The truth of Athena's birth as told in the Nike Story.

The story is summed up as follows: Pallas laid with Metis, his wife's sister and Lord Zeus' consort, and Athena was born. Pallas was in a difficult situation and he turned to his friend Prometheus for advice. Zeus hitherto refused to sleep with Metis based on a secret prophecy that Metis would bear a child that was greater than the father so Zeus knew he was not the father. With a monumental scandal brewing, Zeus turned to the counsel of Prometheus who advised Zeus that it would be better to claim Athena as his own child or risk being disgraced in front of the whole of Olympos and since he was not the father of the child the prophecy would not hold weight. Thus, Athena was born from Zeus' head, as an idea, and not his loins; Pallas is her father and she is my sister. Furthermore, Zeus swallowed Metis for her transgression and absorbed her wisdom, the little of what remained after Athena's birth since much of it was imbued into the new-born. As for the prophecy that the child of Metis would become greater than her father; that came to pass in the battle of the Giants, where Athena defeated father Pallas, flayed him and used his skin to make herself a divine aegis and forever more allowing herself to be called Pallas Athena, signifying her great strength.