Arrephoros

An Arrephoros (Ancient Greek: Ἀρρήφορος) was a girl acolyte in the cult of Athena Polias on the Athenian Acropolis. They were seven to eleven years old. According to Pausanias,^[1] two Arrephoroi lived for a year on the Acropolis and concluded their term with a mystery rite called the Arrhephoria: they carried unknown objects into a cavern, and there exchanged them for other unknown objects.

The lexicon of Harpocration states (s.v. Arrêphorein) that there were four Arrephoroi and that two supervised the weaving of the Panathenaic peplos.

• Joan Breton Connelly, Portrait of a priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, p. 27 ISBN 0-691-12746-8