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Importance

According to Walter Burkert, both Hera and Demeter have many characteristic attributes of Pre-Greek Great Goddesses.

In the same vein, British scholar Charles Francis Keary suggests that Hera had some sort of " Earth Goddess " worship in ancient times, connected to her possible origin as a Pelasgian goddess (as mentioned by Herodotus). In Greece the Mediterranean goddess of nature is the bride of the Greek sky-god. In her fest Daedala Hera is related to the nymph Plataia (consort of Zeus), an old forgotten form of the Greek earth-goddess. Plataia may be related to Gaia who is occasionally identified with Hera.

According to Homeric Hymn II to Delian Apollo, Hera detained Eileithyia to prevent Leto from going into labor with Artemis and Apollo, since the father was Zeus. The other goddesses present at the birthing on Delos sent Iris to bring her. As she stepped upon the island, the divine birth began. In the myth of the birth of Heracles, it is Hera herself who sits at the door, delaying the birth of Heracles until her protégé, Eurystheus, had been born first.

The Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo makes the monster Typhaon the offspring of archaic Hera in her ancient form, produced out of herself, like a monstrous version of Hephaestus, and whelped in a cave in Cilicia. She gave the creature to Python to raise.

In the Temple of Hera, Olympia, Hera's seated cult figure was older than the warrior figure of Zeus that accompanied it. Homer expressed her relationship with Zeus delicately in the Iliad, in which she declares to Zeus, "I am Cronus ' eldest daughter, and am honourable not on this ground only, but also because I am your wife, and you are king of the gods."