Perseus cut her head off by using his shield as a mirror so he wouldn’t be turned to stone. Out of Medusa’s blood sprang Pegusus.

How Did Medusa Die

Answer: According to the myth of Medusa she was mortal and Perseus cut her head off and put it in a bag, resulting in her death. But she lost none of her powers, and when Athena sewed her head on the Aegis, she still had her powers. In the myth she does not seem really dead. The myth seems to have two purposes: one is to explain the ugly mask on the Aegis of Athena; two is to relate the story of Queen Medusa, who actually got her head cut off by a general who conquered her named Perseus. The mask on the Aegis is probably an image of the goddess Athena herself, at a time in the distant past when she was the head of all the deities. This was the mask she wore when she wanted project her supreme power in the face of some awful threat. Medusa is believed to have been a queen in Africa some 3000 BCE or so.

After some time, Polydectes fell in love with Danaë and desired to remove Perseus from the island. He thereby hatched a plot to send him away in disgrace.

Polydectes announced a banquet[5] wherein each guest would be expected to bring him a horse, that he might woo Hippodamia, “tamer of horses”. The fisherman’s protegé had no horse but promised instead to bring the head of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, whose very expression turns people to stone. The Medusa was horselike in archaic representations,[6] the terrible filly of a mare—Demeter, the Mother herself—who was in her mare nature when Poseidon assumed stallion form and covered her. Another version of this story is that Medusa was in fact a mortal woman who had an affair with the god Poseidon. One day Athena caught the two of them in her temple and as punishment turned the poor woman into a hideous monster. In a third is similar to the second, Poseidon raped her in a temple of Athena. Polydectes held Perseus to his rash promise.

For such a heroic quest, a divine helper would be necessary, and for a long time Perseus wandered aimlessly, without hope of ever finding the Gorgons or of being able to accomplish his mission should he do so.

According to the iconography of the vase-painters, the gods Hermes and Athena came to his rescue. Hermes gave him an adamantine sword,[7] while Athena gave him a highly-polished bronze shield. For his further journey, the version of Aeschylus, in his lost tragedy, The Daughters of Phorcys must have “simplified the journey of Perseus through the realms of thrice-three goddesses and probably left out the first three, the spring-nymphs…. On an ancient vase-painting we see the nymphs receiving the hero, one bringing him the winged sandals (talaria), another the helm of invisibility,[8] the third the wallet, kibisis, for the Gorgon’s head” (Kerenyi 1959:49-50).

They told him to go to the island of the golden apples to the west. He went there like a swift walker on the air (Nonnus, Dionysiaca xxv.32) and asked the Hesperidae where the Graeae were. They told him and made him promise to come back and dance with them. He went to the Graeae, sisters of the gorgons, three perpetually old women with one eye and tooth among them. Perseus snatched the eye at the moment they were blindly passing it from one to another so they could see him and he would not return it until they had given him directions. With all this, “Like a wild boar he entered the cave” (This is the one line of Aeschylus, The Phorkides, “The Daughters of Porkys” that survives). In the cave he came upon the sleeping gorgons. By viewing Medusa’s reflection in his shield he could safely approach and cut off her head, which then birthed Pegasus and Chrysaor from her blood. The other two gorgons pursued him, but by using his helm of invisibility he escaped.

Perseus used his shield to reflect her image. No one could look directly at her without turning to stone. Then he was able to see her to cut off her head.

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Perseus killed her. Her lover