Plaster cast of a group of two women, usually identified with Demeter and her daughter Persephone, although, according to some scholars they could also be two of the Horae (Hours). The original sculptures are exhibited in the British Museum in London, after they were removed by Thomas Bruce, lord of Elgin, who between 1801 and 1804 when Greece was still under Ottoman rule forcibly detached from the pediment most of the sculptures that he found in their original places.

The women, carved on the same piece of marble, are seated on low boxes. To the right is Demeter, slightly turning her body towards the centre of the pediment where the scene of Athena's birth takes place. Demeter has her right hand bended and raises her left. She is clad in a peplos secured on her shoulders with fibulae and has a himation draped over her left hand and right thigh. Next to her, Persephone touches her mother’s shoulder with one hand, while she rests the other on her knee. She wears a belted, sleeveless chiton and himation that falls to the front and covers her legs. A small drill on her right wrist was probably intended for the insertion of a bronze bracelet, now lost. The heads and hand extremities of both figures are missing and the feet extremities are badly damaged.

The two Parthenon pediments are adorned with about fifty oversized statues. The sculptures perfectly worked even on their unseen sides present scenes from the myths of the goddess Athena. The east pediment portrayed the miraculous birth of Athena from the head of her father Zeus. The scene takes place on Mt Olympus in the presence of the other gods who watch standing, sitting or half-reclining. The pediments' corners contained the chariots of Helios (Sun), which emerges from the sea, and Selene (Moon), which sinks in the ocean waves, indicating thus that the goddess' birth takes place at dawn. The centre of the scene was occupied by the statues of Zeus and Athena. Due to the misadventures suffered by the monument over the following centuries, many of the temple's sculptures have been destroyed; some survive in mutilated form, while others are represented only by small fragments.