Mythologies
“Akkadian” first names an East Semitic language written in cuneiform, not a single religion or an unchanged state. Its earliest written phase is…
“Amazigh mythology” does not denote one ancient book or unified pantheon. It is a working label for unlike witnesses: funerary and votive Libyco…
“Assyrian” describes the traditions of northern Mesopotamia centered first on the city of Aššur and its identically named god. It also names the…
“Babylonian” here describes the traditions of southern Mesopotamia associated with the city of Babylon and with cities that shared the Babylonian…
This page uses “Canaanite” for a range of traditions among Northwest Semitic speaking Levantine cities, not one state or timeless religion. Ugarit…
The Chinese source material remembers founders by what they do with a difficult world. Pangu separates sky and earth, Nüwa repairs a broken heaven,…
“Egyptian mythology” is a modern label for materials produced in the Nile Valley across more than three millennia, not a single creed or book.…
The Etruscans were communities of city states in Etruria, central Italy. Their influence was strongest from the seventh to fifth centuries BCE, and…
Greek mythology is the body of stories about the world's beginnings, divine families and human heroes preserved in ancient Greek texts and images.…
Hindu mythology is not one story system with one date or one theology. Vedic hymns, speculative dialogues, epics, devotional traditions, temple…
Japanese creation and disaster stories become most revealing when read as arguments about life on dangerous islands, not as claims that ancient…
Ragnarök is powerful because foreknowledge does not cancel obligation. Odin knows that the wolf will take him, Thor can kill the world serpent but…
“Persian” does not name one thing here. Iranian is an Indo European language family and Persian one member of it; Persia is a region and, in…
“Roman religion” includes rites of the city and household, then practices across Italy and a wide empire, changing from regal and republican periods…
Sumerian myths become more revealing when read beside the work of a southern Mesopotamian city. Water had to be channelled, fields and herds…