World mythology
Spring 2012
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1
Defining Mythology
• “a story about something significant in which
the main figures are personalities” (Segal)
• “Traditional stories a society tells itself that
encode or represent [its] world-view, beliefs,
principles, and often fears” (Vandiver)
• Stories
• Old or “sacred”
• “special seriousness and importance” (Fry)
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“Mythology”: origins in western
thought
• Mythos: story or fiction
– Created by a poet: poetry is “made”
• “a beyond located in a faraway time and a distant place”
– Plato: replaced by logos (“truth”) and philosophy
• Five classes of inhabitants (Plato)
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Gods
Daemons
Inhabitants of Hades, the dead
Heroes
Men of the past
3
“Myth” and Mythology
• “-ology”: “study of”
• Are we studying myth itself or the study of
myth?
– “Modern” Religion versus Classical “Myth”
• Myths and Truth
– “inside” vs. “outside”
– Myth does not mean “false”
– Everyone believes his/her myths are “true”
• Learning Disinterestedness
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Myths, Legends, Folktales
• Myth: Gods and their rites (rituals)
• Legend: traditional stories rooted in historical
fact
– Pre-history vs. History
• Folktales: folk-tales, not aristocratic
– primarily for “entertainment”
– Humor rather than tragedy (“awe-ful”)
– Actors are “like us”; ordinary people (or animals)
• Example of alligator “urban legend” (5-6)
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Myth and Science
• 19th Century Views: Science replaces myth
• E. B. Tylor: Myth explains and understands the
world
– In modern world, science does what myth did
• J. G. Frazer
– Not theory, but applied “science”
– Myth explained how ritual worked
• Example: “Creationism” vs. Evolutionary
Theory
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Understanding Myth
• Aetiology: origin or cause of something
– Not just scientific (contra p. 7)
• Psychology: How do “I” work?
– what does it mean to be a human being?
• Sociology: how do groups work?
– society/communities
• Anthropology: cultural values
• History: what happened?
– Tells us about the past
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The Trojan War: A “case study” in myth
• The Judgment of Paris: who is the most
beautiful goddess
• Menelaus, Agamemnon, and the sacrifice of
Iphigenia (“the family of Atreus”)
• The Trojan War lasts 10 years
• The Iliad: the last year of the war
• Odyssey: journey of Odysseus home
• Return of Agamemnon, and murder
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The Trojan War: the judgment of Paris
• Paris son of Priam, king of Troy, who kidnapped
Helen, wife of Menelaus
• Marriage of Thetis, sea-goddess
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Desired by Zeus & Poseidon
Son greater than father, so married to human male
Eris (“Strife”) & Themis (justice) showed up uninvited
Eris throws in apple, “to the fairest”
Paris must decide which goddess gets the apple
Aphrodite bribes with the “most beautiful woman in
the world”
9
Aphrodite (footnote)
• Not goddess of love
• Goddess of sexual desire and passion
– Desires someone else to meet one’s own needs
and urges
– Not concern for the well-being of other
– Not “romantic” love
• ≈ Ishtar (181), sexuality and war
– Desires Gilgamesh (180)
– Sexual passion destroys
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Questions
• What is the story “about”?
• Why tell the story?
• Is it a myth?
– Narrative
– Role of gods
• Historical Basis
– H. Schliemann discovered “real Troy” and
Mycenae
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Understanding Myth and the Trojan
War
• Aetiology
– ruins of Mycenae
– why did Paris “do it”? Why did Agamemnon
sacrifice his daughter?
• Psychology: nature of sexual passion
• Sociology: role of heroes; why does war
occur?
• Anthropology: glory in battle,
• History: led to discovery of Troy and Mycenae
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Processes of Mythic Production
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•
•
•
Oral, memorized
Rhythmic and/or rhymed
Formulaic: repeated, fixed, stock phrases
“Paratactic” vs. “syntactic” storytelling
– different parts of the narrative exist side by side
– different parts are connected, added to each other
• “Literary Frame”: retelling a story to make a
specific point, communicate some new idea
• Rationalize: make up (invent) reasons
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Example of “retelling”: the Europa
Myth
• Europa raped by Zeus, disguised as a bull
– Taken from Phoenicia to Crete
– Sons and brothers look for her
• Herodotus: Europe not descended from Europa
• Rome used myth to justify power
– Horace: “Stop your sobbing…half the world will
bear your name”
• European Union uses this to describe and
symbolize its identity
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Greek Creation Myths: Origins of the
gods
• “live forever”
• Calls on Muses
• Chaos (“gap”, “void”), Gaia, Ouranos
– Eros “makes men weak”
– Tartarus: underworld
– Chaos, Night, Erebos (“darkness”)
• Sea god (Pontus), fresh water (Oceanus)
• Cyclopes, Hundred Handed (see 31)
– Ouranos hates them
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Muses
• 3 Titans
– Practice
– Song
– Memory
– Mothers of:
• “Olympian” Muses: music, song, dance
– Nine “genres” of chanting and knowledge
 – E.g., epic, tragedy, comedy, history
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Eros
• Desire (not “love”)
• A primal god
• Comes “before”
Aphrodite
• Later considered son
or companion of
Aphrodite
• Multiple Erotes =
Cupids

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The castration of Ouranos
• Ouranos hates his children
– “shameful acts” (ll. 71, 77)
– Genitals removed by Kronos
• Blood creates
– Furies
– Giants: primal powers of nature
– Nymphs: spirits of ash tree
• Foam becomes Aphrodite
– Accompanied by Eros
– Lines 114-116
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The Titans: Kronos and Rhea
• Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades,
Zeus
• Kronos swallows children
• Rhea replaces Zeus with stone
• Kronos regurgitates children
• Omphalos: sacred stone
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Zeus & his mates
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•
•
•
•
•
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Lighting, thunder, kingship, law
Themis —> Order, Justice, Fates
Demeter —> Persephone
Mnemosyne —> the 9 Muses
Leto—> Apollo, Artemis
Hera —> Hebe (youth, first cupbearer), Ares
Other sons: Hermes, Dionysus, Heracles
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Children of Zeus and Hera without
copulation
• Athena Parthenos (“the Virgin”)
– Wisdom subservient to Zeus
– Avoids fate of father and grandfather
• Hera
– Hephaistos
– Poseidon
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Pandora (1)
• “all-gifts”
– Ironic?
• Bad & Good Strife
– Eris: fighting
– Good competition, incentive to improve
• Prometheus (“fore-thought”)
– Tricked Zeus into choosing bones of sacrifice over
meat
– Zeus hid fire, Prometheus stole it
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Pandora (2)
• Figure of Pandora
–
–
–
–
Made of water and earth
Weaving
Charm, desire, cares
Slyness, “morals of a bitch” (“lies, crafty words, deceitful
nature”)
• Epimetheus (“after-thought”)
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–
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“don’t accept the gifts of the gods”—Why not?
Pandora opens “the cask”
Evils, diseases, cares, pain, work
Only hope remains, caught in the lid
27
Ages of Man (1)
• Golden
– Long lives “untouched by work and sorrow”
– Died as if one went to sleep
– Became “[pure] spirits of the earth,” “givers of
wealth”
• Silver
–
–
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–
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Children for 100 years, short adulthood
Had never developed self-control
Failed to sacrifice
Became spirits of the underworld
28
Ages of Man (2)
• Bronze (from ash tree: staffs of spears)
– Violent and war-mongers
– Nameless in Hades
• Heroes, Demi-Gods
– Just before present: e.g., Trojan War heroes
– A few now live carefree life on the Blessed Isles
• Iron Age
– “work and grieve unceasingly”
– Future loss all morality & propriety (ll. 82, 90, 99)
– Aiodos (Shame), Nemesis (Righteous Indignation)
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Ovid’s Creation Story
• “sing of metamorphoses”
• “science,” i.e., speculative theories
– Monism
• All is water
• Not a single thing, but a boundless universe of change from one
opposite to another (e.g., wet to dry)
• How can “boundless” be a thing? Density
– Pluralism
• “the many” come from 4 things, which make everything through
“love” and “strife”
• Not 4 things, many “seeds” ; a thing is whatever “seed”
predominates
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The World
• Chaos: undefined, “confused”
– “at war”
• Definition
– Fire, air, water, earth
– Everything has its place
– Climate zones of earth, Wind
• Stars can appear
• Man (not sure of origin)
– “seeds of the sky”
– Mixture of fire and air emulates the form of the gods
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Ages of Man according to Ovid
• Gold (Saturn = Cronos)
– No need for law
– No intrusion into natural harmony, no farming
• Silver: rule of Jove (Zeus)
– Origins of seasons, hot, cold
– Man needs a house and farming
• Bronze: cruel and violent, yet not “sacrilegious”
• Iron
– Impiety, property, plunder, plots (ll 181-2, 200-1,
204ff.)
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Enuma Elish: Background
• Powers (58)
– Sumer(ian) 3000-2350; 2100-2000
– Akkad(ian) 2350-2100—>Assyrian (1600-612)
– Babylon(ian) 2000-1600; 612-539
• Marshes of Persian Gulf (map bottom)
– Salt and fresh water
– Central Plant: Reeds
– Biblical symbol: Garden of Eden, coming together
of rivers
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Marshes and Reeds
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Marsh
Culture
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The First Gods of Enuma Elish
• Salt water, fresh water
– Tiamat: chaos, female
(see ll. 135-145, 430ff.)
– Apsu, “vizier” Mumma (fog)
• Ea (at first “Nudimmud”)
– Fourth generation
– Also, “Enki”
(lord [en] of the
earth/soil [ki])
– Comes from Apsu
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Noisy Gods and Ea’s conquest of
Apsu
• Gods of Ea’s generation disturb the “old” gods
– Tolerated by Tiamat
– Confronted by Apsu and Mummu
– “How can we destroy what we created?”
– Apsu and Mummu plot
• Ea seizes control
– “stilled the waters” (ll. 63, 68)
– Kills Apsu, ties up Mummu
– “set dwelling…on top of Apsu”
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Marduk created to defeat Tiamat
• “superior in every way” (l. 92, see 104)
– Given authority by Anu: sky/heaven
• Marduk’s “grandfather,” removed from immediate authority
• Winds stir up Tiamat (ll. 110, 119, see 229)
– Creates monsters as weapons
– Qingu commander of army: “cast a spell” (l. 151)
– Initial defeat of Anu and (father) Anshar (Ll. 173-4)
• Summoning of Marduk
– “what kind of man?,” “Tiamat, of womankind” (ll. 194,
195)
– Asks for council; power of unchanging decrees
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Marduk’s War against Tiamat
• Gods authorize worship of Marduk (ll. 260-270)
– Power of creation and destruction
– “path of peace and obedience” (l. 292, see l. 471)
– Winds as weapons (Tiamat has her monsters)
• Battle of spells (ll. 319, 329)
– Tiamat seems to praise Marduk (331); he rejects
– Who has rejected compassion (l. 338; see 45)?
• Given power to whom it does not belong
• Threatened Ashar and Anu
– Marduk sends winds, Tiamat tries to swallow, Marduk
shoots inside
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Division of Tiamat: primal sea controlled
• Ties up enemies; takes Tablet of Destinies
• Tiamat’s body makes sky and earth
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Takes over worship of older gods (ll. 400 ff.; 458 ff.)
Ribs becomes gate-posts
Constellations, time, moon, sun (Shamash)
Poison = fog; head & udder = mountains; eyes—> 2
rivers; tail and thigh fixes cosmos
• Reads tablets and establishes worship (l. 474)
– Establishes Babylon
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Creation of man and Kingship of
Marduk
• To serve the gods
– Need a victim: Qingu incited the war
• Assigns gods to sky and earth (300 each)
– Need to rest, ask for a shrine (l. 544-5; see 488)
– The banquet of the gods
– Anu names Marduk’s bow
– Confirm Marduk’s “kingship” and “mastery”
• Fifty names of Marduk
– = Elil (syncretism)
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Creation in Genesis (the Hebrew
Bible)
• “in the
beginning…[of?]”
– Tohu va-bohu
– The Deep = Tehom
= ?Tiamat
– “Spirit of God was
moving over the
face of the waters”
• “And God said…”
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• Light: Night and day
• Firmament=expanse
• Sea and dry land,
vegetation
• Sun, moon, stars
• animals in sea & air
• Land animals, man
• “very good”: God
rests
42
water
Rakiya
=“firmament”/e
xpanse
Light
Dark
Day
Earth, land
Night
water
Based on the
work of Norbert
M. Samuelson
The deep:
Tehom
Void
43
Based on the
work of Norbert
M. Samuelson
“Windows”
Rakiya
“seas”
“fountains of the deep”
Earth, land
44
The Garden of Eden, Man and
Woman
• Heaven and earth already; no rain, only mist
• Man formed from dust; “the breath of life”
• God plants the garden “in the east”
– Tree of life and tree of the knowledge of good and evil
– Man to till the garden: don’t eat of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil
• A Companion for man
– Naming of the animals; but none are appropriate (“fit”)
– Woman created from rib
– Both are naked but unashamed
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The Loss of Paradise
• Serpent: how does the woman change the command?
• You will be like elohim.
– Elohim (“God”) and Yhwh (“the LORD”)
– Was the serpent right?
• Knowledge: nakedness
– “hear the sound of the LORD God”
– Ashamed
• Curses
• Clothing; cast out of the garden
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Prose Edda: Historical Background
• Celts (middle Europe)
– France > British Isles > Wales, Scotland, Ireland
• Germans (Nibelungenlied), Anglo-Saxon
(Beowulf)
• “Norse” peoples
– “Vikings,” became Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians
– Iceland became Christian in 1000 CE
– Swedes were sacrificing to Odin as late as 1070
• Snorri wants to preserve ancient traditions
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http://www.germanen-plakat.de/der-kosmos-die-drei-ebenen-der-germanischen-welt/
Asgard
Utgard =“outer-world”
Utgard-Loki
A giant
Midgard
World-serpent
Niflheim
Ice/frostgiants
“fog-world”
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Nidhögg gnawing at world-tree, Yggdrasil
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Aesir: warrior gods
• Odin (=German Wotan)
– “All-Father”
– Shaman, god of runes, knowledge, wisdom
– Motivates warriors
– Valkyries: bring dead to hall of Valhalla
• Thor
– Lightning, thunder
– Hammer
– Giant-killer
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Vanir: fertility gods
• Njörd: lives by sea, fishing, wealth
– In some stories, fathers children with sister
• Son Frey: sun, rain, fertility of land > prosperity
• Daughter Freya (or, Freyja)
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Object of lust of giants
Some sources say she’s a whore
I.e., excites sexual desire
Snorri: “She enjoys erotic poetry. It is good to call on
her for love.”
51
The reconciliation of the gods
• War between the Aesir & Vanir
• Exchange hostages
– Njörd and Frey go to Aesir
– The Aesir send Hoenir and Mímir
– Hoenir reputed to have qualities of chieftain, but he
won’t do anything without the counsel of Mímir.
– The Vanir believe themselves to be cheated, cut off
Mímir’s head, and send it back to the Aesir
– Mímir’s head source of wisdom for Odin
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Key characteristics of Snorri’s
retelling
• Historicizing: retelling myths as if they are
history
• Euhemerism
– myths are fanciful or exaggerated versions of
historical personages or events
– Subtype of “rationalization”
– Foundational figures or events of a community
• Syncretism: combining or synthesizing
different religious beliefs or cultural customs
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Prologue
• What stories does Snorri incorporate into the
prologue?
– 79 bottom; 80 top; 81 middle
• “In the end they lost the very name of God”
– Who is “they”?
– What is Snorri trying to explain, pp. 80-81?
• How does Snorri include the gods in his tale?
– What is he doing? 81 middle-82
– How does he “euhemerize” the Aesir (82 middle)?
– Why are these ____ assimilated to the Aesir?
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“The Deluding of Gylfi”
• How does Snorri incorporate the old tales?
– Look at the structure.
• Goes the Aesir for answers
• Ginnungagap
– Niflheim, Hel; and Muspel (Surt)
– Rivers of Niflheim: yeasty venom > rime
– Ymir, first frost-ogre from melting rime
– How do we explain alternative name,
“Aurgelmir”? (also, “Bergelmir” [86 bot.])
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Humans and Their World
• Ymir’s sweat; legs copulate
• Ymir’s cow licks “the whole man” from a block of
ice: Buri (Notice: no wife for Buri)
• Identified with Aesir:
– Originally, was this “really” a story about the gods, or humans?
– “it is my belief…We think…you believe they are the gods”
• Buri has son “Bor” = “Bur” = “son”
• Bor’s sons kill Ymir > Bergelmir escapes flood
• Ymir’s blood, flesh, bones = water, earth, rocks
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Sky and Midgard
• Put in place by “sons of Bor” (gods?)
– Völuspa: creator gods are Odin, Hœnir, and Lódur
• Skull = sky
– Four directions
• “burning embers” of Muspell= heavenly lights
– Given place
– Ordering of time
• Ymir’s eyebrows = Midgard
– Brains = clouds
• Final version of creation of men: trees (“pieces of
wood”) > “Ask” [“ash tree”] and Embla
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Aesir, Asgard, Troy
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•
•
•
•
Euhemerizes origins of Norse gods
Identifies Asgard with Troy
What is significant about the choice of Troy?
Explanation of “All-Father”
Christianization?
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Southwestern Amerind: (Pre)history
• From Asia via Bering Strait (> 15,000 BP ?)
• Shamanism (Siberia) and animism
– Contacts spirit world for benefit of people
• Zuni: indigenous to region
• Navaho: “Diné”: “the people”
– from Canada/Alaska (“Athapaskans”) c. 1300-1400
– “apachu” = “strangers” > some settled into agriculture
= “apachus of the cultivated fields [Sp. Nabahu]”
– Tonal language (like east Asian languages)
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Southwestern Amerind Creation
Stories
• Literary versions of earlier oral stories
• Emergence Myths: Come out from under the
ground as pre-human beings
• Zuni origins
– pregnant Mother Earth must push Father Sky away
– Spits in water > clouds; fertilized by Father Sky > rain
– Earth like bowl: land surrounded by water; mtns. = rim
of bowl
• Navaho: small, dark world, water on 4 sides
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Zuni Emergence Myth: The Sun
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Dark
Disorderly: human chaos
“four days,” i.e., a general period of time
No differentiation
Beautiful world
The Sun needs “prayersticks”
Rays of sun
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Two Sons lead people out of 4th
world
• Separation
– “look for beautiful places”
– “old enough to work”
• Go to the southwest; down into the 4th world
– The 2 sons are both sons of the people, and their
fathers
– People want to see Sun
• Led by priests of the four directions
– Pine, spruce, silver spruce, aspen
– Makes prayer sticks: “went up the prayerstick”
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Third
World
Fourth
World
• Pine
• From North
• Rumbling
Second
World
• Spruce
• Silver
• West
Spruce
• Rumb• South
ling • Twilight,
rumbling
First
World
• Aspen
• East
• Red
Dawn
Daylight
world
• Sun and
sun’s
flowers
• Plant
corn
• Learn to
eat
Emergence into the 1st world
•
•
•
•
•
bow priests (2 sons)
carriers of medicine bundles
Tears make flowers
Growth of corn by itsumawe
Take on human characteristics
– In second world, are slimy beings with webbed
extremities, tails, and horns
– Must be removed in 1st world
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First night
• Cut mouth (red from the whetstone)
Second night
• Cut anus (black from the soot whetstone)
Third night
• Cut webs from hands and feet
• No longer notice the risen sun
Fourth night
• Cut tails and horns
“Humanization”
• “when the sun rose they did not mind any
more”
• Separation of the community
• Etiology of climate
• Finding the middle
– not quite where the community lives
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Navajo Creation Story: “Air-Spirit
People”
• fighting and adultery
– Expelled from every direction
– “insurmountable wall of water”
• Fly to escape
– find a sipapuni to east (and other directions)
– “place of emergence”: spiritual emergence
• “Insect” people look in each direction
– Nothing but bare land
– “we could have told you”
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Third and Fourth Worlds
• Join swallows
– After 24 days, a locust is “too free” with a swallow’s
wife
– Not enough food to go around
– Fly up until they find another sipapuni ( > 3rd)
• Join grasshoppers, problems repeat
–
–
–
–
–
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Sipapuni is a tendril of vine > 4th world
4 grasshoppers join with (4 colors, like today)
Sky primarily black and blue (no sun, moon, stars)
4 peaks, one in each direction
Meet race with houses and agriculture
69
Gods make humans
•
•
•
•
Exiles and race with agriculture intermarry
Insect people want human beings
Preparation: bathing
Ritual magic: 2 ears of corn between 2 buckskins
– Care and balance
• Wind blows: man and woman (margin)
• First family
• Masks: kachinas to symbolize beneficent spirits
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