Researchers of the past argue that the history of mankind does not know a single nation that denied the existence of certain higher powers that govern their earthly, and sometimes even afterlife. Representations of them changed as civilization developed, and on their basis numerous religious cults were formed, both preserved to the present day and sunk into the depth of centuries. Let us recall only some of the gods of the Ancient World, originating, according to the generally accepted definition, in the prehistoric period and limited to the 5th century, when the world entered the era of the early Middle Ages.
Ancient Sumerian deities
To start a conversation about the heroes and gods of the Ancient World follows from a story about the religious ideas of the Sumerians who lived on the territory of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and created at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. first world civilization. Their beliefs and the mythology generated by them were based on the worship of numerous demiurge gods - the creators of the world and everything in it, as well as the spirits that patronized people in various aspects of their lives.
These are probably the most ancient gods of the world, about which quite complete information has been preserved. The dominant place among them was occupied by the god An (or Anu). According to Sumerian mythology, he was one of the demiurges who created the world, and existed even before the earth was separated from the sky. Among other celestials, he enjoyed such unquestioned authority that the Sumerians always portrayed him presiding over the councils of the gods, which they arranged to address critical issues.
Among the Sumerian patron gods, the most famous is Marduk, whose name is associated with the foundation and further development of one of the largest cities in the Ancient World ─ Babylon. It was believed that it was to him that the city owed its take-off and prosperity. It is characteristic that with the growth of the ancient metropolis, the worship of its patron became increasingly widespread. In the pantheon of the Sumerian gods, Marduk was given the same place as Jupiter among the ancient Greek celestials.
Rejected Passion
As an example of Sumerian mythology, it is appropriate to cite one of the stories about the Goddess Ishtar, who successfully patronized such seemingly incompatible things as love and war. The legend that has reached us tells how once the goddess’s heart burned with love for the brave hero Gilgamesh, who returned from a military campaign in which he won thanks to her patronage.
For the service, Ishtar wished that the hero became her husband, but was refused, because Gilgamesh had heard not only about her countless love affairs, but also about the manner of turning annoyed men into spiders, wolves, rams and other wordless creatures. Of course, this did not get away with him, because what could be worse than the revenge of a rejected woman?
Sky bull
Enraged, Ishtar went to heaven with her parents ─ the supreme god Anu and his wife Antu, to whom she spoke of her humiliation. To avenge the offender, she persuaded the old people to create for her a terrible Heavenly bull that could destroy Gilgamesh. Otherwise, the obstinate daughter threatened to raise all the dead from the graves and give them to the human race.
Knowing from experience that arguing with her daughter is useless, An and Antu fulfilled her request. The goddess returned to the earth with a bull, who, having drunk all the water in the Euphrates for a start, began to devour the unfortunate Sumerians. And the end of ancient civilization would have come to this, but, fortunately, the very same Gilgamesh arrived, who, along with his friend Enkidu, defeated the monster and sacrificed his carcass to other, more decent deities.
The legend ends with the fact that Ishtar, standing at the walls of the ancient city of Uruk, curses the obstinate Gilgamesh and, having gathered all the Sumerian harlots, bitterly mournes with them the ruined bull. Why did she need the representatives of an ancient profession for this - history is silent.
Civilization gone
It remains only to add that the pantheon of the gods of the Ancient World, revered by the Sumerians, is very extensive. We will add to the already named names only the most famous: Anunnaki, Adad, Bel, Dumuzi, Inanna, Tiamat, Tammuz, Sumukan, Sina and Tsarpanitu.
In the middle of II millennium BC. e. the state of Sumer gave way to the power of the Babylonian empire, and the Sumerian language, as a spoken language, went out of use. Nevertheless, for almost 2 thousand years, literary works were written on it, some of which were discovered during archaeological excavations.
Gods of egypt
The history of the Ancient World is inseparable from the desire of people to know the world around him, sometimes frightening and filled with impenetrable secrets for them. Evidence of the attempts of the ancient Egyptians to understand its structure is the creation of a large pantheon of gods, which became the product of their imagination and personified natural forces for them.
A characteristic feature of the religion of the ancient Egyptians was the belief in the divine origin of the pharaohs, on which their unlimited power was based. Both celestial overlords and their earthly governors were far from always friendly to people, and therefore both had to be propitiated not only with prayers and praises, but also with sacrifices, the character of which changed depending on who they were intended for.
The gods of the Ancient World and myths that tell about them have always been a bright page of world culture. The vast pantheon of gods born on the banks of the Nile is no exception. Historians have about 2 thousand of its representatives, but not more than 100 of them enjoyed universal veneration, while the worship of the rest was local in nature.
It is interesting to note that with the change in the alignment of political forces in the country, the hierarchical position that these or other gods occupied also changed. The history of the Ancient World, and Egypt in particular, is full of turmoil and upheaval, the result of which were frequent changes of rulers, which radically changed the status of the gods especially revered by them. Meanwhile, a number of characters can be distinguished from the general pantheon, whose “rating” was invariably high throughout the history of ancient Egyptian civilization.
Top of the divine hierarchy
This is, first of all, the creator of everything earthly - the god Amon-Ra, also known by the names Amun or Atum. It was he who was considered the father of all the pharaohs. Sometimes in the imagination of the Egyptians Amon-Ra assumed a female form and was then called the goddess Amunet. This transvestite god was especially revered in Thebes, which for a long period was the capital of the state. Usually he was depicted as a man in royal attire and a crown decorated with feathers, less often ─ in the image of a goose or a ram.
Osiris, the god of fertility and the afterlife, was slightly inferior to him in popularity, the list of his closest relatives evoked the deepest reverence for him. Being the son of the earth god Hebe and the sky goddess Nut, he married his sister Isis ─ the patroness of fertility, motherhood, health and sea voyages (family marriages were not forbidden in that era). Having inherited the title of supreme ruler over time, he taught the Egyptians to cultivate the land, abide by the laws and honor the gods.
Insidiousness and love in Egyptian mythology
However, like many ancient gods of the peoples of the world, Osiris underwent many different tribulations and tribulations on the way to its greatness. It all started with the fact that the god of the desert Seth, personifying the evil principle, planned to kill him and take the place of the supreme ruler himself. He carried out his insidious plan quite original.
Having made a golden chest of the appropriate size and inviting guests, among whom was Osiris, the villain announced that he would give this jewelry to someone who could comfortably accommodate in it. Everyone began to try, and when the turn came to Osiris, Seth slammed the lid of the chest, tied it with ropes and threw it into the Nile, along the waves of which he swam to an unknown destination.
Upon learning of the loss of her husband, Isis went in search of him and found a chest with her faithful on the Phoenician coast. But her joy was premature. Seth on the heels outstripped Isis and in front of her eyes chopped off her husband’s body in pieces, scattering them all over Egypt.
But the villain had a poor idea of whom he was dealing with — the goddess collected most of Osiris’s remains, made them into a mummy, so fortunate that she soon conceived of her son Horus, who later became the god of hunting and was portrayed as a man with a falcon head. Having matured, Gore defeated Set and helped his mother resurrect her father's mummy.
Other inhabitants of the ancient Egyptian pantheon
Recall some of the names of the gods of the Ancient World that lived on the banks of the Nile. This is primarily the god Shu. He and his wife Tefnut were the first celestials created by the supreme god Atum and laid the foundation for the separation of the sexes. Shu was considered the god of sunlight and air. He was portrayed as a man in a headdress with a train, while his wife had the appearance of a lioness.
Another god of the Ancient World, considered the embodiment of the sun, was the supreme ruler of Ra. His images in the form of a man with a falcon head crowned with a solar disk are often found on the walls of Egyptian temples of that old era. The peculiarity of Ra was his ability to be born every day from the sacred cow of Nut and, having made his way through the vault of heaven, to immerse himself in the kingdom of the dead, so that the next morning he would start over again.
It is worth noting that Osiris, discussed above, besides Isis' wife, had another sister named Nephthys. In Egyptian mythology, she played the rather gloomy role of the goddess of death and the mistress of the kingdom of the dead. From her underground possessions, she appeared only with the setting of the sun and made the way through the sky in her black boat all night. Her image can often be seen on the covers of sarcophagi, where she appears in the image of a winged woman.
A far from complete list of Egyptian gods can be continued with such names as Sekhmet, Bastet, Nepid, Thoth, Menhit, Ptah, Hathor, Shesemu, Hons, Heket and many others. Each of them has its own story and its own image, imprinted on the walls of temples and the interior of the pyramids.
The world of the gods of ancient Greece
Ancient myth-making, which had a huge impact on the formation of all European culture, reached its highest peak in Ancient Hellas. The origin of the world and the gods in ancient Greece, as well as in Egypt, did not seem accidental. The creation of everything was attributed to the supreme creator, whose role in this case was performed by Zeus. He was the king of all other gods, the lord of lightning and the personification of the boundless sky. In Roman mythology, which became a continuation of Greek, Jupiter corresponds to this image, endowed with the same properties and inherited the external features of its ancestor. Zeus's wife was the goddess Hera ─ the patroness of motherhood, who guarded women during childbirth.
A characteristic feature of the Greek pantheon of gods is its elitism. Unlike the characters of Egyptian myths, in Ancient Hellas there were only 12 celestials who lived on the top of Mount Olympus and descended to the earth only in case of emergency. At the same time, the status of the remaining deities was significantly lower, and they played a secondary role.
It is worth noting one more characteristic feature of the Greek and Roman gods ─ it was customary to depict them exclusively in human form, giving perfection to the features of each. In the modern world, the gods of Ancient Greece are well known, because their marble sculptures are an unattainable example of ancient art.
Elite of the ancient Greek pantheon
All that was somehow connected with the war and was accompanied by bloodshed, were commanded, in the view of the ancient Greeks, two deities. One of them was Ares, who had an unbridled disposition and delighted himself with the spectacles of hot fighting. Zeus did not love him for excessive bloodthirstiness and suffered on Olympus only because he was his son. The thunders ’sympathies were on the side of Athena’s own daughter ─ the goddess of a just war, wisdom and knowledge. Appearing on the battlefield, she pacified her exorbitant brother. In Roman mythology, Minerva corresponds to it.
It is difficult to imagine the world of heroes and gods of Ancient Greece without Apollo ─ the god of sunlight, a skilled healer and patron of muses. His name has become a household name thanks to sculptural images that embody the standard of male beauty. A few centuries later, the Romans Apollo embodied in the image of Phoebus.
The standard of female beauty, in her perception by the ancient Greeks, is the goddess of love Aphrodite, who was a prototype of the Roman Venus. Born from sea foam, the beauty took under her protection love, marriage, fertility and spring. It is very curious that, despite the abundance of the most enviable grooms, she gave her heart to the lame-legged Hephaestus (he was called Vulcan for the Romans) ─ the god of blacksmithing, preferring a hard-working and dominant husband to handsome men from the top of Olympus.
In order not to offend any of the gods of the Ancient world, once revered on the shores of Hellas, we recall the patroness of the moon, fertility, hunting and female chastity Artemis (among the Romans Dian), the lord of the kingdom of the dead Hades, the god of the seas Poseidon (aka Neptune) and the reckless drunkard, god wine and fun ─ Dionysus, better known by his Roman name Bacchus.
Since over the past centuries the number of worshipers of this god has not only not decreased, but is growing every year, we will devote several lines to it. It is known that Dionysus was born as a result of the secret love of Zeus and the Theban princess Semela. The jealous wife of the Thunderer, the goddess Hera, having resorted to tricks, ruined the passion of her lascivious husband, but could not destroy the child she hated.
Having resorted to the help of Hermes ─ the god of travelers and the expert on human souls, ─ Zeus secretly transferred his son from his wife to the education of nymphs ─ patronesses of the life-giving forces of nature. When Dionysus grew up and turned from a pink-cheeked child into a beautiful young man, they presented him with a vine and taught him how to make a life-giving drink from her fruits. Since then, the illegitimate son of Zeus became the god of wine and fun. The inhabitants of Greece worshiped him, decorating themselves with garlands of grape leaves and singing hymns in his honor.
The beginning of a new era
These 12 celestials are not limited to the entire list of the gods of the Ancient World, once glorified by Greek poets, who conveyed to us the unique spirit of ancient myths. But only they became inhabitants of Olympus, their images inspired prominent sculptors and painters of subsequent eras, which brought worldwide fame to these gods hidden from us for centuries.
The history of the Ancient World, as is commonly believed, culminated in the fall of Rome in 476 and the abdication of his last emperor, Romulus Augustus. From that moment, the world moved to a new stage in its development ─ the early Middle Ages. Gradually, not only the way of the former life, but also the gods who gave birth and protected it, went into oblivion.
Their numerous pantheon was replaced by a single God ─ the Creator and Creator of all things. The cult of the former celestials was declared dark paganism, and its followers were subjected to no less severe persecutions than those that they had recently organized against Christians.