39
If you only look at the greatest Greek heroes, yes, of course their offspring don't surpass them. They are the greatest heroes, after all. I mean, Telemachus is no slouch, but you're comparing him to Odysseus.
The greatest heroes do have heroic fathers as well:
Peleus was king of the Myrmidons, a member of the Argonauts, and participant in the hunt for ...
22
Sumer, sometime in the 4th or 3rd millennium B.C.
My first instinct was to check out the Wikipedia article again. One interesting quote was
The presence of dragons within Chinese culture dates back several thousands of years with the discovery of a dragon statue dating back to the fifth millennium BC from the Yangshao culture in Henan in 1987, and jade ...
21
Strangely, the Pastafarian mythos doesn't seem to support the notion of strainers as religious headgear. The most prominent mention is the colander in the flood myth:
He produced a great Colander of Goodness and He did collect water in
an enormous pot, which He heated; and He did drop in a heaping portion
of pasta and slowly simmer the sauce for so ...
21
The source of the story is the Þrymskviða poem (The Lay of Thrym), which is included in the Poetic Edda.
It was Thrymr, king of the jötnar, who stole Mjölnir. He then demanded the gods allow him to marry Freyja, in order to return it. Thor travelled to Jötunheimr to claim back his hammer, and he managed to sneak in dressed as a bride.
Loki wasn't ...
18
As said already, your story is taken from Þrymskviða. There's a retelling of the story named The Children of Odin, which refers to that in a more easily comprehensible way:
The actual story does not say that Loki stole the hammer from Thor.
Then when they were far from Jötunheim Thor missed Miölnir, missed the hammer that was the defence of Asgard and ...
17
The Pomola is a snow bird spirit in Native American mythology, it lived on Mt Katahdin and caused cold weather
In Penobscot folklore, the Pomola was a bird spirit that lived on Mt Katahdin. It was associated with night, wind, snow, and storms. Apparently it had a moose's head according to some legends. The Penobscots and Abenakis avoided climbing to the ...
17
The Norse flood myth is actually a flood of blood, created when Odin, Vili and Vé slew Ymir, the primeval ancestor of the jötnar. From Snorri's Prose Edda:
The sons of Bor slew the giant Ymer, but when he fell, there flowed so much blood from his wounds that they drowned therein the whole race of frost-giants; excepting one, who escaped with his household....
16
This is the myth of Baucis and Philemon.
Here is the Wikipedia page: Baucis and Philemon, and here is one website with the full text (I think): Tales Beyond Belief: Baucis and Philemon.
By the way, the two gods were Zeus and Hermes, and the two trees were oak and linden.
15
The myth you're looking for is first outlined in Hesiod's Theogony.
Theogony 535-558:
[535] For when the gods and mortal men had a dispute at Mecone, even then Prometheus was forward to cut up a great ox and set portions before them, trying to deceive the mind of Zeus. Before the rest he set flesh and inner parts thick with fat upon the hide, covering ...
15
It wasn't permanent, but I did find a similar story. In Hittite mythology, the sky/storm god Tarhunt had as his nemesis a snake/dragon god Illuyanka. Note the similarities here between the story of Thor and the World Serpent. Both are Indo-European peoples, so this is likely not coincidental.
There are two surviving accounts of this story, both from CTH 321....
15
In Greek mythology, the giant Alcyoneus had seven daughters: Phthonia, Anthe, Methone, Alcippe, Pallene, Drimo, and Asteria.
When their father was slain by Heracles, they threw themselves into the sea, and were changed into ice-birds.
To be more specific, the species they transformed into was the kingfisher.
source: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...
15
There's a wolf transformation in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and as written texts go they don't come any earlier. Although in this case it was a spell cast upon him and he never had a chance to transform back into human form.
There may of course be earlier oral mythology.
14
The strongest candidate for a god of writing would be Hermes, the god of - amongst other things - language:
Also the Guide, the Slayer of Argus, contrived within her lies and crafty words and a deceitful nature at the will of loud thundering Zeus, and the Herald of the gods put speech in her. And he called this woman Pandora, because all they who dwelt ...
14
The World Turtle (Wikipedia)
This motif is very well known. Not a god per se, but close enough. (Btw: I think it represents a ship).
Rainbow Serpent (Wikipedia)
The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity, often a creator god, in the mythology and a common motif in the art of Aboriginal Australia.
It is named for the obvious ...
14
That story appears in one of the most beautifully written stories that can exist. In Herodotus Histories, chapter 1.
The Athenian lawgiver Solon is visiting the richest man in the world
the Lydian Croesus and Croesus want to impress Solon and show him how
rich and wealthy he is and after asks him who is the happiest
man:
My Athenian guest, [...] I ...
13
This tale appears to come from Toltec mythology, related to us by the Aztec and preserved in later Mexican source. The Ixtlilxochitl your source cites is almost certainly Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl, an early modern native historian from New Spain. He wrote that:
In the year 8 Tochtli, which was 1,347 years after the second calamity and 4,779 ...
12
The excellent answer by HDE mentions the Chinese dragon from 4700-2900BC, but did not explore further. This answer will attempt to source the claim for the Chinese dragon, which is arguably older and more complete than the Sumerian dragon.
A photo of the dragon, made from clams embedded within sandstone, can be found here:
...
12
Apart from Hermes, Prometheus takes pride that he gave letters to humans. According to Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound (v.460):
ἐξηῦρον αὐτοῖς, γραμμάτων τε συνθέσεις
which translates to
I invented for them, and the combining of letters
12
For Egyptian, you'd have several choices. Going from the largest (at least in the Heliopolitian cosmology):
Nuun (Nun) is the cosmic ocean that our universe is a bubble in:
https://henadology.wordpress.com/theology/netjeru/nun/
Atum includes the concept of "Completeness". In a sense He/She would be related to the universe we know, and precipitated himself/...
12
I love this story! According to good ol' Wiki, which is sourced, this story comes from an Icelandic rímur cycle. It is also cited in the Gylfaginning.
Your story and the rest of it are from the third and fourth rímas, emphasis mine:
As Thor and his companions approach Útgarða-Loki's fotress they face a strong locked fortress gate (v. 3-6). Unable to ...
answered Dec 13 '16 at 18:33
Lauren-Reinstate-Monica-Ipsum
1,8031 gold badge7 silver badges19 bronze badges
12
Achilles son of Peleus.
Peleus was a minor hero and companion of Hercules in various of his adventures, and was also with Jason as an Argonaut.
His son Achilles was more famous as the leading warrior of the Trojan War.
11
Coyote! (A key figure in Navajo mythology.)
Also Iktomi in Lakota mythology.
10
The example seems to be a particularly bad counterexample. I reproduced the relevant part of the article you cited:
"On 29th January (1818), another body of the Peshawa's cavalry was caught in a defile of the Ghats . . . between the hammer and the anvil of an infantry detachment and a cavalry force, and slain or scattered. . . . Fort after fort tumbled ...
10
The actual lyric is:
I call you all
To Woden's Hall,
Your temples round
With ivy bound
In goblets crown'd,
And plenteous bowls of burnish'd gold,
Where ye shall laugh
And dance and quaff
The juice that makes the Britons bold
To figure this out, what is Woden's Hall? The simplest source for this is Wikipedia - though it's corroborated in ...
10
Ouranos (Roman Uranus) is the Greek (night) sky god. You will find him at the beginning of Hesiod's Theogony. Wikipedia has an extensive list of sky gods, among whom you will find the Egyptian goddess Nut.
10
This depends entirely on your stance of if you're asking for a sky god or if you'd prefer only "outer space", so to speak. Given that these are ancient cultures / mythologies we're discussing, it stands to point that perhaps they would have seen the two as synonymous, which was why historically the sky gods were said to be most powerful. For instance, some ...
10
Examples of this do not seem to especially abound. Perhaps unsurprisingly, people tend to portray God or the gods to be whatever colour they themselves are, for better or worse. Nonetheless, as you have observed, such a phenomenon is not out of the question. Your mention of black Madonnas makes me think of the legendary Roman soldier St Mauritius [Maurice], ...
10
The Flying Spaghetti Monster!
The Flying spaghetti monster is a piece of Spaghetti, which is obviously not human.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
