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Home , Aegipan, Cyclopes, Kumarbi

CHAPTER 4: OF CREATION The Rise of

y tells of the origin of the universe through succeeding generations of gods.

COSMOGONY: a story that explains the ³origin of the world´ : a story that explains the ³origin of the gods´ and their rise to power.

y To explain Zeus¶s supremacy in the world Hesiod must go back to the beginning of all things, to the generations of (chasm), Gaea (Earth), and (Sky).

THE CHILDREN OF CHAOS

y First came Chaos and some understand it as the opening from which the other primordial beings arose. y After Chaos came Gaea, the personification of the earth beneath us. y is often confused in Greek with the abode of , but is personified by Hesiod as the primordial creature that Gaea has offspring with. y also appears after Chaos, the source of motion that brings sexual beings together to produce still more offspring. y Hesiod also believes that (darkness) and (night) came from Chaos

THE CHILDREN OF GAEA: THE AND THEIR COUSINS

y Cyclopes and Hecatonchires had important roles to play in the world¶s early days.

THE TITANS

y Gaea first bore asexually Uranus y Then she bore her watery doublet y In sexual union with her son, Uranus, Gaea produced the six male and six female Titans, a word of unknown meaning. y , who will contend with Uranus for power, is named as the last born. y Two notable Titans are the watery male and female o Gave birth to all the gods o Oceanus is a river that encircles the world, where the domes of the sky touches the flat surface of the earth. y ³brilliant´ must have something to do with the lights in the sky, and ³law´ refers to the earth, that which is fixed and settled y Themis will bear the children to Zeus, as well ³memory´. y Cronus and , doublets for Uranus and Gaea, are parents or grandparents of the , including Zeus, the king of gods.

CYCLOPES, HECATONCHIRES

y Gaea bore to three Cyclopes ³round-eyes´, and the mighty Hecatonchires, the ³hundred- handers´, after union with Uranus. o Combined wisdom of the metallurgist with great strength o Taking raw iron from the depths of earth, they made the irresistible weapon of victory: lightning; their names Brontes (thunderer), Steropes (flasher) and (brightener), reflect the noise and brilliance of their marvellous weapon. y Uranus and Gaea finally bore the three Hecatonchires, who each had a hundred arms that shot from their shoulders, as well as fifty heads, beings who can easily crush any opponent in their mighty hands.

HYPERION¶S CHILDREN: SUN, MOON, DAWN

y The Titan is a sun god, father to the better known Helius, also a sun-god; to , the moon; and to , the dawn. y , the son of Helius and Clymene, an Oceanid. o Although Phaethon¶s mother was married to the King of Ethiopia, she promised him that his father was the sun. As confirmation, she told Phaethon to journey to the sun¶s palace where the sun allowed Phaethon one wish. He wished to ride the sun¶s chariot across the sky. At first, it went well but the horses lost control and left the save path, landing in Lybia where the people¶s skin burned black to the ablaze. y Selene, the moon, had fallen in love with the handsome shepherd Endymion and she seduced him in his sleep. She bore him fifty daughters and asked Zeus to put him in an eternal sleep so he could never age. y Eos, the dawn, had much more love affairs than Selene. Above all she loved Tithonus, a Trojan prince. She asked Zeus to make him immortal but forgot to ask that he never age so he aged to the point where he could not lift his bones, so Eos in the end locked him in his room. o Other editions of the story claim that Tithonus shrivelled up and turned into a cicada.

CRONUS AGAINST URANUS

y Uranus hated his own offspring. y The image of Gaea and Uranus is that they are always in perpetual intercourse so that Uranus would never allow his children to leave her womb. y Cronus cut off Uranus¶ pee pee which broke him away, allowing him to rise to the place he belongs. o The world is now in its proper configuration, ³Sky´ above and ³Earth beneath, with Tartarus attached. y Fecundated by the drops of blood that fell from the ghastly wounds of Uranus, Gaea gave birth to the , the Furies, ferocious female spirits who haunt anyone who sheds kindred blood, driving them into madness. y The ³earthborn ones´ were also created, beings of enormous strength and unbrindled violence, who one day will bring their power to bear against Zeus and his Olympian siblings.

THE BIRTH OF , , AND SEA DIETIES

y Aphrodite was created with blood fell on the earth, but the genitals themselves fell into the sea and the sea foam mixed with semen until she was created, goddess of sexual love. o Represents the universal force of irresistible sexual desire, a fruit of mutilation and violence. y When Gaea had another union with her other son Pontus and a host of other offspring, most have little importance in later myth or make a brief appearance in heroic legend. o Notable for their monstrous shape or are changeable in appearance y means ³that at which you point in surprise´ and in Greek art, the monstrous descendants of Sea and Earth were most often represented as mixtures of animal and human parts. y ³snatchers´ are human headed birds that were grandchildren of Gaea and Pontus; hostile spirits of storm who appear from nowhere to carry away the living. y Sirens lured sailors to their deaths but were not descendants of Gaea and Pontus. y Sphinx ³strangler´ a deadly spirit (female with wings) of plague who in Greek myth besieged the city of Thebes y had a woman¶s body to which wings were attached, snakes instead of hair, and boar¶s tusks for teeth, in art. y , an enemy of , had an ordinary woman for the buttocks up, but a serpent below, ³a glimmering flesh eater in the inky caverns of hallowed earth.´ y was a fifty headed hound who guarded the gates of Hades¶ realm y Chimera ³she goat´ a lion with a snake¶s tail and a goat¶s head growing from its back. y Creto ³sea monster´ was a whale or enormous fish y ³gray ones´ were ³fair cheeked hags, gray from birth´ y was the wise , a prophetic deity, as are many sea gods. o Had a human shape, but he could also change his shape at will into fire, a leopard, a serpent, or a tree. o Sired the fifty two , a group of sea spirits hard to distinguish from their cousins o , mother of , was the best known Nereid

ZEUS AGAINST CRONUS: BATTLE WITH THE TITANS

y Cronus became king and was told by his parents that he would fall victim to one of his children, so he swallowed them whole as fast as they were born from his mom and sister, Rhea. o These children were , , , Hades, , and Zeus y Zeus was born to Rhea in Crete, in a cave, where he was brought up by nymphs on milk from the goat and Honey from Melissa, the ³bee.´ y Zeus forced Cronus to vomit up the children, Zeus¶ siblings y Zeus became , and his siblings took up their abode on . y The Titans banded together in resent and attacked the Olympians in the ³battle of the Titans´ o Zeus joined sides with the Hecatonchires, but were imprisoned by the Cyclopes from Tartarus. They drank a mythical drink called nectar and food called o The Cyclopes made the for Zeus as his weapon y was condemned to live at the edge of the world by Zeus, where he held up the , continuing the separation between Uranus and Gaea

ZEUS͛ BATTLE WITH TYPHOEUS:

y Gaea who advised Zeus to summon the Hecatonchires against her own children (titans) resented his victory now y She became his enemy y Coupled with Tartarus, she gave birth to Typhoeus (also called ) y **refer to page 92-93 for a passage in Theogony*** y Apollodorus, author of oldest surviving ͞handbook of Greek myth͟ adds details to Hesiod͛s Theogony y He says that Typhoeus was born in Cilicia(southern coast of Turkey) and was huge y Typhoeus͛ description: waist down he has serpents, majestic wings, and shaggy hair all over his body y He was able to throw fiery rocks into the heavens and as a result, the Olympian gods morphed into animals and fled to Egypt y Zeus attacked him by pitching at him y Typhoeus beat Zeus by cutting off his hands and feet and putting them in a jar that he threw in a cave in Cilicia y Zeus͛ son, along with a goat-shaped woodland spirit called Aegipan(goat-) restored Zeus to his former self y Zeus catches a mountain and throws is right back at Typhoeus and badly wounds him y Thus the mountain is called Mount Haemus(bloody) y Zeus then chases him down and buries under

ZEUS͛ BATTLE WITH THE GIANTS:

y Even though he defeated the Titans and Typhoeus, a succession myth occurred (a continuation of a previous myth) y This succession myth demanded that Zeus was to be overthrown y To forestall prophecy, Zeus married ͞cleverness͟ herself, the Oceanid y She is already pregnant with y After learning that the next child after Athena will dethrone him, Zeus swallows Metis thus keeping ͞cleverness͟ inside him y This ensures that no one will overthrow him y One day, he cries out for help because of a headache y or strike his head with an axe y As a result, Athena is born from his head

y The giants, conceived from the blood of Uranus͛ bloody severed genitals and urged by Gaea, attacked the Olympians y Gigantomachyobattle of the Giants y Mortal Heracles, son of Zeus, joined the battle as an said that the gods could not defeat the giants without a mortal y The Giants had lost and the three male gods; Zeus(), Hades(god of the dark mist at the worlds end) and Poseidon(god of gray sea)

PROMINENT THEMES IN THE GREEK CREATION STORY:

y What we know call divine mytho its subject is the actions of gods and the description of grand events and their consequences y However there are folklore elements y Hesoid describes as: because the universe is no static creation, there comes from successive growth and change, from progressive proliferation and differentiation away from unity (page 97 paragraph 2) y First came Chaos/Chasm from which emerged night and day y Then Gaea/Earth came who gave birth to Pontus/Sea and Uranus/Sky y Greek cosmogony/theogony is a tale of gradual ascent to power of male over female y Social ideal was that the male ruled the universe and that he was all mighty and clever y Gaea who͛s son and husband was Uranus conspired with her son Cronus to mutilate and take over Uranus y Uranus: an , opposed life and cared only for his own lust y Uranus kept children in her womb and Cronus, no better ate his children y Cronus also became stupid, even mistakenly thought a stone was his child y Uranus and Gaea then advised Rhea, a doublet of Gaea, carried her child to the island of Crete where Zeus grew to manhood y How Zeus became so powerful: He freed the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires from Tartarus, where Cronus imprisoned them y Cyclopes create Zeus͛ armourers who made the thunderbolt y Hecatonchires served as his mercenary soldiers and with their assistance he defeated the Titans

EASTERN CREATION STORIES:

y It is known that about creation and so on was a result of some eastern creation myths

THE BABYLONIAN ENUMA ELISH:

y Best example of Mesopotamian creation myth is this(literal translation is ͞when on high͟) y It was a poem that was recited on the 4th day of the new year y In honour of the god of the city, Marduk y Created about 1100 B.C. y The poem starts with the gods of the primordial waters, male Apsu, freshwater and female Tiamat, saltwater y ***Refer to pages 99-103 for in-depth poems of Babylonian creation y Essentially it has many similarities to that of Greek Creationism

The HITTITE KINGSHIP IN HEAVEN:

y Later classical myths come from these powerful Indo-European Hittite people who rule Anatolian plain in the Late Bronze Age y A small portion of a poem called Kingship in Heaven survived y However, it has clear relevance to Greek cosmogony y Refer to page 104 for the poem y Learn that Anush argued with the storm-god, still within the body of Kumarbi over how the storm god should escape kumarbi͛s body y Kumarbi felt dizzy and asked Aya(also Ea, same god) for something to eat y He ate something that hurt his mouth and then after being warned not to give birth through certain body parts, the storm god came out of Kumarbi͛s penis y The storm god, now called , overthrew Kumarbi and became king of heaven

OBSERVATIONS:

y For a summary of the second part of chapter four, refer to the overview section on pages 105- 107 y Also, examine the similarities on page 107 (look at chart!) y Read perspective 4.2 for interesting comparison between mythic creationism and biblical creationism y