Mythology

Mythology, the body of myths of a particular culture, and the study and interpretation of such myths. A myth may be broadly defined as a narrative that through many retellings has become an accepted tradition in a society. By this definition, the term mythology might include all traditional tales, from the creation stories of ancient Egypt to the sagas of Icelandic literature to the American folktale of Paul Bunyan.

Myths are universal, occurring in almost all cultures. They typically date from a time before the introduction of writing, when they were passed orally from one generation to the next. Myths deal with basic questions about the nature of the world and human experience, and because of their all-encompassing nature, myths can illuminate many aspects of a culture.

II

WHAT ARE MYTHS?

Although it is difficult to draw rigid distinctions among various types of traditional tales, people who study mythology find it useful to categorize them. The three most common types of tales are sagas, legends, and folktales.

When a tale is based on a great historical (or supposedly historical) event, it is generally known as a saga. Despite a saga’s basis in very distant historical events, its dramatic structure and characters are the product of storytellers’ imaginations. Famous sagas include the Greek story of the Trojan War and the Germanic epic poem the Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs).

A legend is a fictional story associated with a historical person or place. For example, many early saints of the Christian church are historical figures whose lives have been embellished with legend (see Saint Denis; Saint George). Legends often provide examples of the virtues of honored figures in the history of a group or nation. The traditional American story about young George Washington and the cherry tree—in which he could not lie about chopping it down—is best described as a legend, because George Washington is a historical figure but the story about the cherry tree is recognized today as fictional.

Folktales, a third variety of traditional tale, are usually simple narratives of adventure built around elements of character and plot—for example, the young man who slays a monster and wins the hand of a princess. The Greek tale of Perseus is a good example of this theme. He saves the Ethiopian princess Andromeda from a sea monster and then marries her. Folktales may contain a moral or observation about life, but their chief purpose is entertainment.

Myths may include features of sagas, legends, and folktales. What makes one of these tales a myth is its serious purpose and its importance to the culture. Experts usually define a myth as a story that has compelling drama and deals with basic elements and assumptions of a culture. Myths explain, for example, how the world began; how humans and animals came into being; how certain customs, gestures, or forms of human activity originated; and how the divine and human worlds interact. Many myths take place at a time before the world as human beings know it came into being. Because myth-making often involves gods, other supernatural beings, and processes beyond human understanding, some scholars have viewed it as a dimension of religion. However, many myths address topics that are not typically considered religious—for example, why features of the landscape take a certain shape.

III

COMMON TYPES OF MYTHS

No system of classification encompasses every type of myth, but in discussing myths it is helpful to group them into broad categories. This article concentrates on three major categories: cosmic myths, myths of gods, and hero myths.

A

Cosmic Myths

Cosmic myths are concerned with the world and how it is ordered. They seek to explain the origin of the world, universal catastrophes such as fire or flood, and the afterlife. Nearly all mythologies have stories about creation, a type of story technically known as cosmogony, meaning “birth of the world.” Creation stories also include accounts of how human beings first came into existence and how death and suffering entered human experience.

The oldest cosmogonies known today are those of Egypt and the ancient Near East. An example is the creation epic of the Babylonians, Enuma elish (When on high), which dates back to at least the 12th century bc. According to Enuma elish, in the beginning of the world there was only a watery void in which fresh waters mingled with salt waters of the sea. The fresh waters were personified as Apsu, a male being, and the salt waters as Tiamat, a female. The myth describes a conflict between these earliest gods and a younger generation that sprang from them. Ultimately the younger gods won the war, led by Marduk, a god of thunder and lightning who resembles the Greek god Zeus and the Norse god Thor. Marduk defeated the army of the elder gods and killed Tiamat—represented as a dragon—in single combat. He then split her carcass in two, forming heaven and earth from the halves, and established the sun, moon, and constellations.

Enuma elish contains several themes common to many ancient Near Eastern creation stories: the ordering of the world out of chaos, the central role of waters in the creation of the world, the victory of a divine king over enemies who represent chaos, and the creation of matter from the corpse of a world-mother. A very different type of creation story appears in the Spider Woman myth of the Native American Hopi people. According to this narrative, in the beginning the only two beings in existence were Tawa, the sun god, and Spider Woman, an earth goddess who lived in a shadowy, cavelike underworld. Human beings were created from clay by Spider Woman and animated by the gaze of Tawa. Tawa used his light and heat to create dry land, and the world took shape. Spider Woman led the humans and other creatures up to the earth’s surface, and each species was assigned its proper residence and role in the world. This myth features the common Native American theme of emergence, in which creatures emerge from the earth as if from a mother’s womb.

Other types of creation myth occur in the cosmogony of the Maya people, with its many cycles of creation and destruction, and in the ancient Hebrew account of creation by a single, all-powerful deity.

B

Myths of the Gods

Many myths do not directly concern human beings, but focus rather on the activities of the gods in their own realm. In many mythologies the gods form a divine family, or pantheon (from the Greek pan, meaning “all,” and theos, “god”). The story of a power struggle within a pantheon is common to a large number of world mythologies—for example, the Babylonian Enuma elish centers on Marduk’s struggle for supremacy and his eventual victory over Tiamat. Greek mythology features a similar story of struggle between generations. In Greek mythology, the earliest gods were Gaea (Earth) and Uranus (Heaven), and their children were called the Titans. The eldest of the Titans, Cronus, overthrew his father and was eventually overthrown by his own son, Zeus, who became the new master of the universe. Similarly, the Aesir–the pantheon of the Norse gods—had to overcome an older group called the Vanir before gaining power. Unlike the Greek and Babylonian accounts, the Norse myth features a reconciliation between the two sides.

Across cultures, mythologies tend to describe similar characters. A common character is the trickster. The trickster is recklessly bold and even immoral, but through his inventiveness he often helps human beings. In Greek mythology, Hermes (best known as the messenger of the gods) was a famous trickster. In one version of a characteristic tale, Hermes, while still an infant, stole the cattle of his half-brother Apollo. To avoid leaving a trail that could be followed, Hermes made shoes from the bark of a tree and used grass to tie them to the cattle’s hooves. When Apollo nonetheless discovered that Hermes had stolen his cattle, he was furious. In the end, Apollo was so enchanted with the music of a lyre that Hermes had made that he allowed Hermes to keep the cattle in exchange for the lyre. Other tricksters of mythology are the West African god Eshu, who tricked the supreme god Olodumare into abandoning the earth to dwell in heaven; the Indian god Krishna, whose trickery often aims at a higher moral purpose; and the Native American Coyote, who scattered the once-orderly stars in the sky and strewed the plants on earth.

Myths about the gods are as numerous as the cultures that produce them. Other types that occur across various cultures include myths about the Great Mother (for example, the Mesopotamian Ishtar, who journeys to the underworld to rescue her lost lover Tammuz); the Dying God (for example, the Egyptian Osiris, who is murdered and dismembered but ultimately resurrected); and the Savior God (for example, the Greek Prometheus, who helps humanity at the cost of incurring Zeus’s anger).

C

Myths of Heroes

Nearly all cultures have produced myths about heroes. Some heroes, such as the Greek Achilles, have one mortal and one divine parent. Others are fully human but are blessed with godlike strength or beauty. Many myths about heroes concern significant phases of the hero’s career, such as the circumstances of the hero’s birth, a journey or quest, and the return home.

The birth and infancy of a mythological hero is often exceptional or even miraculous. In the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean world, the births of many heroes followed similar patterns. For example, the Hebrew prophet Moses, the Greek hero Oedipus, and the Roman heroes Romulus and Remus were all exposed to the elements at birth and left to die, but miraculously survived. Other heroes were immediately able to care for themselves. In early infancy, the Greek hero Hercules strangled a pair of enormous serpents sent to kill him. The Irish Cú Chulainn, who later became a great warrior, also performed astonishing feats of strength as a child.

Most heroes set off on a quest or a journey of some kind. One of the earliest tales of a hero’s journey is the Babylonian story known as the Gilgamesh epic, written in cuneiform on 12 clay tablets in about 2000 bc. The hero, Gilgamesh, embarks on a quest for immortality. A goddess named Siduri guides him, and in the course of his adventures he must do combat with monsters and visit the world of the dead. At the end of the quest, Gilgamesh must accept mortality, which the gods allotted to human beings when they created them. In Greek and Roman mythology the stories of Jason (who sailed in quest of the Golden Fleece) and of Aeneas (who traveled from Troy to Italy to found Rome) likewise describe journeys or quests. Other narratives that may be interpreted as heroic journeys include the biblical story of the Hebrew prophet Moses, who led his people on a 40-year journey through the wilderness, and the Celtic tale of King Arthur and the quest for the Holy Grail (see Arthurian Legend).

The most famous tale of a hero’s return home is probably the ancient Greek story of Odysseus, recounted in the Odyssey by the poet Homer. When the story opens, Odysseus has been away for nearly 20 years, fighting in the Trojan War and then kept captive by the sea nymph Calypso. Back in his kingdom of Ithaca, suitors who want to marry his wife Penelope are devouring and wasting his property and plotting against his son. Zeus persuades Calypso to let Odysseus leave and return home, but the god Poseidon is angry with Odysseus and is determined to kill him. In the course of his journey, Odysseus is shipwrecked, held captive by Calypso, and nearly devoured by monsters; all his companions are killed. When he finally returns to Ithaca, penniless and without allies, he must plot the destruction of the suitors and persuade Penelope that he really is who he claims to be. Of course, he succeeds brilliantly.

IV

INTERPRETING MYTHS

The universal human practice of myth-making appears to be the earliest means by which people interpreted the natural world and the society in which they lived. Thus myth has been the dominant mode of human reflection for the greater part of human history. Greek thinkers of the 6th century bc were the first people known to question the validity of myth-making. In subsequent centuries the rationalism introduced by these Greeks and the monotheism (belief in one God) of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all but replaced myth-making throughout much of the world. In some Asian and African cultures, however, traditional stories retained their power and became important elements of religious systems. And some cultures in the modern world maintain a worldview based primarily on myths. These cultures include Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, and the Maori of New Zealand.

A

Antiquity

In the early stages of Greek civilization, as in other ancient cultures, the truth of myths was taken for granted. The Greek word mythos, from which the English word myth is derived, was originally used to describe any narrative. Early Greek authors who employed the term drew no rigid distinction between tales that were historical or factual and those that were not.

In the 6th century bc, however, Greek thinkers began to question the validity of their culture’s traditional tales, and the word mythos came to denote an implausible story. Greek philosopher Xenophanes, for example, argued that much of the behavior that the poets Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods was unworthy of divine beings. By the 5th century bc, serious Greek thinkers tended to regard the old myths as naive explanations for natural phenomena or simply to reject them altogether. Nevertheless, myths retained their cultural importance, even after they had come under attack from philosophers. The ancient Greek tragedies, which remained central to civic and religious life in Athens through the end of the 5th century bc, drew their subject matter largely from myths.

In the early 4th century bc, Greek philosopher Plato systematically contrasted logos, or rational argument, with mythos—which in Plato’s view was little better than outright falsehood. In his philosophical dialogue The Republic, Plato argued that the ideal commonwealth should exclude traditional mythological poetry on the grounds that it was full of dangerous falsehoods. Plato himself nevertheless devised myths of a sort to explore such topics as the birth of the world and death and the afterlife, which in his view fell outside the boundaries of logical explanation.

After Plato, most thinkers either tried to apply reason to the supernatural elements in myths or interpreted them symbolically. Euhemerus, a Greek writer of the 4th century bc, traced the origin of the gods to the deification of human rulers by their grateful subjects. This explanation for the gods is consequently known as euhemerism. Philosophers known as the Stoics and—much later—the Neoplatonists interpreted myths as allegories (narratives that employ picturesque language and images to convey a hidden message). Even as classical Greco-Roman civilization went into decline in the early centuries ad, the older, more critical spirit of Xenophanes was kept alive by Greek essayist and satirist Lucian of Samosata. In the 2nd century Lucian lampooned such myths as the birth of Athena from Zeus’s head, as well as the Judgment of Paris, which supposedly led to the Trojan War.

B

Hebrew and Early Christian Interpretations

In the Hebrew tradition, the break from mythology took a different direction than it had taken among the Greeks. Here, the source of tension was not the incompatibility of myth and reason—as it had been with the Greeks—but the incompatibility of Near Eastern polytheism (belief in many gods) and Hebrew monotheism. Greek thinkers resolved the primary tension (myth versus reason) by identifying the divine figures in Near Eastern mythology as natural elements and forces, such as the sun and the wind. The Hebrew Bible resolved the primary tension (polytheism versus monotheism) by concentrating on the role of a supreme god and by minimizing or eliminating the roles of all other characters who could be considered divine.

As classical civilization gave way to Christianity, Christian thinkers argued about the role of myth in their religion. The traditional myths had undergone criticism and reinterpretation by Greek writers from Xenophanes to Lucian, over a period of seven centuries. Most Christian thinkers found this philosophical critique—particularly euhemerism—useful in their struggle against pagan culture and its worship of many gods. They argued that the pagan gods were actually no more than human rulers who had been mistakenly deified by their followers. Some Christian thinkers, however, attempted to establish a parallel between Christian ideas and certain aspects of pagan mythology. In the 2nd century, theologian Justin Martyr drew a comparison between Hermes (the divine messenger) and Christ (the representative of God). In the 4th century, theologian Saint Augustine argued that Christians should utilize the traditions of the pagan world in furthering the Christian worldview.

In this spirit, pagan mythological themes were reinterpreted and used symbolically in early Christian art. For example, a common motif of pagan art was the figure of Odysseus bound to the mast of his ship so that he could hear the irresistibly sweet singing of the Sirens without danger of temptation. In Christian art, this motif was adapted to symbolize a soul bound to the wood of the cross, through which the believer enters the port of salvation. Other traditional pagan motifs that were used in Christian allegories include Helios on his chariot of fire (Christ, the “light of the world” in biblical language) and the figures of Cupid and Psyche (Christ and the soul). See also Early Christian Art and Architecture.

C

The Middle Ages and Renaissance

In the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century) allegorical interpretation of the ancient myths predominated. Even the works of the ancient Roman poet Ovid, whose writings about the pagan gods were famous for their irreverence and bawdiness, received allegorical interpretation. For example, Ovid’s Metamorphoses includes a story of how Zeus fathered Perseus by approaching Danae in a shower of gold; this tale was interpreted in light of the biblical story of Mary’s virgin conception of Jesus. The entire Metamorphoses offered a rich source of material for medieval Christian allegory, starting with its tale of the creation and universal flood, and continuing through the flight of Phaëthon (who foolishly tried to drive the chariot of the sun) to the long philosophical speech of Greek philosopher Pythagoras at the end.

Mythological interpretation in the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century) continued the allegorizing approach of the Middle Ages. An old idea that enjoyed a new vogue in the Renaissance was astrology, which associated the personalities of the pagan gods with the planets that bore their names—Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and so forth. In a more philosophical vein, the Neoplatonist thinkers in Italy—especially Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola—attempted to reconcile pagan mythology with Christian theology. Typically, however, Renaissance thinkers interpreted the material of pagan mythology in an imaginative rather than theoretical manner, drawing upon it for inspiration in painting and poetry.

D

The Age of Enlightenment

During the Age of Enlightenment (17th and 18th centuries), with its emphasis on rationality, the allegorical interpretation of myths fell into disfavor. At the beginning of this period, myths were dismissed by intellectuals as absurd and superstitious fabrications, in part because of a climate of hostility toward all forms of religion. The so-called Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, in which the relative merits of classical and modern literature were debated, lent additional force to the devaluing of myths and myth-making. French writer Pierre Bayle, in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary, 1697), ridiculed the absurdity of the ancient Greek and Roman myths.

In the late 17th century, a different approach to mythology arose in the context of new information about myth-making peoples (especially those in the Americas). Europeans had become aware of these peoples in the course of the voyages of discovery of the 16th and 17th centuries. Working on the assumption that these cultures could provide insight into the experience of prehistoric societies, European scholars sought the origins of mythology in the 'childhood of man,' when human beings supposedly first formulated myths as a response to their physical and social environment. The studies made in this period were consolidated in the work of German scholar Christian Gottlob Heyne, who was the first scholar to use the Latin term mythus (instead of fabula, meaning 'fable') to refer to the tales of heroes and gods.

E

The 19th-Century Science of Mythology

As more and more material from other cultures became available, European scholars came to recognize even greater complexity in mythological traditions. Especially valuable was the evidence provided by ancient Indian and Iranian texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Zend-Avesta. From these sources it became apparent that the character of myths varied widely, not only by geographical region but also by historical period. German scholar Karl Otfried Müller followed this line of inquiry in his Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (Prolegomena to a Scientific Mythology, 1825). He argued that the relatively simple Greek myth of Persephone reflects the concerns of a basic agricultural community, whereas the more involved and complex myths found later in Homer are the product of a more developed society.

Scholars also attempted to tie various myths of the world together in some way. From the late 18th century through the early 19th century, the comparative study of languages had led to the reconstruction of a hypothetical parent language to account for striking similarities among the various languages of Europe and the Near East. These languages, scholars concluded, belonged to an Indo-European language family. Experts on mythology likewise searched for a parent mythology that presumably stood behind the mythologies of all the European peoples. German-born British scholar Max Müller concluded that the Rig-Veda of ancient India—the oldest preserved body of literature written in an Indo-European language—reflected the earliest stages of an Indo-European mythology. Müller attributed all later myths to misunderstandings that arose from the picturesque terms in which early peoples described natural phenomena. For example, an expression like “maiden dawn” for “sunrise” resulted first in personification of the dawn, and then in myths about her.

Later in the 19th century the theory of evolution put forward by English naturalist Charles Darwin heavily influenced the study of mythology. Scholars excavated the history of mythology, much as they would excavate fossil-bearing geological formations, for relics from the distant past. This approach can be seen in the work of British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor. In Primitive Culture (1871), Tylor organized the religious and philosophical development of humanity into separate and distinct evolutionary stages. Similarly, British anthropologist Sir James George Frazer proposed a three-stage evolutionary scheme in The Golden Bough (3rd edition, 1912–1915). According to Frazer’s scheme, human beings first attributed natural phenomena to arbitrary supernatural forces (magic), later explaining them as the will of the gods (religion), and finally subjecting them to rational investigation (science).

The research of British scholar William Robertson Smith, published in Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889), also influenced Frazer. Through Smith’s work, Frazer came to believe that many myths had their origin in the ritual practices of ancient agricultural peoples, for whom the annual cycles of vegetation were of central importance. The myth and ritual theory, as this approach came to be called, was developed most fully by British scholar Jane Ellen Harrison. Using insight gained from the work of French sociologist Émile Durkheim, Harrison argued that all myths have their origin in collective rituals of a society. This approach reached its most extreme form in the so-called functionalism of British anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, who held that every myth implies a ritual, and every ritual implies a myth.

F

20th-Century Approaches

Most analyses of myths in the 18th and 19th centuries showed a tendency to reduce myths to some essential core—whether the seasonal cycles of nature, historical circumstances, or ritual. That core supposedly remained once the fanciful elements of the narratives had been stripped away. In the 20th century, investigators began to pay closer attention to the content of the narratives themselves. Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud held that myths—like dreams—condense the material of experience and represent it in symbols. Freud’s pupil Carl Jung took this psychological approach in a different direction. Jung viewed myths not as relics of the infancy of the human race, but as revelations of humanity’s tendency to draw on a collective store of what he called archetypes—a set of patterns in the unconscious mind that people in all cultures express through similar images and symbols. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that the primary function of myths is to resolve contradictions between such basic sets of opposites as life and death, nature and culture, and self and society.

What has become clear is that myth-making is an extremely varied and complex human activity. As in other creative activities, an enormous number of social, environmental, and personal factors come into play that make it difficult to summarize or explain myth-making from a single vantage point. While every theory offers something illuminating and useful to the understanding of some myths or mythological traditions, it seems unlikely that anyone will ever devise a theory that accounts for every type of tale that is classified as myth.

V

INFLUENCE OF MYTHS

Mythology has exerted a pervasive influence on the arts in all parts of the world from the earliest times. In the Americas, people expressed mythological themes using materials such as sand (in the sandpaintings of the Navajo) and stone (in the jade masks of the Olmec). In Oceania, wood was a preferred material, used to created sculptures and masks. The indigenous peoples of Central and South America used ceramics for funerary urns and sculptures of gods and mythological figures. In ancient Europe as well, mythological themes were treated in a variety of media, including stone, wood, and metal.

Some of the richest artistic traditions involving mythology are found in the cultures of West Africa. Particularly prominent in sculpture are the Nommo, celestial twins whose representations can be studied both in the way they have changed over time and in the way they vary across cultures. Despite the artistic value of pieces inspired by myth, it is misleading to isolate the art objects of myth-making cultures from their religious and intellectual context. The statuettes and masks of the Dogon people, for example, do not exist primarily to satisfy an aesthetic impulse, but to serve as instruments in religious acts.

Even apart from cultures in which myth-making is bound up with ritual, myths have provided a wealth of material for the writer and artist since the beginning of recorded history. The divine characters employed by Homer in his epics—principally Zeus, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares—became the common property of poets throughout antiquity. In addition, Greek writers of tragedy drew upon the traditional body of myth to create such human characters as Agamemnon and Clytemnestra (in the Oresteia of Aeschylus); Antigone (in the play of the same name by Sophocles); and Electra (in plays by Sophocles and Euripides).

The gods have also provided inspiration to many visual artists through the centuries. As an ideal of masculine beauty, Apollo figures prominently in artworks of all periods. The most famous representation of Apollo is the Apollo Belvedere, an ancient Roman sculpture copied from a Greek original, in the Vatican Museum in Rome. Many artists of the Renaissance and the Baroque Era (1600 to 1750) represented Apollo as well. The goddess Venus, equally renowned for beauty, has inspired many artists since ancient times. Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli copied an ancient sculpture in his famous painting Birth of Venus (after 1482, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy).

In literature and music the debt to mythological themes is equally pronounced. Antigone, a daughter of Oedipus, became famous in the play by Sophocles, which portrays the conflict between obedience to the laws of the state and to the higher laws of the gods. Among those who later used themes from her life are French playwrights Jean Cocteau (Antigone, 1922) and Jean Anouilh (Antigone, 1942) and German playwright Bertolt Brecht (Antigone, 1948). Electra, the unhappy daughter of Agamemnon who seeks to avenge her father’s murder, has been the subject of plays by French playwright Jean-Paul Sartre (The Flies, 1943) and American playwright Eugene O’Neill (Mourning Becomes Elektra, 1931), and of a celebrated opera by German composer Richard Strauss (Elektra, 1909). It is no exaggeration to say that art, music, and literature throughout the world would be unimaginably different without the influence of mythology.