Curated category
Cattle deities
- HeraHera is the goddess of marriage, women, and family in ancient Greek religion, and the protector of women during childbirth.
- Mars (mythology)Mars, the Roman god of war, was not simply a deity of battle. He was also a guardian of crops, a father of the Roman people, and a protector whose sacred…
- DionysusDionysus stands as one of the most paradoxical figures in all of ancient Greek religion: the god who frees his followers from fear and self-consciousness…
- Neptune (mythology)Neptune, the Roman god of freshwater and the sea, had a festival timed not to stormy weather or crashing waves but to the worst heat of summer, when rivers…
- IsisIsis was one of the most consequential figures in the religious history of the ancient world. She began as a relatively minor character in the royal rituals…
- Nut (goddess)Nut, the ancient Egyptian goddess of the sky, stretches across the ceiling of the world. Her body arches on fingertips and toes, spanning the four cardinal…
- HeliosThe word helios comes from a Proto-Indo-European root that ancient scholars trace back to the dawn of language itself. Walter Burkert noted in his 1985 book…
- PasiphaëPasiphaë was the queen of Crete, a daughter of the sun god Helios, and one of the most unsettling figures in all of Greek mythology.
- Vulcan (mythology)Vulcan was the only major Roman god whose worshippers wanted his cult kept at a distance. The Etruscan haruspices, the diviners who read divine will, held…
- HathorHathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion, and she may be the most difficult deity in that tradition to pin down with a single description.
- GebGeb, the Egyptian god of the Earth, was said to laugh earthquakes into existence. According to ancient belief, the trembling of the ground was not a…