Curated playlist
Cattle deities
- HeraHera is the goddess of marriage, women, and family in ancient Greek religion, and the protector of women during childbirth. She is the queen of the twelve Olympians and of Mount Olympus, the sister and wife of Zeus, and the daughter of the…
- 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 animals spoke prophecy from the branches of oak trees. His very name gave the world a…
- 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, yet who also embodies ritual madness and the destruction of those who stand against…
- 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 ran low and springs nearly dried up. Every year on the 23rd of July, Romans…
- 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 of ancient Egypt and ended her journey as a universal goddess worshipped from…
- 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 points of north, south, east, and west. Stars cover her skin. The dead cry out to…
- HeliosHelios, the Greek god who personifies the Sun, is invoked in one ancient ritual text with remarkable vividness: "a youth, fair to behold, with fiery hair, clothed in a white tunic and a scarlet cloak and wearing a fiery crown." The same…
- 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. Her story raises a question that ancient audiences found deeply troubling: what happens when a god's…
- 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 that any temple of Vulcan should sit outside the city. His oldest shrine in Rome,…
- 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. Her Egyptian name, ḥwt-ḥr, is typically translated as "house of Horus" but can…
- 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 geological event but an outburst of divine amusement. Crops grew because Geb permitted…