Curated category
Legendary progenitors
- NoahThe Hebrew Bible places Noah as the tenth and final antediluvian patriarch in Genesis chapter 5. His father Lamech lived to be 182 years old when Noah was…
- Adam and EveThe Book of Genesis opens with two distinct narratives about the first humans. The first account in chapter one describes God creating humankind as a…
- Venus (mythology)The Latin word Venus stems from a Proto-Italic form reconstructed as wenos, meaning desire. This root traces back to the Proto-Indo-European term wes-, which…
- FreyrIn Norse mythology, Freyr stands as the god associated with kingship, fertility, peace, prosperity, fair weather, and good harvest.
- Líf and LífþrasirIn the poem Vafþrúðnismál, the god Odin asks a jötunn named Vafþrúðnir who will survive when Fimbulvetr arrives. The winter at the end of the world brings…
- AeneasAeneas is the Romanization of the hero's original Greek name Aineías. This name first appears in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite when Aphrodite gives him his…
- RaIn the beginning, there was only Nun, a vast mass of watery chaos filling the universe. No land existed yet, and no life stirred within that dark expanse.
- CybeleA corpulent female figure sits flanked by large felines on a stone slab from Çatalhöyük, dated to the 6th millennium BC.
- YmirIn the grassless void of Ginnungagap, venomous drops dripped from the icy rivers known as Élivágar. These poisonous streams hardened into ice and rime that…
- Ask and EmblaIn 1936, Henry Adams Bellows translated the Poetic Edda for Princeton University Press. This ancient text describes a scene where three gods walk along a…
- RígsþulaA single sheet of parchment from the fourteenth century holds the only surviving copy of Rígsþula. This fragment rests within Codex Wormianus, cataloged as…