Curated playlist
Legendary progenitors
- NoahNoah's flood story matches an older Mesopotamian tale point by point.
- Adam and EveIn Islam, Adam and Eve share equal blame for the forbidden fruit. God forgave them.
- Venus (mythology)The Roman goddess Venus was once shown with a beard in Cyprus. Her worshippers there cross-dressed.
- FreyrThe Norse god Freyr gave away the one sword that could have saved him. He traded it to win a giantess as his wife.
- Líf and LífþrasirTwo humans, Líf and Lífþrasir, survive Ragnarök by hiding in a wood. They eat only morning dew until the flames die.
- AeneasTwice in Homer's Iliad, gods snatch the Trojan Aeneas from death. He was a minor warrior who became Rome's first hero.
- RaEvery night, the serpent Apophis attacked the boat of the Egyptian sun god Ra. Hymns and spells helped him win.
- CybeleIn 204 BC, Rome fetched the goddess Cybele in the form of a black lump of meteoric iron.
- LilithLilith is a feminine figure in Mesopotamian and Jewish mythology, and her name has also been spelled Lilit, Lilitu, and Lilis. Among the surviving Jewish incantation bowls is one commissioned from an occultist to protect a woman called…
- Yakub (Nation of Islam)Yakub, also spelled Yacub or Yaqub, is the central figure of a creation story told by the Nation of Islam. The Nation's doctrine describes him as a black scientist from Mecca who lived 6,600 years ago and engineered the white race. The…
- YmirIn Norse myth, the gods killed the giant Ymir and built the world from his body. His skull became the sky.
- Ask and EmblaThree gods walking along a beach found two trees and made the first humans. They were Ask and Embla in Norse myth.
- RígsþulaRígsþula, the Lay of Ríg, breaks off while a young man is out hunting. He is riding through a forest, snaring birds, when a crow speaks to him. That is the last event the poem records. The poem survives incomplete, written on the last…