Curated playlist
Underworld gods
- HadesBy around the 5th century BC, the Greeks had largely stopped saying Hades's name aloud.
- DionysusZeus sewed the unborn Dionysus into his thigh after the child's mother died. That is why Dionysus is called twice-born.
- OsirisIn Egyptian myth, Set tricked his brother Osiris into a box and threw it into the Nile. Isis then searched for the body.
- HermesOn his first day of life, the Greek god Hermes stole Apollo's cattle. He also invented the lyre by nightfall.
- ThothPlutarch says the Egyptian god Thoth won five extra days for the calendar by gambling with the Moon.
- VarunaIn the Rigveda, Varuna watches every human action through spies scattered across the stars.
- TartarusIn Hesiod's Theogony, Tartarus was a god as well as a pit. It ranked third among the first gods.
- AnubisAncient Egyptians made a jackal guard their dead because jackals dug them up. Anubis was the god of funerary rites.
- RaEvery night, the serpent Apophis attacked the boat of the Egyptian sun god Ra. Hymns and spells helped him win.
- GilgameshWhen King Gilgamesh of Uruk died, workers diverted the Euphrates River to bury him beneath its bed.