Curated category
Underworld gods
- HadesIn ancient Greek, the name Hades meant "the unseen one," a direct contrast to his brother Zeus who represented the brightness of day.
- DionysusClay tablets unearthed at Pylos in the twelfth or thirteenth century BC bear the inscription di-wo-nu-so. This Mycenaean Greek form appears twice on…
- OsirisThe first evidence of the worship of Osiris appears in the middle of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt during the 25th century BC.
- HermesThe earliest written record of Hermes appears in Linear B inscriptions from Pylos, Thebes, and Knossos dating to the Bronze Age Mycenaean period.
- ThothThe name Thoth emerges from the ancient Egyptian phrase meaning he is like the ibis. Linguists reconstruct this as *di-hauti, though the exact pronunciation…
- VarunaIn the Rigveda, composed between 1900 and 1200 BCE, Varuna stands as a central figure among the earliest Hindu deities. He appears in numerous hymns…
- TartarusIn the late 8th century BC, Hesiod wrote of a being named Tartarus who emerged from Chaos and Gaia. This entity stood as the third primordial deity in…
- AnubisThe Greek name Anubis arrived in Egypt around the 7th century BC, replacing the ancient Egyptian term Inpu. Before that date, priests and scribes used the…
- 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.