Curated category
Underworld gods
- HadesHades is the god of the dead and the King of the underworld in ancient Greek religion and mythology. His name became so feared that by around the 5th century…
- 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…
- OsirisOsiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the dead, was depicted wrapped from the legs up like a mummy, crowned with a towering atef crown, and holding the…
- HermesHermes is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion, and his story begins in a cave on Mount Cyllene, in the dead of night, where Zeus secretly made love…
- ThothThoth is an ancient Egyptian deity whose name, in one interpretation, means "he who is like the ibis." He governed a domain so vast it seems almost…
- 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…
- AnubisAnubis watches from the walls of royal tombs built more than five thousand years ago, his black jackal head unmistakable against the painted stone.
- RaRa was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun, and the Egyptians called themselves the "Cattle of Ra." The name fit a strange origin story.
- GilgameshGilgamesh was king of Uruk, a city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, and he may have walked the earth sometime between 2800 and 2500 BC.