Creation Myths across the Cultures

“In the beginning, there was - Nun? Nothing? A great blackness? Water? Perhaps, there was only sand and sky? ” All of the great Creation stories begin with this very simple statement, and then proceed to tell us of the gods and goddesses that created this vast and wonderful Earth. Although these stories had many similarities, they also had just as many differences.

In this essay, I am going to examine two of the oldest civilizations myths and discuss those similarities and differences. Greece The Greek Story of creation is chock full of family dissension and anger.It shows a shift between a matriarchal culture in which people worshiped the Mother Earth for the crops that she would bare, to a society that was based on patriarchy. According to Greek myth, the original creator of the Earth was Gaia herself. In the darkness of Chaos, she gave birth to not only the mountains and the sea, but also to the sky, giving him equal standing with her and having him surround her on all sides, (Rosenberg, 2011).

Gaia and Uranus had the three one hundred handed giants and three Cyclopes, but Uranus was terrified of his children and proceeded to throw them into the depths of Tartarus.After the birth of her next thirteen children, Gaia and her youngest son, Cronos conspired together to overthrow Uranus. While he slept, Cronos took a very sharp sickle and castrated his father, making himself the king of the sky. Cronos married his sister, the Earth goddess Rhea and together they had six children. But, Cronos feared that one of his children would overthrow him in the same way he had overthrown Uranus and he swallowed his first five children up. But Rhea hid her sixth child away from him and when he was of an age, Zeus took up the same sickle that had castrated Uranus and committed the same crime to Cronos.

This incited a war between the gods and the titans and the only reason why the gods won was because of the help of the hundred-handed giants and the Cyclopes. Egypt Like the Greek people, the gods of Egypt had much turmoil within their family. The sky goddess, Nut was very beautiful and became pregnant with not only her husband, Ra’s children, but also the children of Geb, the god of the earth, and Thoth, lord of Divine words. Upon learning of his wife’s infidelity, Ra cursed Nut and informed her that she would never give birth to any of her children.Nut went to Thoth and got him to devise a plan in which she was able to give birth to her children.

Thoth convinced the moon to play games with him and every time he won, the moon had to give him a little of her light. When he had enough light to add five more days to the calendar, Nut gave birth to her children; one on each of the extra days. On the first and second days, Osiris and Horus the first, both of whom were children of Ra were born, on the third day came Set, the first child of Geb. Set chose his own time to be born and chose to be born at night by cutting a whole in his mother’s side.

From the time of his birth, Set showed an aggressive spirit. On the fourth day, Isis, child of Thoth was born and on the fifth, Nephthys, the second child of Geb was born. From the time they shared in their mother’s womb, Osiris and Isis loved one another and eventually they married, just as Set and Nephthys also married. Osiris became king of upper and lower Egypt, uniting the two tribes together and teaching them to farm and giving them a body of laws of which they should live by.His rule became known as a golden age in Egypt. Rosenberg, 2011) However not everyone was happy.

Set was jealous of Osiris and he set about stealing the throne of Egypt from his brother. He planned carefully and eventually trapped Osiris into a sarcophagus, smothering him. Then they poured melted lead on the box and took it to the Nile River and threw it in. Isis was overcome with grief and wandered from town to town looking for the sarcophagus that held her husband. When she eventually found him, she was able to bring him back to life for a short period of time.

While he was alive during that short period, Osiris fathered a child on Isis whom she called Horus, and hoped that he would one day avenge his father’s death. While Horus was still growing up, Set found the sarcophagus that held Osiris’s body, and in a rage he tore apart the body and spread the pieces out all over the land. Nephthys, who was married to Set, was always loyal to Isis and she helped her find all the pieces of Osiris and together, once they had all fourteen pieces, Isis put the body of her beloved husband back together and she and Nephthys buried him properly.Afterward, Horus led the two goddesses to the land of the dead and spoke the divine words that would bring his father back to life. Osiris became the god of the dead and Horus took Osiris’s place as the king of all Egypt. (Rosenberg, 2011) Similarities and Differences Both of these stories begin with vast nothingness, though one is nothing but chaos and the other is only water.

The Nile River is the life force of the Egyptian culture and these people were scared that if they wronged their gods, the gods would see fit to make the river dry up.The Egyptian government was very centralized and you can see in their myths how even though there was much strife within the godly family, the gods and goddesses worked together to overcome the evil in the world. These myths helped the people to overcome their own adversity and the evil within their world. The Greek government was spread out over different city states and the people of Greece believed that there was a patron god or goddess that oversaw the welfare of each state.