No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions
Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: WHILE THE PUBLISHER AND AUTHORS HAVE USED THEIR BEST EFFORTS IN PREPARING THIS WORK, THEY MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES REPRESENTATIVES, WRITTEN SALES MATERIALS OR PROMOTIONAL STATEMENTS FOR THIS WORK. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION, WEBSITE, OR PRODUCT IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE PUBLISHER AND AUTHORS ENDORSE THE INFORMATION OR SERVICES THE ORGANIZATION, WEBSITE, OR PRODUCT MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR SITUATION. YOU SHOULD CONSULT WITH A SPECIALIST WHERE APPROPRIATE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR AUTHORS SHALL BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFIT OR ANY OTHER COMMERCIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR OTHER DAMAGES.
For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit https://hub.wiley.com/community/support/dummies
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023939564
ISBN 978-1-394-18793-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-394-18794-2 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-394-18795-9 (ebk)
Contents at a Glance
Part 4: One Big Family Feud: Norse and Northern European
Part 5: The Cradle(s) of Civilization: African and Near-Eastern
The Wolf-Queen: Mebd (Maeve)
The Great Cattle Robbery: An Irish Epic
The great Irish hero: Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool)
The Snake Charmer: Saint Patrick
Creating humans from bamboo . . . or maybe Omumborombonga?
The Trickster Spirits: Huveane and Uhlakayana
Trickster number 1: Huveane
Trickster number 2: Uhlakayana
The house that Uhlakayana (or maybe Huveane) built
Mesopotamian Gods: Okay, We Fear You . . . You Happy?
Enûma Elish: The Babylonian Creation Story
Just one big happy family
A corporate reorg and some new leadership
Gilgamesh: Epically Sumerian
Gilgamesh the king: Big man in Uruk
Searching for immortality
Hebrew Mythology: A is for Apple, B is for Babel
In the beginning
Oh look, a flood myth
The Tower of Babel and different languages
18: Three Cheers for Egypt: Ra, Ra, Ra!
Write Me a Really Big River
Order from chaos: One version of how the world began
creator gods and their side of the story
Trouble in paradise: Horus and Seth
The “framework story”: The story that sets up all the others
Scheherazade keeps ’em coming back: Talking to stay alive
The Stories within the Stories within the Story
From Baghdad to Batavia, on, in, and under the sea: Sinbad the Sailor
The great Persian genie-off: Aladdin, his lamp, and the genie 273 Open, sesame! Ali-Baba, some thieves, and the clever Morgiana 275
PART 6: KASHMIR TO KYOTO, AND A LOT IN
CHAPTER 21: Land of a Thousand Gods: India
The Vedic Invaders
Creation of the world, animals, and people
Warlike gods for a warlike people
Memorized mythology: The Vedas
Hinduism: Room for Many Gods
Sources of Hindu myths
The creation of the world and Brahma, the creator
The other big gods: Some okay guys
The goddesses: A mixed bag
Life after life: What you sow is what you reap
Two Coexisting Religions: Buddhism and Jainism
Buddhism and its start in India
Jainism: Give it up!
The interrupted creation of people
Multifaceted
The world under the fifth sun
for rain, corn, and
What a coincidence: Mythology, Moctezuma, and the conquistadors
Scylla and Charybdis
Introduction
Mythology For Dummies, 2nd edition, is about the stories people tell that really matter. The telling of myths may be one of the most important things human beings do. Everyone tells myths. Every culture of every time produces myths. Put together all these myths, and you come up with the subject of mythology, a vast body of stories about heroes, gods, spirits, monsters, and forces of nature.
To understand mythology is to understand human beings. That’s why myths are worth thinking about. Just like human beings, myths can be stirring, inspirational, funny, and beautiful. On the other hand, just like human beings, myths can be complicated, cruel, violent, obscene, or just (seemingly) absurd.
About This Book
This book is meant to be a quick reference for anyone who wants to discover the basics of world mythology. We’ve organized it into chapters that deal with specific topics; if you have a particular interest, you can just read the pertinent chapters and not bother with the rest of the book. Or you can read the whole thing but in any order you like. Though we devote a big chunk of the book to classical mythology (Greek and Roman myths), we also try to cover as much of the world as possible.
One important thing to remember: We take myths very seriously; Mythology is religion. Some of the myths in this book are stories from cultures that don’t exist or religions no one practices anymore. Others are myths from cultures and religions that are alive and important to millions of people the world over today.
Don’t get us wrong; we’re not saying that myths aren’t funny. Many myths are really funny, and they’re supposed to be. Neither are we saying that our entire discussion of myths is serious, because it isn’t. We want this book to be engaging and entertaining, so we have fun talking about mythology with the hope that you have fun reading about mythology. But when we say that something is a myth, we’re not saying that it’s false or wrong.
Many other books on mythology often include complicated analysis of myths and try to convince you what different myths may mean about a civilization or culture. But in this book, we give you a fun overview of exciting tales from around the world. Don’t worry; we explain any theoretical or technical concepts as we go along, but we mainly want to tell stories!
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you read this book:
» We list dates in terms of BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era). Most scholars refer to dates in this way rather than BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, or “In the Year of Our Lord”) because the new abbreviations are more considerate in an age when scholars of different religious faiths (or no religious faith) work together.
But don’t let that confuse you. The year 19 BCE is the same as 19 BC, and not only did we write this book in the 21st century AD, but we also wrote it in the 21st century CE.
» We generally use the word deities to refer to gods and goddesses together. We may occasionally use “gods” to mean “gods and goddesses.”
» We’ve written this book in English, but most myths weren’t told originally in English. We’ve often had to choose among different but equally okay ways of rendering human or divine names into English. Was the hero of the Trojan War called Achilles or Akhilleus? Was the founder of Taoism named Lao Tse or Lao Tzu? We’ve tried to make good decisions, but don’t be surprised if you see some of the names spelled very differently in other books.
Foolish Assumptions
Dear reader, we make a few assumptions about you:
» You may have encountered some myths (Americans often learn about Greek mythology in school), but you’d like to know more about those myths and mythology in general.
» You may know a lot of myths from a particular culture — perhaps you are a fan of Japanese Manga — but would like to widen your knowledge of mythology to include other cultures.
» You’re reading this book because you don’t really know what mythology is, or what myths are, and you’d like to know.
Icons Used in This Book
Along the way, we’ve marked some information with these three icons.
Remember icons point out the information that’s especially important to know. We also use this icon to indicate places where we tie bits of mythological theory with myths, pointing out what kind of myth you’re looking at.
The Tip icon highlights suggestions or explanations that may help you better understand a complicated story or topic.
This icon identifies historical or scholarly information — things the professionals who study this stuff care about. This info isn’t essential to the topic at hand, so the book makes sense even if you skip over all these icons. But it may be more fun if you don’t.
Beyond the Book
In addition to what you’re reading right now, this book comes with a free accessanywhere Cheat Sheet that includes tips to help you keep mythology at your fingertips. To get this Cheat Sheet, simply go to www.dummies.com and type “Mythology For Dummies Cheat Sheet” in the Search box.
Where to Go from Here
You can start reading this book at any point in any chapter! If you want more than we can offer in this For Dummies book, we’ve tried to reference the original sources for mythology, or the cultures and histories behind them, as we go along.
If you are a fan of the Percy Jackson novels, you could check out Chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Fans of Japanese Manga will enjoy Chapter 23. Fans of Marvel’s Thor and Loki will enjoy Chapters 12 and 13. If your family traces its roots to Africa, Chapter 16, 18, and 19 might be interesting. If you are wondering why so many kids today are named “Finn” or “Maeve,” check out Chapter 15. Fans of Disney’s Aladdin will want to read Chapter 20.
1 Mythology Basics and Why the Stories Endure
IN THIS PART . . .
Define myth and make connections between myth, religion, and history.
See how myths survive, even in the face of science and even when they’re based on a religion that no one practices anymore.
How to Spot a Myth a Mile Away
A myth is a story. The Greek word mythos means “story,” and sometimes it means “thing you say that gets folks to act in a certain way.” That’s the basic concept. But, of course, not just any old story can be a myth. Amy (one of the authors of this book) was served a whole pig’s head for dinner in Thailand; this story is a good one and worth telling, but it isn’t a myth. Chris (the other author of this book) once got shot at by some people in the woods — another good story, but not up to the standards of mythology.
Experts love to argue about difficult, hard-to-define subjects, and mythology has been a popular topic for argument for the last two centuries. Scholars argue about what’s a “true” myth as opposed to some other kind. Some mythology snobs insist, however, that no one confuse myths with other similar types of stories, such as legends, sagas, and folktales. (We define all four in the following sections.) But there is not a bright, obvious line between myth, folktale, legend, and factual historical accounts. (See “Different Types of Myths: Historical and Fictional American Legends.”)
Most stories known as myths have elements of legend or folktale in them and vice versa. These terms are useful in helping decide what’s a myth and what isn’t, but you shouldn’t get too hung up on them.
Specifics of mythological proportions
You may know a myth when you see it, but you still need some kind of definition before you can get down to the business of fully appreciating myths. Myths can be stories about gods, goddesses, and supernatural events and supernatural beings, and humans’ relationships with them; they can also be tales from “history” (whether factual or fictional). What’s common to all myths is that they explain truths or values and stories that help groups of people (such as a specific nationalities) identify themselves, understand their world, and define their values. Myths help validate the social order, such as hereditary kingships or social class structures. They also can provide a “history” of a kingdom that makes the existence and growth of a kingdom or nation seem inevitable.
Because myths are often about humans and the gods, they’re also often about religion. Every myth in this book was or still is part of a religion people practiced seriously.
The word myth has come to mean “untrue” in some contexts; people say something is “just a myth” if no factual basis exists for it. But myths do have their own truths. They provide people with a view of the world and a set of values that can
