Greek Mythology: About a certain deity...

ugh....what is it with people and rape fics.

edit: what a terrible page topper.

edited 10th Sep '14 8:45:53 AM by nightwyrm_zero

More about the female goddesses being older thing. I'll have to copy-pasta from someone else cause I just remember bits and pieces.

The origins of both go back into prehistory and no one can answer that question other than to say that both show influences of the mother-goddess religion that was evidently practiced in the stone age as evidenced by cave paintings, female figurines and shrines at places like Catal Hyuk in eastern Turkey(spelling may not be correct). The Greeks probably assimilated this influence through the Cretan pre-Greek civilization which the Mycenean Greeks (the Greeks of Homer's poetry and the first of a couple of waves of Greek invasions into what became Greece) eventually conquered.

The point of this is that the Greeks were syncretists; when they encountered other religions, they generally assimilated them by identifying that religions gods or goddesses with their gods and goddesses and often by ''' "marrying" the deities of the other religion to deities of their religion. '''

The Egyptians didn't do that.

This makes sense to me because the Osiris Myth (long version) has a lot of similarities to several Greek myths (all with rape). A big difference being was that there's no rape in the Osiris myth, except for Isis getting pregnant by dead husband (and she was totally the dominant one), yup.

Like, Isis made an island into a floaty island to protect Horus. Leto (impregnated by Zeus, hiding from Hera) had to give birth on a floating island.

Isis wandered around looking for Osiris' body parts, similar to Demeter wandering around looking for Persephone. Both even became fond of a mortal kid and wanted to make him immortal but someone interrupted. Both even killed mortals who annoyed them. Luckily for Isis, she wasn't raped by a horsey, at least not that I'm aware of.

And of course, Osiris becoming ruler of Underworld is like Persephone.

Ancient Egypt, though patriarchal, also tended to treat their women better than the Ancient Greeks did. Isis is depicted as being more proactive while uh... her husband was damsel in distress.

How much do you guys know about the orphic tradition and the period before the supremacy of the Olympic pantheon?