Mythology and History

Somewhere between 3000 BC and 2000 BC,

the lands of Greece were settled by a metal-
using agricultural people who spoke a
language other than Indo-European.
Some of the names they gave their villages
were preserved by the Greeks, names, for
instance, ending in "-ssos." We know next
to nothing of these people, their religion,
their cultural memory, their language, or
their everyday experience.
The period when they dominated Greece,
called the "Early Helladic" period, seemed
to be one of comparative quiet and peace.
All that ended around 2000 BC; the early
Helladic sites and villages were destroyed
in fire or abandoned outright.
An invader had entered the stage, one that
quickly dominated the landscape: the
Greek.
It is from this Culture that the most famous
and well preserved mythological History is
retained
• Their cities grew larger, their graves more opulent, their art more common,
their agriculture more efficient, and the power of these new warlord cities
began to be felt around the Aegean.
• This period of Greek development and prosperity is called the Late Helladic
Period or simply the Mycenean period.
• The Mycenaean age found its voice in the poetry of Homer in a single
defining event: the Mycenaean war against Troy, a city in Asia Minor. But this
poetry was regarded as fiction only until an amateur archaeologist named
Heinrich Schliemann dug up the city of Troy in Turkey and later dug up the
Mycenaean cities of Mycenae (which gives the age its name) and Tiryns.

Mycenaean grave
• The ancient texts we call Greek Myths are mostly from the period known as
Classical Greece, circa 500 b.c.e.
• The stories behind the myths are from a much earlier time but written versions
don‘t exist before Classical times.
• The oldest myths can be traced to three main sources: Homer, Hesiod and The
Homeric Hymns, circa 800 b.c.e. That means that by the time they were written
down, these works had survived 400 years of additions, subtractions and
mutations to finally become the versions we now call ‗authentic‘.
• The oldest known Greek
literary sources are

• HOMER the epic poems

Iliad and Odyssey, focusing
on events surrounding the
Trojan War.
• HESIOD, a possible
contemporary with Homer,
offers
• Theogony (Origin of the
Gods) the fullest account of
the earliest Greek myths,
dealing with the creation of
the world; the origin of the
gods, Titans, and Giants; as
well as elaborate
genealogies, folktales, and
etiological myths.

The Giants preparing their attack on

heaven. Engraving by Bernard Picart
1673-1733
• HESIOD'S Works and Days, a
didactic* poem about farming life,
also includes the myths
of Prometheus, Pandora, and the
Four Ages.
• The poet gives advice on the best
way to succeed in a dangerous
world, rendered yet more dangerous
by its gods
• * Didactic Poetry is instructional poetry. The poet
expected the reader to learn skills, science, philosophy,
love, crafts, etc.
Myths also are preserved in

1. the Homeric Hymns

2. in fragments of epic
poems of the Epic Cycle
3. in lyric poems
4. in the works of the
tragedians of the fifth
century BC
5. in writings of scholars
and poets of the
Hellenistic Age and
6. in texts from the time of
the Roman Empire by
writers such as Plutarch
and Pausanias.
7. Euripides - Poet of Greek tragedy
Greek lyric poets
1. Including Pindar, Bacchylides, Simonides
and bucolic poets such
as Theocritus and Bion, relate individual
mythological incidents.
2. Additionally, myth was central to
classical Athenian drama.
1. The tragic playwrights
Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides took most of
their plots from myths of
the age of heroes and the
Trojan War.
2. Many of the great tragic
stories (e.g. Agamemnon
and his children, Oedipus,
Jason, Medea, etc.) took on
their classic form in these
tragedies.
3. The comic playwright
Aristophanes also used
myths, in The Birds and
The Frogs.
Oedipus and the Sphinx – gustave
moreau
• Historians Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, and
• geographers Pausanias and Strabo, who traveled throughout the Greek world and noted
the stories they heard, supplied numerous local myths and legends, often giving little-
known alternative versions.
• Herodotus in particular, searched the various traditions presented him and found the
historical or mythological roots in the confrontation between Greece and the East.
• Herodotus attempted to reconcile origins and the blending of differing cultural concepts.
But we know now that Greek civilization began at least a millennium before the
Age of Athens and almost eight hundred years before Homer. It began off the
mainland of Greece, in the Aegean Sea, in the palaces of the bureaucrat-kings of
Minoa.
• After the Minoan civilization had been weakened in a series of earthquakes, the
Mycenaean's conquered Crete and other Aegean civilizations, establishing
themselves over the culture that so deeply influenced their own.
• The most famous of the Mycenaean raids, of course, is the war against Troy, a
wealthy commercial city on the coast of Asia Minor.
• This city, according to the archaeological evidence, was totally destroyed by
the Mycenaean's.
Shortly after this
defining event,
their civilizations
fell into what is
termed ‗the dark
ages‘, in which
Greeks stopped
writing
and, it seems,
abandoned their
cities.
Mycenaean culture
• No other texts in the Western imagination occupy as central a position in the
self-definition of Western culture as the two epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and
the Odyssey .
• They both concern the great defining moment of Greek culture, the Trojan War.
• Whether or not this war really occurred, or occurred as the Greeks narrate it, is
a relatively unanswerable question.
• We know that such a war did take place around a city that quite likely was Troy,
that Troy was destroyed utterly, but beyond that it's all speculation. This war,
however, fired the imaginations of the Greeks and became the
• defining cultural moment in their history.
In 1870, an amateur archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, determined to find
the real Troy of the Trojan War, the war that is the center of the Homeric
poems.
Mycenaean funeral mask wrongfully
attributed to Agamemnon

After successfully locating and digging up Troy, he turned his sights to the
Greek mainland and discovered two ancient cities, Mycenae and Tiryns,
which together revealed a civilization that up until that point had only been
known in the poems of Homer and Greek drama.
His discoveries inspired a man named Arthur Evans to begin digging in Crete in
order to discover what he thought would be an identical, Mycenean culture
thriving on that island;
instead, what he found was a people far more ancient than the Mycenaean's, and
far more unique than any peoples in the ancient world: the Minoans.
The Palace at Knossos
• TROY
• The legendary founder of
the city was Ilus, the son
of Tros, from whom the
name Troy was derived.
• The son and successor of
Ilus was Laomedon,
who was slain by the
hero Hercules, when
Hercules captured the
city.
• It was during the reign of
Laomedon's son Priam
that the famous Trojan
War occurred, which
resulted in the capture
and destruction of the
city.
1. He started excavating on Mount
Hissarlik in 1870. S

2. chliemann excavated a total of nine

different Troys.
3. Assuming that the Iliad's Troy had to
be near the bottom level, Schliemann
unknowingly destroyed lots of
valuable artifacts from the Troys in
higher strata.

4. In 1873, Schliemann found many

artifacts, many made of precious
metals such as gold and silver. He
named them Priam's Treasure
because King Priam supposedly ruled
over Troy during the Trojan War.
5. Many archaeologists today do not
believe that the Priam's Treasure had
anything to do with the Trojan War
because the artifacts came from
different dates.
The ‗layers of Troy‘
Aerial View of Troy- Vanderbilt Dept. of Classical Studies
Schliemann's Discovery of
Mycenae, 1876-7
 As the Trojan War was
the product of Mycenaean
culture, the Homeric
poems were the product
of the Greek Dark Ages.
• The Greeks continued to narrate the
stories long after they had abandoned
their cities and abandoned writing.
• The history of the war was preserved
from mouth to mouth, from person to
person; it may be that the stories of the
Trojan War were the dominant cultural
artifact of the Greek Dark Ages.
• These stories probably began as short
tales of isolated events and heroes;
eventually a profession of story-telling
was established—classical scholars call
this new professional a "bard."
• This new professional began combining the stories into larger narratives; as
the narratives grew, the technique of story-telling changed as well. Whereas
early bards probably memorized their stories with great exactitude, the later
bards, telling much longer stories, probably improvised much of their lines
following sophisticated rules.
• We have evidence from the classical age in Greece of people memorizing the
complete poetry of Homer word for word (over 25,000 lines of poetry); it may
be possible that the Homeric poems were memorized with more exactitude
than scholars believe. No matter what the case, by the end of the Greek Dark
Ages, these bards or story-tellers were probably the cultural center of Greek
society; their status improved greatly as Greeks began to slowly urbanize
 Theories on
Mythology

Homer on a throne close Iliad

and Odyssey, right side a figure
called Mythos, from a work of
Archelaos
The Physical theory
• according to which the elements of air, fire, and water were originally the
objects of religious adoration, and the principal deities were personifications
of the powers of nature.
• The transition was easy from a personification of the elements to the notion of
supernatural beings presiding over and governing the different objects of
nature.
• The Greeks, whose imagination was lively, peopled all nature with invisible
beings, and supposed that every object, from the sun and sea to the smallest
fountain and rivulet, was under the care of some particular divinity
The Allegorical theory
• supposes that all the myths of the ancients were allegorical and symbolical,
and contained some moral, religious, or philosophical truth or historical fact,
under the form of an allegory, but came in process of time to be understood
literally.
• Thus Saturn, who devours his own children, is the same power whom the
Greeks called Cronos (Time), which may truly be said to destroy whatever it
has brought into existence.
• The story of Io is interpreted in a similar manner. Io is the moon, and Argus the
starry sky, which, as it were, keeps sleepless watch over her. The fabulous
wanderings of lo represent the continual revolutions of the moon, which also
suggested to Milton the same idea.

"To behold the wandering moon

Riding near her highest noon,
Like one that had been led astray
In the heaven's wide, pathless way."
Il Penseroso.
 The Historical theory
• All the persons mentioned in mythology
were once real human beings
• The legends and fabulous traditions
relating to them are merely the
additions and embellishments of later
times.
• Thus the story of Aeolus, the king and
god of the winds, is supposed to have
risen from the fact that Aeolus was the
ruler of some islands in the Tyrrhenian
Sea, where be reigned as a just and
pious king, and taught the natives the
use of sails for or ships, and how to tell
from the signs of the atmosphere the
changes of the weather and the winds.
• Cadmus, who, the legend says, sowed
the earth with dragon's teeth, from
which sprang a crop of armed men, was
in fact an emigrant from Phoenicia, and
brought with him into Greece the
knowledge of the letters of the alphabet,
which be taught to the natives. From
these rudiments of learning sprung
civilization, which the poets have
always been prone to describe as a
deterioration of man's first estate, the
Golden Age of innocence and simplicity.
The Scriptural theory;
• Mythological legends are derived from the narratives of Scriptures, though the real facts
have been disguised and altered.
• Thus Deucalion is only another name for Noah,
• Hercules for Samson, Arion for Jonah, etc.
• Jubal, Tubal, and Tubal-Cain were Mercury, Vulcan, and Apollo, inventors of Pasturage,
Smithing, and Music.
• The Dragon which kept the golden apples was the serpent that beguiled Eve.
• Nimrod's tower was the attempt of the Giants against Heaven.―

Dutchman Johan Huibers built the

replica of Noah's Ark with cedar
and pine using modern tools after a
premonition of his homeland
flooding.
It stands at 150 cubits (68 metres) -
three-quarters of the length of a
football pitch.
Heinrich Schliemann
Did much to change attitudes towards mythology and History with
his famed expedition to discover Troy.
 Hesiod‘s Theogony
Hesiod’s cosmogony anthropomorphic explanation of
how the Universe
could have come into being by itself
Gaia earth mother and primordial sculpture.

First, Chaos was born, then

Earth, next Tartarus
Gen 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth
was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the
Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. 4 God saw that the light
was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.
Chaos gave birth to Erebos (where the dead pass as soon as they die) then to
dark-robed Night.
From Night, the Upper Air was born, and Day (the offspring of Night’s love for
Erebos.)

Vashti Hindu
mother
Goddess
Chaos or
Urizen by
Blake
According to Hesiod,
Chaos meant not ―utter
confusion,‖ but rather
the region or gap
between Heaven and
Earth, the abode of
blazing thunderbolts.
The birth of Chaos in
Hesiod‘s Theogony —
in effect the opening of
the gap between
Heaven and Earth —
seems to presuppose
that before this, Earth
and Heaven were one.
• In the Babylonian creation myth is recounted in the "Epic of
Creation" Enuma Elish, for example, Earth and Sky are not first
distinguished, and nothing exists except the primeval waters.
The Mesopotamian "Epic of Creation" dates to the late second millennium
B.C.E. Sumer
In the poem, the god Marduk (or Assur in the Assyrian versions of the poem)
is created to defend the divine beings from an attack plotted by the ocean
goddess Tiamat.

Earth and the heavens.

The hero Marduk offers to save the gods only if he is

appointed their supreme unquestioned leader and is
allowed to remain so even after the threat passes.

The gods agree to Marduk's terms. Marduk

challenges Tiamat to combat and destroys her. He
then rips her corpse into two halves with which he
fashions the heavens and the Earth
Genesis
Earth is at first ―without
form and void; and
darkness was upon the
face of the waters.‖
But God ―divided the
waters which were below
the firmament from the
waters which were above
the firmament [i.e., rain
water]‖ to create Heaven
and Earth.
Hesiod's Five Ages – Garden of eden
story and Greek Mythology.

The first extant account of the

successive ages of mankind comes
from Hesiod's Works and Days (lines
109-201):
Rubens: Eve and the fall.

The Ancestors of man

Charles Mahoney garden of Eden
 The Golden age In Greek mythology.

It is said that the earth—unforced—bare them fruit abundantly and yielded—

without compulsion—all needful things.
No law was necessary Men dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many
good things and loved by the gods. There was no law and therefore no fear of
punishment.
Silver age: After Cronos was banished, the world was ruled by Zeus. Then the
OLYMPIANS made a second generation of men which was of silver and less noble
than the race of the Golden Age.
After the Silver Age came the Brazen race

This race—terrible and strong—was in no way equal to the race of the Silver Age.
They loved war and all deeds of violence. They ate no bread, and their hearts
were hard like adamant. The armor of these fearful men was of bronze, and so
were their houses, along with all their implements, since there was no iron. But
others say that this generation was destroyed by The Flood in the time of
Deucalion.
Popol Vuh

a collection of narratives of the Post Classic Quiché kingdom in Guatemala's

western highlands.
The title translates as "Book of the Community," "Book of Counsel," or more
literally as "Book of the People.―
Popol Vuh's prominent features are its creation myth, its Flood story , its epic
tales of the Hero Twins Hunahpú and Xbalanqué,and its genealogies.
Creation Myth

Chapters 1-3 contain Popol Vuh's creation myth. There are four deities, three in a celestial
realm collectively called Tepeu and Heart of Heaven and another on the terrestrial plane
called Gucumatz.

"This is the first account, the first narrative. There was neither man, nor animal, birds,
fishes, crabs, trees, stones, caves, ravines, grasses, nor forests; there was only the sky. The
surface of the earth had not appeared. There was only the calm sea and the great expanse of
the sky. There was nothing brought together, nothing which could make a noise, nor
anything which might move, or tremble, or could make noise in the sky. There was nothing
standing; only the calm water, the placid sea, alone and tranquil. Nothing existed. There was
only immobility and silence in the darkness, in the night. Only the creator, the Maker, Tepeu,
Gucumatz, the Forefathers, were in the water surrounded with light. [...] Then Tepeu and
Gucumatz came together; then they conferred about life and light, what they would do so
that there would be light and dawn, who it would be who would provide food and
sustenance. Thus let it be done! Let the emptiness be filled! Let the water recede and make
a void, let the earth appear and become solid; let it be done. Thus they spoke. Let there be
light, let there be dawn in the sky and on the earth! There shall be neither glory nor grandeur
in our creation and formation until the human being is made, man is formed. [...] First the
earth was formed, the mountains and the valleys; the currents of water were divided, the
rivulets were running freely between the hills, and the water was separated when the high
mountains appeared. Thus was the earth created, when it was formed by the Heart of
Heaven, the Heart of Earth, as they are called who first made it fruitful, when the sky was in
suspense, and the earth was submerged in the water."
Together, gods attempted to create living beings so that the they may be praised and
venerated by their creation. Their first attempts (animals, mud man, and wooden man)
proved unsuccessful because they lacked speech, souls, and intellect.
"This the Forefathers did, Tepeu and Gucumatz, as they were called. After that they began to
talk about the creation and the making of our first mother and father; of yellow corn and of
white corn they made their flesh; of cornmeal dough they made the arms and the legs of
man. Only dough of corn meal went into the flesh of our first fathers, the four men, who
were created. [...] And as they had the appearance of men, they were men; they talked,
conversed, saw and heard, walked, grasped things; they were good and handsome men, and
their figure was the figure of a man."
Women were created later while the first four men slept.
 The Myth of Prometheus

Prometheus , Paul Manship (1934), with the fire in his hands in front of the
Rockefeller Center in New York with lines from Aeschylus inscribed
Prometheus (name means
forethought) and his brother
Epimetheus (―gifted with
afterthought‖)
Given the task of forming
men from clay
The first woman to be
created in ancient
Greek myth was known
as Pandora.

The creation of
Pandora; interior of
Cylix (470 - 460
B.C.)
Pandora had been given a
covered pithos, or storage
jar, by Hermes and was
instructed never to open it.
15The LORD God
took the man and
put him in the
garden of Eden to
work it and keep it.
16And the LORD God
commanded the man,
saying, "You may
surely eat of every
tree of the garden,
17but of the tree of
the knowledge of
good and evil you
shall not eat, for in
the day that you eat
of it you shall surely
die."
Athena, the goddess of prudent intelligence, animated the molded man by
giving him a soul. Prometheus became fonder of men than Zeus had
anticipated.
Prometheus
is a figure whom Steiner ()refers to
as the Greek Lucifer.
(anthroposophy)
Prometheus awakened a
consciousness in humans
that was too dangerous in
the eyes of Zeus, so Zeus had
Prometheus chained to a rock in
the Caucasus mountains.
• But the serpent said to
the woman, "You will not
surely die. 5For God
knows that when you eat
of it your eyes will be
opened, and you will be
like God, knowing good
and evil." 6So when the
woman saw that the tree
was good for food, and
that it was a delight to
the eyes, and that the
tree was to be desired to
make one wise, she took
of its fruit and ate, and
she also gave some to her
husband who was with
her, and he ate. 7 Then
the eyes of both were
opened and they knew
that they were naked.
In Mythology light, fire, and sun
are words that have always
had a double meaning.
• It stands for hidden knowledge
and wisdom
• This is reserved for the
brightest spirits of the age
• Is handed down from one
adept to the next
• Is not understood by common
people
• Refers to the Sun as a symbol
of the highest enlightenment
and wisdom
• Lucifer is a symbol of man’s
highest wisdom
Prometheus and the
Great Flood

While Prometheus was

chained to the rock, Zeus
sent a great flood.
Zeus was disgusted with
how wicked man had
become and decided to
destroy them.
Prometheus warned his
son, Deucalion, about
Zeus' intentions and told
him to build an ark.
Myth of Baldur – the Norse
Prometheus

Edda or Balder the solar god

awakens human intelligence in
three progressive stages.
Each arrow overshot his
head" (1902) by Elmer Boyd Smith.

Gen3:14

“Because you have done this,

cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15I will put enmity between you and the
woman,
and between your offspringe and her
offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
Thor – another savior
The son of Odin and a giantess,
Jord, Thor protected Asgard and
Midgard (heaven and earth) from
various forms of evil, usually
fighting against the attacks of
giants.
In the Edda, Thor's greatest enemy
was the Midgard Serpent,
Jormungand. He will kill the serpent
at Ragnarok (the time of the end of
the world) but will die from its
poison.
1. ENKI – The sumerian prometheus
1. *Ea stands in his watery home the Apsu.*Enki
walks out of the water to the land. Enki is
attended by a god with two faces called Usmu
(Isimud).
2. Within his sacred precinct 'Mound of Creation' in
Eridu, Enki unraveled the secrets of life and death.
His emblem was two serpents entwined on a staff -
the basis for the winged caduceus symbol used by
modern Western medicine.
3. Enki was the god who created the first humans: In
those days, in those years, The Wise One of Eridu,
Ea, created him as a model of men. His name was
Adapa, Adam in the Old Testament: Elohim
created the Adam in His image - in the image of
Elohim created He him.

Enki walks out of the water onto dry land – cylinder seal
 Enki is a god of water, creation, and fertility.
1. He was once known as En-kur, lord of the
underworld, He struggled with Kur as mentioned in
the prelude to "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the
Underworld―.
2. He also holds dominion over the land. He is the
keeper of the 'me' –
3. The Divine Laws - the Rules of the Universe. The
'me' were assembled by Enlil in Ekur and given to
Enki to guard and impart to the world, beginning with
Eridu, his center of worship. The light bringer
4. From there, he guards the 'me' and imparts them on
the people. He directs the 'me' towards Ur and
Meluhha and Dilmun, organizing the world with his
decrees.
5. Enki was the leader of the first sons of Anu that
came down to Earth. He played the pivotal role in
saving humanity from the global Deluge. He defied
the Anunnaki ruling council and told Ziusudra (the
Sumerian Noah) how to build a ship on which to
save humanity from the killing flood.
The Myth of the Fish Gods
 Myth of Oannes
the Mesopotamian Prometheus

• According to legend and

ancient historical accounts
Oannes was a figure who
introduced the civilized arts
to modern man.
• These accounts credit
Oannes with introducing
following arts and sciences:
• Agriculture
• Written Language -
Cuneiform
• Architecture
• Mathematics
Babylonian Kings List

• The first part of the list ends

with "Then the Flood swept
over”. . .
• Third century B.C., a Babylonian
priest named Berosus wrote a
history of Mesopotamia in Greek
called the Babyloniaca.
• an original copy of his work no
longer exists; only bits and
pieces, quotations of Berosus
from later authors
• none of these authors had an
original document, either; the
oldest of them, Josephus (1st
century A.D.), got his material
Bull man and fishman (Oannes) from Pasargadae:
third-hand
Audience Hall ("S")
• It is impossible to have an
accurate original from all these. One of the oldest residences of the Achaemenid kings,
founded by Cyrus the Great (r.559-530).
• The Sumerians and Babylonians also
believed that seven wise men (apkallu)
were important.
• According to Berossus, the first was a
creature named Oannes (also called
Adapa, Musarus, or simply Uan), who
came out of the Persian Gulf and taught
the ways of civilization to the people he
met.
• Berossus described Oannes as a demon
that was half-man, half-fish, and the city
of Eridu was founded where he revealed
himself.
• Nowadays most scholars dismiss this
story as just a myth;
• If they pay attention to it at all, they
suggest that Oannes was an extra-
terrestrial visitor.
• An ancient mythological story
is difficult to sift through • Mesopotamian legend identified Enki, the
since it is clear that in empires Sumerian water god, as the sender of Oannes
such as the Babylonian, the • Oannes became an advisor to the first
scribes would write for a antediluvian king, Alulim/Aloros.
specific King/priest audience
• He was followed by six other sages:
• To dismiss it as do many Uandugga, Enmeduga, Enmegalanna,
Scholars do is not easy since Enmebuluga, Anenlilda, and Utuabzu.
ancient myths and legends
were never concocted as • Each of them in turn advised one of the early
children's fantasies and kings
therefore had to have an • They were credited with introducing the Me
origin in something factual even (the original code of laws and morals), as well
though over time it became as arts, crafts and sciences.
distorted. • When the last sage, Utuabzu, finished
• Stories and legends were teaching what he knew to Emenduranna, the
primarily be concerned with seventh pre-flood king, he "ascended to
legitimising their rule and not heaven." This should remind the readers of
necessarily whether the Enoch, who is also considered a teacher and
Historic facts are accurate. who also did not die.
• An explanation for the puzzling
story of Oannes can be worked
out when look at these events
through the lense of scripture.
• The ‘creature’ that came from
the sea and taught mankind all
that he knew could easily be
Noah who lived before and
after the Flood.
• Regarded as a man of God and
of wisdom he could easily have
been confused with Enoch who
‘ascended to heaven’
 Berossus: was a Hellenistic-era
Babylonian writer and
astronomer who was active at
the beginning of the 3rd century
BC.

Oannes (relief from Palace S in Pasargadae)

The Babylonian King Lists
Recorded in several ancient
locations
related to the Sumerian king list.
There are two versions,
known as "King List A" (all kings
from the First Dynasty of Babylon
to the Neo-Assyrian king
Kandalanu) and "King List B"
(only the two first dynasties).

A third version of the list was

written in Greek by Berossus.
Fuxi and Nuwa – the Chinese Oannes
The Matsya fish avatar of Krishna in India
The Pope with Mitre fish head
Dagon principle deity of the Philistines and Phoenicians sea cultures.
The Story of MATSYA Avatar
• In MATSYA Avatar, Lord Vishnu incarnates himself as a
fish in this world. In the earliest yuga (era) of Sata-yuga,
• A king named Manu was performing severe penance for
thousands of years. One day when he was at the River, a
small fish came into his hands and just as he was about
to throw the fish back into the river, the fish requested
the king to save its life.
• Heeding its request, the king put the fish into a jar of
water but the fish started growing and the jar was not big
enough for it.
• Then the king threw it into the river, but it soon it
outgrew the river and the king then threw it into Ganges
and then into the ocean.
• The king realized that it was Lord Vishnu himself and
then the lord made an appearance and made a special
request to the king. It predicted that the world would
come to an end by a huge flood in seven days and
requested the king to build a huge boat and take the
seven sages(hermits), seeds of all plants, one animal of
each type and told him that he would appear as a fish to
propel the boat to Mt Himavan for surviving the flood to
the next yuga(eon).
• True to his word, after seven days the Lord appeared and
the king tied the boat to the fish by using the royal
serpent Vasuki and the fish took all of them to Mt
Himavan and kept them there till the flood was over and
in the new era, the king started procreation for the new
era.
Dagon was the god of the Philistines. The idol was
represented in the combination of both man and fish. The
name 'Dagon' is derived from 'dag' which means 'fish'.
The priests of Dagon wore the same mitre hat that was
worn by "Cybele". It looked like the open mouth of a
fish -propped upon the priest's head.
"He was half fish and half man. He was called the
great Fish of heaven. The Philistines called him
"DAGON― ,the fish god that is also mentioned in the
Bible.― Joshua 19:27 Judges 16:231Samuel 5:2,3,4,5,7
1Chronicles 10:10,Judges 16:23

Dagon was a major northwest Semitic god, the god of

grain and agriculture according to the few sources to
speak of the matter, worshipped by the early Amorites, by
the people of Ebla, by the people of Ugarit and a chief god
(perhaps the chief god) of the Biblical Philistines.
His name appears in Hebrew as (in modern transcription
Dagon, Tiberian Hebrew), in Ugaritic as dgn (probably
vocalized as Dagnu), and in Akkadian as Dagana, Daguna
usually rendered in English translations as Dagan.
 "When the Philistines took the ark of God,
they brought it into the temple of Dagon
and set it by Dagon. And when the people
of Ashdod arose early in the morning, there
was Dagon, fallen on its face to the earth
before the ark of the LORD. So they took
Dagon and set it in its place again. And
when they arose early the next morning,
there was Dagon, fallen on its face to the
ground before the ark of the LORD. The
head of Dagon and both the palms of its
hands were broken off on the threshold;
only the torso of Dagon was left of it.
Therefore neither the priests of Dagon nor
any who come into Dagon's house tread on
the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this
day."- 1 Sam 5:2-5
Atargatis is a Goddess of Syrian origin whose worship spread to Greece and
Rome the root of the mermaid is Oannes and Semiramis.
Janus – The Two headed God who looks back and forward holds the keys
for the door to heaven
Janus - God
of gates,
doors,
doorways,
beginnings
and endings.
The supreme deity of the Incas: Viracocha

The Incas, which had a great technology when the

Europeans were still barbaric nomads, said that
their technology was taught to them by Viracocha
who was described as a Caucasian, bearded man.

Legends of the Aymara Indians say that the Creator

God Viracocha rose from Lake Titicaca during the
time of darkness to bring forth light. Viracocha was
a storm god and a sun god who was represented as
wearing the sun for a crown, with thunderbolts in
his hands, and tears descending from his eyes as
rain. He wandered the earth disguised as a beggar
and wept when he saw the plight of the creatures
he had created.

Viracocha made the earth, the stars, the sky and

mankind, but his first creation displeased him, so
he destroyed it with a flood and made a new, better
one, taking to his wanderings as a beggar, teaching
his new creations the basics of civilization, as well
as working numerous miracles. Viracocha
eventually disappeared across the Pacific Ocean
(by walking on the water), and never returned. It
was thought that Viracocha would re-appear in
times of trouble.
 Quetzalcoatl, Aztec God – feathered serpent
1. represented life, motion, laughter, health, fertility,
and the arts and crafts of civilization, such as
farming, cooking, and music.
2. Quetzalcoatl's name can also be translated as
"precious twin," and in some myths, he had a twin
brother named Xolotl, who had a human body and
the head of a dog or of an ocelot, a spotted
wildcat.
3. culture hero, a bringer not just of life but also of
civilization.
1. These old myths merged with legends about a priest-king named Quetzalcoatl, possibly
a real historical figure.
2. In the Aztec creation myth, Quetzalcoatl's cosmic conflicts with the god Tezcatlipoca
brought about the creation and destruction of a series of four suns and earths, each era
was destroyed in a different manner leading to the fifth sun and today's earth
3. At first there were no people under the fifth sun. The inhabitants of the earlier worlds had
died, and their bones littered Mictlan, the underworld. Quetzalcoatl and his twin, Xolotl,
journeyed to Mictlan to find the bones, arousing the fury of the Death Lord. As he fled
from the underworld, Quetzalcoatl dropped the bones, and they broke into pieces. He
gathered up the pieces and took them to the earth goddess Cihuacoatl (Snake Woman),
who ground them into flour. Quetzalcoatl moistened the flour with his own blood, which
gave it life. Then he and Xolotl shaped the mixture into human forms and taught the new
creatures how to reproduce themselves.
The myth of Giants
1. The word giant comes
from the Greek Gigantes
(meaning earthborn), a
race of huge creatures
who were the offspring of
Gaia, the earth, and
Uranus, the heavens.
2. In Goya‘s Colossus he
uses the Giant image as a
metaphor for the
prevailing fears and
terrors of the mind
3. In ancient times the
barbarians saw ancient
Roman ruins and thought
they could only be the
work of Giants
4. Metaphorical idea or
ignorance what is the
truth behind the
mythology?
The Greek Myth of Giants
• The father of the Giants was Uranus the mother was the earth Gaia
• Uranus was fearful of the power of the Giants so he forced them back into the womb of
Gaia
• She then hatched a plot to free them
• Her son Cronos cut off his fathers genitals and threw them in the sea
• The organ covered with blood splattered over Gaia. From the blood, more children were
born:
• According to Hesiod, the organs bobbing in the sea gave rise to white foam. From the
foam, Aphrodite (means "out of white foam"), the goddess of love.
These giants were half man, half monster, with serpents' tails instead of legs.
After Gaia became angry with Zeus, the father of the Olympian gods, the giants
and the Olympians engaged in a war to the death known as the Gigantomachy.

This second century CE relief of the Gigantomachy was found in Aphrodisias. It depicts Athena attacking (and
defeating) two giants
• Under the reign of Cronos, the work of
creation continued and the Golden
Age ensued.
• Of this Golden Age, Hesiod wrote of
the men "they lived like gods, free
from worry and fatigue; old age did
not afflict them; they rejoiced in
continual festivity." All the blessings
of the world were theirs.
• When death came to them, it was like
being overcome by slumber after
which they became benevolent
guardian spirits and protectors of the
living.
• Cronos was given a prophecy that he
would be over thrown by his son

• He was fearful and swallowed his

children when they were born
• Rhea, Cronos wife, grieving for the lost of her children, pleaded
with her parents Gaia and Uranus when she conceived her sixth
child, Zeus.
• They sent Rhea to Lyktos in Crete and when she gave birth to
Zeus, she gave him to Gaia who hid him in a cave in Mount Dicte
and nourished him.
• Meanwhile, Rhea returned to Cronus giving him a large stone
wrapped in swaddling clothes.
• Cronus thinking that it was the newborn, swallowed the stone
Zeus managed to free his siblings by tricking Cronos into vomiting them out, and
together they fulfilled the prophecy of Zeus usurping his father‘s rule.
The Titans revolted against the rule of Zeus and war was waged between them for
ten years but a stalemate resulted.

Zeus could not win without the help of the Cyclopes and Giants imprisoned in
Tartarus
The Titans are now led by a new Titan Atlas who was hand-picked by the fellow
Titans to replace Cronus. However, they could not overcome Zeus with the new
weapons and the help of the Giants and Cyclopes.
Zeus finally overthrew the Titans and locked them deep in the depths of Tartarus,
with the three Giants keeping watch.
Gen 11:3They said to each other, ―Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.‖
They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then they said, ―Come, let us build
ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name
for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.‖
• The gods needed the help
of a human hero because
the giants could not be
killed by gods.
• Zeus therefore fathered a
son, the mighty Hercules,
whose mother was a
human.
• The two sides met in battle
at the home of the giants, a
place called Phlegra
(Burning Lands).
• The giants hurled huge
rocks and mountaintops
and brandished burning
oak trees.
• The gods fought back
strongly, and Hercules
picked off the giants one
by one with his arrows.
• Atlas participated in a war the Titans waged on
the Gods. The Titans, led by Cronos, were
defeated by the Gods, led by Zeus.
• As punishment for the war, Zeus banished
most of the Titans to the hellish Tartarus. For
Atlas, Zeus chose to have him stand at the
western edge of Gaia (Earth) and hold up
Uranus (the sky) to keep the two from
squeezing against each other.

• Later, Heracles (Hercules) was assigned to

gather 12 golden apples from the garden of
Hera.
• these apples were guarded by Atlas‘
daughters, the Hesperides and the dragon
Ladon.
• Heracles duped Atlas into fetching the apples
from his own daughters while he held up the
sky.
• Atlas Heracles, gladly obliged, glad to be free
of his task.
• Later he returned with a sack full of the golden
apples, pleased with himself. But Heracles
asked Atlas if he would kindly hold the sky for
a minute while he rearranged his cloak.
• Atlas agreed. Heracles simply took the sack of
apples and ran off, never to return, once again
leaving Atlas with the task of holding up the
sky for the rest of eternity.
• Those misbehaving Gods
• Where do all the ancient legends of the Greeks, Romans, and
others come from which relate that heavenly beings sired
offspring by mating with women?
• Ancient Sumerian records tell of gods descending from the stars
and fertilizing their ancestors. Such interbreeding is supposed to
have produced the first men on the earth.
• The native inhabitants of Malekula, in the New Hebrides,
believe that the first men were direct descendants of the sons of
heaven.
• The Incas believed that they were the descendants of the "sons
of the Sun."
• The Japanese believe that their Emperor is descended from the
sun god.
• South sea islanders trace their ancestry back to a god from
heaven who they claim visited them in an enormous "egg."
• The Koreans believe that a heavenly king, Hwanin, sent his son,
Hwanung, to earth, who married a woman of the earth and
gave birth to a son, Tangun Wanggom.
• In India ancient Sanskrit texts tell of "gods" begetting children
with women of earth, and how these children inherited the
"supernatural" skills and learning of their "fathers."
• In the Epic of Gilgamesh, from the Middle East, we learn that
"watchers" -- the same expression as used in the book of Enoch
-- came to planet earth and produced giants as offspring!
• An early Persian myth tells of the earth becoming corrupted by
demons who allied themselves with women.
• Greek mythology abounds with stories of Gods coming to earth to seduce women and
produce offspring
• Zeus and Europa
• Apollo and Daphne
Disturbing and controversial
passage of Scripture

"And it came to pass, when men

began to multiply on the face of the
earth, and daughters were born
unto them, That the sons of God
saw the daughters of men that they
were fair; and they took them wives
of all which they chose. And the
LORD said, My spirit shall not
always strive with man, for that he
also is flesh: yet his days shall be
an hundred and twenty years.
There were giants in the earth in
those days; and also after that,
when the sons of God came in unto
the daughters of men, and they
bare children to them, the same
became mighty men which were of
old, men of renown." -- Genesis 6 v
1-4
New Testament describes angels
leaving heaven and being punished,
and also mention that they were
bound in Tartarus:

the angels who did not keep their

positions of authority but abandoned
their own home—these he has kept in
darkness, bound with everlasting
chains for judgment on the great Day.
7In a similar way, Sodom and
Gomorrah and the surrounding towns
gave themselves up to sexual
immorality and perversion. They serve
as an example of those who suffer the
punishment of eternal fire.-- Jude 1 v 6

"For God did not spare the angels

who sinned, but cast them down to
Tartarus and delivered them into
chains of darkness, to be reserved for
judgment; and did not spare the
ancient world, but saved Noah, one of
eight people, a preacher of
righteousness, bringing in the flood
on the world on the ungodly" -- 2
Peter 2 v 4-5
The Titans were overthrown and cast into Tartaros."10 Tartaros is the Greek word
for "hell" or "abyss", the same place where the archangels threw the fallen angels
after they had intermarried with women and brought such violence and corruption
to Earth.
• The Bible speaks of this era as
being a time of great wickedness.
• There were Gibborim (giants) in
the earth in those days as well as
Nephilim; some translations
identify the two as one and the
same. These giants were the
offspring of the "sons of God"
(Hebrew Bney Ha-elohim')
• The Gibborim were unusually
powerful; Genesis calls them
"heroes of old, men of renown;"
(Enoshi Ha Shem).

• Nephilim (literally meaning 'fallen

ones', from the Hebrew root n-f-l
'to fall') reappear much later in
the Biblical narrative, in Numbers
13:31-33.

BECCAFUMI, Domenico Fall of

the Rebel Angels 1528
Norse mythology
• In Norse mythology, the Jotun are often
opposed to the gods. While often
translated into "giants", most are
described as being roughly human sized.
• Some are portrayed as huge, such as frost
giants (hrímþursar), fire giants (eldjötnar),
and mountain giants (bergrisar).
• The giants are the origin of most of various
monsters in Norse mythology (e.g. the
Fenrisulfr), and in the eventual battle of
Ragnarök the giants will storm Asgard and
defeat them in war.
• Even so, the gods themselves were related
to the giants by many marriages, and there
are giants such as Ægir, Loki, Mímir and
Skaði, who bear little difference in status to
them.
• Norse mythology also holds that the entire
world of men was once created from the
flesh of Ymir, a giant of cosmic
proportions, which name is considered by
some to share a root with the name Yama
of Indo-Iranian mythology
Giants AFTER the Flood
• Men of gigantic stature are also mentioned as
existing after the Flood of Noah's time. When the
children of Israel sent spies into the land of
Canaan, preparatory to invading the land, they
were appalled to find giants dwelling in the land.
They gave to Moses and the people a frightening,
dismaying report:
• 28 However, the people who dwell in the land are strong,
and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we
saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites
dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites,
and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the
Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan." 30 But
Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, "Let us
go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to
overcome it." 31 Then the men who had gone up with him
said, "We are not able to go up against the people, for
they are stronger than we are." 32 So they brought to the
people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had
spied out, saying, "The land, through which we have gone
to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all
the people that we saw in it are of great height. 33 And
there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come
from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like
grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them."(Numbers
13:28-33 ESV).
• The word for "giants" here is the same word used
in Genesis 6:4 -- the Nephilim. Obviously,
therefore, some of them lived after the Flood.
Philadelphia - Human skulls with horns This has been
identified as
Were discovered in a burial mound at Sayre,
‘Neanderthal’ but
Bradford County, Pennsylvania, in the
for a need for
1880's.
classification it
Horny projections extended two inches really is just a
above the eye-brows, and the skeletons were very large human
seven feet tall, but other than that were skull
anatomically normal. Seen next to a
proportionate
It was estimated that the bodies had been
human skull.
buried around A.D. 1200.
Is there any evidence for Giants in History ?
The find was made by a reputable group of
It would seem so . . . elusive but tantalising
antiquarians, including the Pennsylvania
state historian and dignitary of the
Presbyterian Church (Dr. G.P. Donehoo) and
two professors, A.B. Skinner, of the
American Investigating Museum, and
W.K.Morehead, of Phillips Academy,
Andover, Massachusetts.
The bones were sent to the American
Investigating Museum in Philadelphia, where
they were later claimed to have been stolen
and have never been seen again.
Pursuit, 6:69-70, July 1973 Mysteries of the Unexplained, p.
39 1992
In Deuteronomy 2:10-11 Moses writes of the land of Moab, "The Emims dwelt
therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; which
also were accounted giants" The word for "giant" here is Raphah, which means
"giant."
Interestingly, the same word also means "ghost, dead, deceased."

Skull found in Peru

(Photographed by Robert
Connolly in 1995).
This skull is incomplete, as the lower
part of the facial area is concerned.
2 Samuel 21
In still another battle, which took place at Gath,
there was a huge man with six fingers on each hand
and six toes on each foot--twenty-four in all. He
also was descended from Rapha. When he taunted
Israel, Jonathan son of Shimeah, David's brother,
killed him.
Numbers 13:33
And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak,
which come of the giants: and we were in our own
sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their
sight.
Deuteronomy 2:11
Which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims;
but the Moabites called them Emims.
Deuteronomy 2:20
(That also was accounted a land of giants: giants
dwelt therein in old time; and the Ammonites call
them Zamzummims;
Deuteronomy 3:11
(Only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of
the Rephaites. His bed was made of iron and was
more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide. It is
still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)
Deuteronomy 3:13
And the rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, being the
kingdom of Og, gave I unto the half tribe of
Manasseh; all the region of Argob, with all Bashan,
which was called the land of giants.
Fossilized Skull compared
with a normal skull

Gustave Dore – David defeats Goliath

 Popular Fakes
This image first surfaced in
October 2002 as an entry in a
Photoshop contest run by
Worth1000.com. It was created
by altering an actual photo of
a Cornell University
excavation of a mastodon
skeleton.

Skeletal remains of a giant found already partially uncovered in the South

East of Saudi Arabia by an oil company (ARAMCO geological team). The
government covered up the incident and seized all evidence and 99.9% of
photographs. It was combated on the internet by releasing a series of fake
giant photos to dumb down the find.
For more info go to: http://objectiveministries.org/creation/news.html
• A 19’6″ human skeleton found in 1577 A.D. under an overturned oak tree in
the Canton of Lucerne.
• 23-foot tall skeleton found in 1456 A.D. beside a river in Valence, France.
• A 25′ 6 ” skeleton found in 1613 A.D. near the castle of Chaumont in France.
This was claimed to be a nearly complete find.
• A 9′ 8″ skeleton was excavated from a mound near Brewersville, Indiana
(Indianapolis News, Nov 10, 1975).
• In 1833 soldiers digging at a pit for a powder magazine in Lompock Rancho,
California, discovered a male skeleton 12 feet tall. The skeleton was
surrounded by carved shells, stone axes, and blocks of porphyry covered with
unintelligible symbols. The skeleton had double rows of upper and lower
teeth. These bones substantiated legends by the local Piute Indians regarding
giants which they called Si-Te-Cahs.
• In Clearwater Minnesota, the skeletons of seven giants were found in
mounds. These had receding foreheads and complete double dentition.
• “A miner fell through a hole in a mine in Italy and found this 11′ 6″ skeleton.”
believed to been found in 1856.
• A mound near Toledo, Ohio, held 20 skeletons, seated and facing east with
jaws and teeth “twice as large as those of present day people,” and besides
each was a large bowl with “curiously wrought hieroglyphic figures.” (Chicago
Record, Oct. 24, 1895; cited by Ron G. Dobbins, NEARA Journal, v13, fall
1978).
• Almost beyond comprehension or believability was the find of the two
separate 36-foot human remains uncovered by Carthaginians somewhere
between 200-600 B.C.
In Peru
There is much literature and eye witness accounts in the USA of Giant
skeletons found in tombs and burial mounds all over the USA
Most of these have been hidden in vaults in the Smithsonian never to
be seen again
But not so in the South American countries where they are on display
in various museums
For example in the Gold Museum in Lima you can still see the clothing
and head of an Incan king who stood an easy 10 feet tall. His golden
robe is 8 feet long and did not touch the ground when he wore it.
His gold gloves are twice as long as a humans as is his dried and
mummified head.
These skulls were
photographed by Robert
Connolly on his trip
around the world during
which he was collecting
materials about ancient
civilizations. The
discovery of unusual
skulls was thus an
unintended "spinoff" of
his efforts.

Robert Connolly
published his
photographs on a CD-
ROM, titled Search for
Ancient Wisdom in 1995.
More than a thousand feet up a rugged mountain
in the Cleveland National Forest.
And James Snyder's house sits right at the bottom.

"I go out of my way to make a slip trail where

nobody else has been and I was actually looking
for gold," said Snyder (the discoverer).
That was back in February 2002 .

But instead of finding gold on Gowers Mountain,

Snyder found a giant fossilized footprint, at least it
looks like one, embedded in solid granite.

The footprint was found in what becomes a creek

bed during the rainy season. It looks as though
something big crossed the creek a long time ago
leaving its footprint behind.
What made it and when?

Who knows....Granite is supposed to have formed

over 1 billion years ago.
No doubt scientists will try to argue that it just
looks like a footprint as they do for every one of
these types of anomalies. For science, if not fraud
it's the only acceptable answer.
This photo of a ‘fossilized Irish giant’ was
taken at a London rail depot, and
appeared in the December 1895 issue of
Strand Magazine. The giant was allegedly
dug up by a Mr Dyer while prospecting for
iron ore in County Antrim (Ireland).

It was 12 ft 2 in (3.71 m) tall, weighed 2

tonnes, and had 6 toes on its right foot.
After being exhibited in Dublin, it was
brought to England and exhibited in
Liverpool and Manchester at sixpence a
head, ‘attracting scientific men as well as
gaping sightseers'. After a legal dispute
over ownership, nothing more appears to
have been heard or seen of the exhibit.