Extra Credit Reading Notes: Crash Course Myth (Ancient Mediterranean)

Notes for Crash Course Myth: Ancient Mediterranean

"Pantheons of the Ancient Mediterranean"

• Pantheons: families of Gods
• Gods: personified projections of the human mythmaker's dreams of overcoming the inevitable effects of the physical laws that require death and disintegration"
• Bring + sustain life 
• Explain how + the world came to be 
• Representative of ancient societies 
• Many sources are fragmented 
• Family relationships are crazy complicated 
• Often necrocentric 
• Particularly apparent in Egyptian culture 

"The Greeks and Romans - Pantheons" 

• Pantheon: all the Gods (literal translation)
• Gods: divine, immortal beings, usually created out of the sexual union between other immortal beings, or sometimes our of some unorthodox nativity 
• Demigods: minor-deities or the offspring of gods and mortals 
• Usually have special powers 
• Sometimes can be raised to divine status 
• Heros: exalted mortals
• Can die, but can perform special feats on earth 
• Sometimes the offspring of a god and a human 

"Herakles. Or Hercules. A Problematic Hero"

• Tricks Atlas into holding the sky up forever
• Born of Zeus and a mortal queen (without her consent)
• Hera tried to kill him when he was a baby 
• Marries a princess 
• Goes crazy, burning his children and nephews alive 
• Changes his name to Herakles to appease Hera 
• Undertakes 10 (turned 12) labors 

Hercules from Michel wal (source: Wikimedia).