Portal:Myths
The Myths Portal


Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is totally different from the ordinary sense of the term myth, meaning a belief that is not true, as the veracity of a piece of folklore is entirely irrelevant to determining whether it constitutes a myth.
Myths are often endorsed by religious and secular authorities, and may be natural or supernatural in character. Many societies group their myths, legends, and history together, considering myths and legends to be factual accounts of their remote past. In particular, creation myths take place in a primordial age when the world had not achieved its later form. Origin myths explain how a society's customs, institutions, and taboos were established and sanctified. National myths are narratives about a nation's past that symbolize the nation's values. There is a complex relationship between recital of myths and the enactment of rituals. (Full article...)
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In Germanic paganism and mythology, Sun, or Sunna (Old Norse: Sól [ˈsoːl], Sun, Sunna; Old English: Siġel, Sunne; Old Frisian: Sunne, Old Saxon: Sunna, Old High German: Sunna, Gothic: 𐍃𐌿𐌽𐌽𐍉, romanized: Sunnō), is the sun personified as a goddess. In Norse mythology, she's an Aesir, and travels across the sky in a horse drawn wagon, a motif dating all the way back to the Nordic Bronze Age, as depicted on the Trundholm sun chariot. As a proper noun, Sól appears throughout Old Norse literature. Scholars have produced theories about the development of the goddess from potential Nordic Bronze Age and Proto-Indo-European roots.
One of the two Old High German Merseburg Incantations, written in the 9th or 10th century CE, attests that Sunna is the sister of Sinthgunt. The Norse depiction, Sól, is attested in both the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, based on source material from around the 10th century. She is described as the daughter of Mundilfari and the night personified, Nótt. She is the sister of the personified moon, Máni, and married to the god Glenr ("opening in the clouds"). At times, she is referred to as Álfrǫðull, the name of her chariot. It is foretold, that during Ragnarök ("the final battle upon end of the world"), she will be eaten by a monstrous wolf (Fenrir), though beforehand she will have given birth to a daughter who continues her mother's course through the heavens. (Full article...)
Did you know? -
- ...that according to Hindu mythology, the deity Revanta (pictured) was born from the union of the sun-god Surya and his wife Saranya in the form of horse and mare?
- ...that Ewale a Mbedi may have been the first Duala leader to trade with Europeans in Cameroon?
- ... that the pre-Columbian Zapotec storm god Cocijo was said to have created the world from his breath?
- ...that in Greek mythology, Antiope was the only Amazon known to have married?
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Anzû, also known as dZû and Imdugud (Sumerian: 𒀭𒅎𒂂 dim.dugudmušen), is a demon in several Mesopotamian religions. He was conceived by the cosmic freshwater ocean Abzu and mother Earth Mami, or as son of Siris. In Babylonian myths Anzû was depicted as a massive bird - also as an eagle with lion head - who can breathe fire and water. This narrative seems to refer to much earlier Sumerian myths, in which he appears as a half-human storm bird who stole the tablet of destiny, challenging Enlil's power over his organisation of different gods that provided Mesopotamia with agriculture (cf. the Flood epic Athrahasis).
Stephanie Dalley, in Myths from Mesopotamia, writes that the Epic of Anzu itself "is principally known in two versions: an Old Babylonian version of the early second millennium [BC], giving the hero as Ningirsu; and 'The Standard Babylonian' version, dating to the first millennium BC, which appears to be the most quoted version, with the hero as Ninurta". However, the Anzu character does not appear as often in some other writings, as noted below. (Full article...)
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