Chapter Four, Lecture Two

From Zeus Against Cronus:

The Battle with the Titans

Zeus

Zeus Against Cronus:The Battle with the Titans Cronus swallows the newly born

Olympians: Demeter, Hera, Hestia, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus

Rhea delivers the youngest, Zeus, in Crete, hidden from Cronus

Zeus raised by nymphs Alamlthea, Melissa, Corybantes, Curetes

Cronus fooled by rock in baby’s clothing

Rhea gives Cronus a stone.

Nymphs

Zeus Against Cronus:The Battle with the Titans

Zeus overthrows Cronus The stone vomited out and became used as the omphalos in Delphi

Other Titans attack The “Titanomachy” Only the Titans Themis and her son Prometheus

side with the Zeus and the Olympians

Delphi

Prometheus

Zeus Against Cronus:The Battle with the Titans

Olympians win with the help of the Cyclopes and the Hecatonchires

Titans cast into Tartarus Altas given special punishment

Forced to hold up the heaven at the edge of the earth

Cyclopes

Atlas

Zeus’s Battle with Typheous Gaea with Tartarus produce Typhoeus Defeated by Zeus’s thunderbolts Apollodorus adds details

Olympians fled to Egypt disguised as animals Zeus temporarily defeated and “deboned” Hermes puts Zeus back together Typhoeus defeated in a “bloody” battle at Mt.

“Haemus” Typhoeus buried under Mt. Etna

Typhoeus

Hermes

Zeus’s Battle with the Giants Will the succession continue after Zeus? Decendents

and where current reign came from and how entitled Metis (cleaverness), one of his consorts, is pregnant Hears that the next child of Metis after this one will

replace him She is pregnant, so he ingests her Athena, the warrior goddess among things, is born

from his forehead (Prometheus or Hephaestus helps)

Athena

Zeus’s Battle with the Giants Much later: Battle of the Giants

Gigantomachy Not in Hesiod Giants spring from Uranus’s severed

genitals With the help of Hercules(!), are defeated World divided among Zeus (Sky), Poseidon

(Ocean), and Hades (Underworld)

Giants

Zeus and Hera, Hades and Persephone, Poseidon

Themes in Greek Creation Story Divine Myth with folklore elements Cosmos becoming increasingly complex,

away from original unity Creation is through sexual intercourse Ascendancy of male over female Female ambivalence Titans represent untamed forces of nature

Folktale in Greek Creation Story Zeus’s story on Crete from local religion on

Crete Zeus’s story there is pattern after a local

vegetation god

Zeus overcomes them by righting old wrongs (against the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes)

motifs-separation, success, combat

Themes in Greek Creation Story Female is ambiguous – creative and

destructive set in contradictions of family special weapon-sickle

Eastern Creation Stories

Babylonian Enuma Elish

Hittite Kingship in Heaven and Song of Ullikummi

Enuma Elish Babylonian Enuma Elish (“When on High”) Features in common with Greek myth:

Unstable female principle Destruction and overthrow by newer gods of the

older gods Result: one male god presiding over a more-or-

less orderly cosmos

Enuma Elish Ea, one of the new gods, seeks advice from

a friendly older god, Anshar, who demands a counterattack against Tiamat and Kingu

But Ea fails Then Anshar remembers Marduk

Enuma Elish Marduk will fight, but only if given absolute

power if he succeeds Marduk destroys Tiamat by forcing the

winds down her throat and then popping her like a balloon

He imprisons Kingu and gets the Tablets of Destiny, which he then gives to Anu

Enuma Elish Marduk then begins to fashion an orderly

cosmos from and on Tiamat’s dismembered body

Divided the realm into sky and earth gods Builds the first ziggurat and is declared the

ruler of the cosmos

Enuma Elish Ultimate origin is from the seas, and

feminine, which is both life-giving and destroying

Hero-god must kill the beasts of the cosmos and overthrow the mother

The cosmos “progressed” to the form it now has

Kingship in HeavenSong of Ullikummi

Indo-European people in central Turkey Arrived in 1900 B.C. and in 1450 even

sacked Babylon Two fragmentary documents are evidence

for their cosmology

Kingship in HeavenSong of Ullikummi

Very strange indeed and fragmentary Successions and overthrows of earlier gods There is an influence

Kingship in HeavenSong of Ullikummi

Alalush, king in Heaven Served by Anush (=An)

After nine years, Alalush overthrown by Anush

Anush rules Served by Kumarbi

After nine years, fights with Kumarbi, who bites off his genitals and swallows them

Kingship in HeavenSong of Ullikummi

Kumarbi spits them out . . . One of the deities he can’t spit out, Teshub,

who eventually escapes from Kumarbi’s penis (probably)

Teshub the storm god becomes the chief god

Kingship in HeavenSong of Ullikummi

More from the Song of Ullikummi Kumarbi plots to overthrow Teshub Kumarbi has intercourse with a rock

Produces the monster, Ullikummi (“destroyer of Kummiya [Teshub’s city]

Ullikummi given to Ubelluri Teshub eventually defeats him after a great

cosmic battle