The Cosmos In Ancient Mythology

The myth above started with a similar background as the Theogony by Hesoid. The cosmos in both myths are in Chaos at the very beginning until the appearance of world creator who reshaped the world. The special state of the cosmos is also mentioned in many other creation myths such as the Hebrew Bible. In the Hebrew Bible, the early cosmos is described using the word “Tohuwabohu” which means disordered and unsystematic. Also, the world creator Chaos spoke before creating which is similar to the Egyptian mythology. For example, in Memphite mythology, Ptah used speech to create the city Memphis and everything else. However, Ptah used both his heart and tongue to create the world who actually conceived the world intellectually and then crafted …show more content…
It focuses on the explanations of some important objects such as water system, lands, stars, plants, etc., and natural phenomenons in our daily life such as day-night circle and birth-death circle. The myth also gave an reasonable history of the world which explains how the ancient world became the current world. It provides a good transition between the unreal world and the real world, for example, the creator god and the other races finally disappeared while human being became the only wise race on the world. Moreover, the creation story provides a ritualistic tradition at the end. It is quite common in creation stories with symbolic and ritualistic traditions. Most traditions derived from creation myths and …show more content…
Creation myth, as a special literary genres, contains a lot of information which is far more beyond the narrative itself. According to definition given by Paul Lafargue, “Myth is neither a liar’s lie, nor pointless fantasy product, which the human mind as it is simple and spontaneous forms.” It is the instinct of human being to explore and to understand the mysterious and wide world. Thus, human being created and recorded their all discoveries as myths. While myths usually show the basic ideas and thoughts of human being, creation myths tend to make explanations of something much profounder such as the origin of cosmos and human being. These explanations are the crystallization of primitive ancients wisdom and the rudiment of modern science and philosophy. Creation myth, not only records the ideas but also spread them among human being. The ideas and thoughts, to some extent, indicates the mainstream ideology of ancient society. Besides, creation myths take education effects undeniably since they demonstrate some basic science information such as agriculture, geography and climate; and cultural knowledge such as etiquette, traditions and social structure or social hierarchy. Creation myths, thus, become the epitomes of local societies. The facts such as the lack of living resources, the unpredictable disasters and the wars can be reflected among the words in the creation myths and the diversity of local creations myths