Greek Mythology: Monarchial Polytheism

Greek Mythology performed an enormous role in the structural development of ancient Greece, not only as a society, but as human beings. Peculiarly, their religion was not exactly one of originality. In fact, their religion was loosely based on earlier civilization’s religions. It contains many remarkably similar resemblances to some of the most ancient recorded religions in history. Ancient Greek religion believes in an abundant amount of gods and deities but there is one, all powerful ruler above all of them. This is call “Monarchial Polytheism.” In order to fully understand how alike the mythological organizations of religions have been throughout the years, you must look back towards the earliest of documented civilizations. Polytheism …show more content…
The Mesopotamian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, which means “When on High”, life began after a great struggle between the Elder gods and the Younger. There was only water swirling within chaos in the beginning, which eventually separated into two distinct principles: Apsu (male) which was fresh water, and Tiamat (female) which was salt water. All other Gods stemmed from the unification of these two. The Elder Gods eventually became annoyed with the raucous assemblage of Younger Gods that Apsu decided to kill them. Before Apsu could put his plan into play, Tiamat, shocked at Apsu’s wrathful plan, warned one of her sons, Ea, the god of wisdom and intelligence. Ea was able to put Apsu to sleep and kill him with the help of his brothers and sisters. Ea then created the Earth out of the corpse of his father. But Tiamat became upset at the death of Apsu and raised the forces of chaos to destroy her children. An epic battle ensued between Ea and his siblings versus Tiamat, her champion Quingu, and the creatures and forces of chaos. Eventually, the mighty Storm God Mardok rose from the battle and vowed to defeat Tiamat if Ea and his siblings would declare him king of the Gods, which his siblings agreed to. Mardok executes Tiamat and creates the sky from her body. He then creates humans from the remains of her champion Quingu as help-mates to the Gods. According to D. Brendan Nagle, “Despite the gods' apparent victory, there was no guarantee that the forces of chaos might not recover their strength and overturn the orderly creation of the gods. Gods and humans alike were involved in the perpetual struggle to restrain the powers of chaos, and they each had their won role to play in this dramatic battle. The responsibility of the dwellers of Mesopotamian cities was to provide the gods with everything they needed to run the