English 12/Period 4 9-10-13 Marissa Bankston, Lisa Bewly, and Ryan Brook

Gods and Goddesses are divine beings of unnatural strength and ability. There are many different types of gods and goddesses, for example in this power point we will be viewing Mesopotamian and Greek gods and goddesses. Theyre all pretty much the same, they just have different names and occasionally different abilities. The Gods and Goddesses regularly interfered with human affairs(whether they be way or actually having affairs with humans), which is where most of our epics come from.

Followed by the Sumerian and East Semitic Akkadian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Chaldea n peoples living in Mesopotamia that dominated the region for a period of 4,200 years from the fourth millennium BCE throughout Mesopotamia to approximately the 10th century CE in Assyria. Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic, worshipping over 2,100 different deities, many of which were associated with a specific city or state within Mesopotamia such as Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Assur, Nineveh, Ur, Uruk, Mari and Babylon. Some of the most significant of these deities were: Anu, Ea, Enlil, Ishtar (Astarte), Ashur, Shamash, Shulmanu, Tammuz,Adad/Hadad, Si n(Nanna), Dagan, Ninurta, Nisroch, Nergal, Tiamat, Be l and Marduk.

A lot Greek people associated the major gods and goddesses: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Dionysus, Hephaest us, Athena, Hermes, Demeter, Heracles, Hestia, Asclepius and Hera. Different cities often worshipped the same deities, sometimes with epithets that distinguished them and specified their local nature. Ancient Greek theology was based on polytheism; the assumption that there were many gods and goddesses. There was a hierarchy of deities, with Zeus, the king of the gods, having a level of control over all the others, although he was not omnipotent. Some deities had dominion over certain aspects of nature. For instance, Zeus was the sky-god, sending thunder and lightning, Poseidon ruled over the sea and earthquakes, Hades projected his remarkable power throughout the realms of death and the Underworld, and Helios controlled the sun. Other deities ruled over an abstract concept; for instance Aphrodite controlled love.

Gods of the underworld. According to The Oxford Companion to World Mythology, the Anunnaki "are the Sumerian deities of the old primordial line; they are chthonic deities of fertility, associated eventually with the underworld, where they became judges. They take their name from the old sky god Anu.

god of earth, wind, and air. Said to have come from the breath of Anu. According to the Sumerians, Enlil helped create the humans, but then got tired of their noise and tried to kill them by sending a flood. A mortal known as Utnapishtim survived the flood through the help of another god, Ea, and he was made immortal by Enlil after Enlil's initial fury had subsided.

The queen of the underworld. Irkalla was originally another name for Ereshkigal, who ruled the underworld alone until Ereshkigal was tricked out of power. Both the deity and the location were called Irkalla, much like how Hades in Greek mythology is both the name of the underworld and the god who ruled it. The Sumerian netherworld was a place for the bodies of the dead to exist after death. One passed through the seven gates on their journey through the portal to the netherworld leaving articles of clothing and adornment at each gate, not necessarily by choice as there was a guardian at each gate to extract a toll for one's passage and to keep one from going the wrong way. The living spirits of the dead are only spoken of in connection with this netherworld when someone has been placed here before they are dead or wrongly killed and can be saved. The bodies of the dead decompose in this afterlife, as they would in the world above. (Wikipedia.com)

the god of evil fate was a hellish minor deity in Mesopotamian mythology, god of death, and minister and messenger of An, Ereshkigal, and Nergal. Namtar was the son of Enlil and Ereshkigal. Namtar was considered responsible for diseases and pests. It was said that he commanded sixty diseases in the form of demons that could penetrate different parts of the human body; offerings to him were made to prevent those illnesses. Seen as a Babylonian Grim Reaper.

Basically the Noah from the bible of the Mesopotamian culture. A character in Gilgamesh epic who is asked by Enki, (Ea) to abandon his world possessions and create a giant ship to be called The Preserver of Life. He was also tasked with bringing his wife, family, and relatives along with the craftsmen of his village, baby animals and grains. The oncoming flood would wipe out all animals and humans that were not on the ship, similar to that of the later Noah's Ark story. After twelve days on the water, Utanapishtim opened the hatch of his ship to look around and saw the slopes of Mount Nisir, where he rested his ship for seven days. On the seventh day, he sent a dove out to see if the water had receded, and the dove could find nothing but water, so it returned. Then he sent out a swallow, and just as before, it returned, having found nothing. Finally, Utanapishtim sent out a raven, and the raven saw that the waters had receded, so it circled around, but did not return. Utanapishtim then set all the animals free, and made a sacrifice to the gods. The gods came, and because he had preserved the seed of man while remaining loyal and trusting of his gods, Utanapishtim and his wife were given immortality, as well as a place among the heavenly gods. (Wikipedia.com)

the goddess of love, war, fertility, and sexuality. Ishtar was the daughter of Ninurta. She was particularly worshipped in northern Mesopotamia, at the Assyrian cities of Nineveh, Ashur and Arbela (Erbil). Besides the lions on her gate, her symbol is an eightpointed star. In the Babylonian pantheon, she "was the divine personification of the planet Venus Had many lovers, but Guirand warns us about being in love with Ishtar: "Woe to him whom Ishtar had honored! The fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly, and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favors heaped on them. Animals, enslaved by love, lost their native vigor: they fell into traps laid by men or were domesticated by them. 'Thou has loved the lion, mighty in strength', says the hero Gilgamesh to Ishtar, 'and thou hast dug for him seven and seven pits! Thou hast loved the steed, proud in battle, and destined him for the halter, the goad and the whip.' Even for the gods Ishtar's love was fatal. In her youth the goddess had loved Tammuz, god of the harvest, andif one is to believe Gilgamesh this love caused the death of Tammuz.

Shamash, as the solar deity, exercised the power of light over darkness and evil. He became known as the god of justice and equity and was the judge of both gods and men. According to legend, the Babylonian king Hammurabi received his code of laws from Shamash. As the god of the sun, Shamash was the heroic conqueror of night and death who swept across the heavens on horseback or, in some representations, in a boat or chariot. He bestowed light and life. Because he was of a heroic and wholly ethical character, he only rarely figured in mythology, where the gods behaved all too often like mortals. The chief centres of his cult were at Larsa in Sumer and at Sippar in Akkad. Shamashs consort was Aya, who was later absorbed by Ishtar.

Mesopotamian god of water and a member of the triad of deities completed by Anu (Sumerian: An) and Enlil. From a local deity worshiped in the city of Eridu, Ea evolved into a major god, Lord of Apsu (also spelled Abzu), the fresh waters beneath the earth (although Enki means literally lord of the earth). was the god of ritual purification: ritual cleansing waters were called Eas water. Ea governed the arts of sorcery and incantation. In some stories he was also the form-giving god, and thus the patron of craftsmen and artists; he was known as the bearer of culture. Ea was a wise god although not a forceful one.

is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in ancient Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greekinfluenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. Apollo was an oracular godthe prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle Medicine and healing are associated with him In Hellenistic times, especially during the 3rd century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, Titan god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, Titan goddess of the moon.

was the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, the son of Zeus and Hera. In Greek literature, he represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war, in contrast to the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and generalship. The Greeks were ambivalent toward Ares: although he embodied the physical valor necessary for success in war, he was a dangerous force, "overwhelming, insatiable in battle, destructive, and manslaughtering. Fear (Phobos) and Terror (Deimos) were yoked to his battle chariot, In the Iliad, his father Zeus tells him that he is the god most hateful to him. An association with Ares endows places and objects with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality. His value as a war god is placed in doubt: during the Trojan War, Ares was on the losing side, while Athena, often depicted in Greek art as holding Nike (Victory) in her hand, favored the triumphant Greeks. Ares plays a relatively limited role in Greek mythology as represented in literary narratives, though his numerous love affairs and abundant offspring are often alluded to. When Ares does appear in myths, he typically faces humiliation. He is well known as the lover of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who was married to Hephaestus, god of craftsmanship. The most famous story related to Ares and Aphrodite shows them exposed to ridicule through the wronged husband's clever device.

the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus. she was born when Cronus cut off Uranus's genitals and threw them into the sea, and she arose from the sea foam According to Homers Illiad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Because of her beauty, other gods feared that their rivalry over her would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, so Zeus married her to Hephaestus,, because of his ugliness and deformity, was not seen as a threat. Aphrodite had many loversboth gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis's lover and his surrogate mother. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite. Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, doves ,sparrows, horses, and swans were said to be sacred to her. Aphrodite had many other names, such as Acidalia, Cytherea and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece.

was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals". The Arcadians believed she was the daughter of Demeter. In the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis (Ancient Greek: ) was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and protector of young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women ; she often was depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her.

is the goddess of the harvest, who presided over grains and the fertility of the earth. Her cult titles include Sito (: wheat) as the giver of food or corn/grain and Thesmophoros (, thesmos: divine order, unwritten law) as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society. Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sanctity of marriage, the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that predated the Olympian pantheon. In the Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of circa 1400-1200 BC found at Pylos, the "two mistresses and the king" may be related with Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. Her Roman equivalent is Ceres.

a god of transitions and boundaries. He is quick and cunning, and moved freely between the worlds of the mortal and divine, as emissary and messenger of the gods, intercessor between mortals and the divine, and conductor of souls into the afterlife. He is protector and patron of travelers, herdsmen, thieves, orators and wit, literature and poets, athletics and sports, invention and trade. In some myths he is a trickster, and outwits other gods for his own satisfaction or the sake of humankind. His attributes and symbols include the herma, the rooster and the tortoise, purse or pouch, winged sandals, winged cap, and his main symbol is the herald's staff, the Greek kerykeion or Latin caduceus which consisted of two snakes wrapped around a winged staff.

one of the twelve Olympian deities of the pantheon in Greek mythology. main domain is the ocean, and he is called the "God of the Sea". Additionally, he is referred to as "Earth-Shaker" due to his role in causing earthquakes, and has been called the "tamer of horses He is usually depicted as an older male with curly hair and beard. son of Cronus and Rhea. In most accounts he is swallowed by Cronus at birth but later saved, with his other brothers and sisters, by Zeus. However in some versions of the story, he, like his brother Zeus, did not share the fate of his other brother and sisters who were eaten by Cronus. He was saved by his mother Rhea, who concealed him among a flock of lambs and pretended to have given birth to a colt, which she gave to Cronus to devour.

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