Chapter Four, Lecture Two From Zeus Against Cronus: The Battle with the Titans

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

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

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

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

Zeus’s Battle with the Giants Will the succession continue after Zeus? Metis, 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)

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

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 Based on contradictory tendencies in a family (folktale)

Themes 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 Titans represent untamed forces of nature Zeus overcomes them by righting old wrongs (against the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes)

Themes in Greek Creation Story Female is ambiguous – creative and destructive

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

Kingship in Heaven Song 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 Heaven Song 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 Heaven Song 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