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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
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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 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