The Great World Of Myths

The great world of myths

Introduction. 

Mileto, Greece, 6th century.C., moment in which with Tales de Miletus philosophy was born;That selfless love to wisdom and the truth that would incite philosophers such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke or Hume to go in search of the absolute truth and the freedom that it involves. But what caused the birth of this knowledge and why in Greece? Greece, is located at the southern end of the Balkan peninsula on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, thus limiting the Aegean Sea, the Ionic and the Mediterranean. 

Developing.

This is why it was a very rich point both physical and culturally in ancient times, because all the merchant ships of Asia, Europe and Africa passed through it;So there was a great cultural exchange due to communication;This led to the cultural opening that gradually became leisure, leading men to the discussion about different myths and comparing them with those of their own culture. Some intellectuals began to wonder what the truth really was, because it was not possible that a single phenomenon had been caused by so many divinities, in such different ways, because after all it was a unique phenomenon. 

This thought became a topic of conversation for men in their leisure time, and over time philosophy arose, that is, the selfless search for truth for the love of wisdom. Therefore we can say that they were the myths of cultures and their differences one of the factors that promoted the birth of philosophy;And this is what leads me to want to deepen the most of the myths of different cultures, because I think it is one of the bases of the culture of a place and an important pillar of the birth of philosophy.

Since there are an infinity of myths, and many do not exist or are very short in different cultures, I have decided to study more thoroughly the myth of the creation of the world, since it is one of the most important myths in all ancient cultures. I will study Europe and Egypt to examine that same myth in its main ancient cultures.

Let’s start with Nordic mythology;In the beginning was the ice world called Niflheim and the world of fire called Muspelheim, among them was the ginnungagap a "deep hole" in which nothing lived. In Niflheim there was a fountain with frozen waters called Hvergelmir (roar cauldron), which borbote, falling part in Ginnungagop;When taking the water contacting the nothingness it became ice, which ended up filling the ginnungap. 

Muspelheim’s embers fell on the ice, forming great clouds that, when they arrived at the Niflheim they became a large block of ice. In one of these blocks he lived a primitive giant called Ymir and a giant cow, called Auöumbla, of which he fed and mutter drinking from his milk. Auöumbla licked the ice, creating Buri, Bor’s first God and father, who was in turn the father of Æsir, Odin, Vili and Ve. Ymir, being a hermaphrodite, created by copulation of his legs the first breed of giants. 

Later Odín, Vili and sees Ymoir murdered and created the world from his body. The gods Odín, Vili and Ver, brought to life and gave their human attributes to the first human beings who were carved in wood. Like the stations, day and night they were regulated by the gods, in this case Sol, wife of Glen and his sister Mania;Sol rides every day through heaven in her car throwing by the horses of Alsvid and Arvak and is hunted during the day by Skoll, a wolf who wants to devour her (the eclipses mean that he almost catches her). Skoll is destined to catch Sol, which will be replaced by his sister Mani, whom he tries to devour Hati, another wolf. The sun according to this belief did not give light, but it emanated from the hair of the Alsvid and Arvak horses.

We will continue with Greek mythology and then compare the two myths and thus observe their similarities. It all started with chaos, a deep emptiness, from which Gea (the earth) and some other divine beings such as Eros (love), the Tartar (the abyss) and Érebo (shadow and darkness) emerged). Gea herself gave light to Uranus (the sky), with which she fertilized, giving rise to the Titans (ocean, ceo, kid, hyperión, jápeto, tea, rea, themis, mnemósine, febe, tetis and chronos) ny moreLate to the Cyclops and the Hecatónquiros. 

Cronos, who was the youngest and wicked of Gea’s children, cast. Later Zeus, persuaded by Rea, his mother, faces his father Cronos, whom he challenged a war for the throne of the gods (the gods are the children of the Titans);Finally, with the help of the Cyclops, whom he released from Tartar, Zeus and the other gods (his brothers) achieve the victory, condemning Cronos and the other Titans to be prisoners in the Tartar. Helios (the sun) crossed the sky in auriga for the day and when Nix (the night) appeared, navigated the earth in a golden glass.

Finally we will observe the Egyptian culture. After investigating this one, I found that this myth has different variations according to the place of Egypt, so I will treat the basic myth from which the different variants leave. This account that the world emerged from NU, the inert waters of chaos;The first one that emerged from NU was a small mound of pyramid -shaped land called Benben (this concrete idea could arise from the annual flood of the Nile, which left the nearby lands very fertilized and formed small mounds of earth when back). 

The Sun, which is very closely made to its creation, emerged from the mound as the general god RA (God of the Sun) or as Khepri (represents the newborn sun);This is when there are different variants, I know that Ra or Khepri said it appeared in the form of a heron, hawk, beetle or child and that could have emerged directly from the mound or a lotus flower that grew in this. Other common variants of Egyptian cosmology is the cosmic egg, instead of the waters and the mound or that ra, as a fundamental power, arose from a primary mound that rested once in the chaos of the primordial sea.

Conclusions.

As can be seen, despite the geographical distance between these three cultures (places of origin), they have very similar characteristics. At the beginning of all of them there was nothingness (Ginnungagop, chaos, primordial sea) and from this a divine being emerged (in the case of Nordic and Egyptian mythology they arose from water), and in the case of Greek mythology andNordic that being was not a god. 

All have in common that the solar divinity (whether a God or other divinity) at the beginning of creation, was an essential being so that it was given great value, also the stories that revolve around their "mission" are verysimilar. The God / Solar Divinity furrows the heavens in a car pulled by horses and is then replaced by the god / divinity of the night or changes to continue throwing him;Finally, I would like to end again that even if it comes from very different sites, mythology has many common characteristics in all cultures and myths.