Mythology

I

Introduction

Mythology, the body of myths of a particular culture, and the study and interpretation of such myths. A myth may be broadly defined as a narrative that through many retellings has become an accepted tradition in a society. By this definition, the term mythology might include all traditional tales, from the creation stories of ancient Egypt to the sagas of Icelandic literature to the American folktale of Paul Bunyan.

Myths are universal, occurring in almost all cultures. They typically date from a time before the introduction of writing, when they were passed orally from one generation to the next. Myths deal with basic questions about the nature of the world and human experience, and because of their all-encompassing nature, myths can illuminate many aspects of a culture.

II

What Are Myths?

Although it is difficult to draw rigid distinctions among various types of traditional tales, people who study mythology find it useful to categorize them. The three most common types of tales are sagas, legends, and folktales.

When a tale is based on a great historical (or supposedly historical) event, it is generally known as a saga. Despite a saga’s basis in very distant historical events, its dramatic structure and characters are the product of storytellers’ imaginations. Famous sagas include the Greek story of the Trojan War and the Germanic epic poem the Nibelungenlied (Song of the Nibelungs).

---

---

A legend is a fictional story associated with a historical person or place. For example, many early saints of the Christian church are historical figures whose lives have been embellished with legend (see Saint Denis; Saint George). Legends often provide examples of the virtues of honored figures in the history of a group or nation. The traditional American story about young George Washington and the cherry tree—in which he could not lie about chopping it down—is best described as a legend, because George Washington is a historical figure but the story about the cherry tree is recognized today as fictional.

Folktales, a third variety of traditional tale, are usually simple narratives of adventure built around elements of character and plot—for example, the young man who slays a monster and wins the hand of a princess. The Greek tale of Perseus is a good example of this theme. He saves the Ethiopian princess Andromeda from a sea monster and then marries her. Folktales may contain a moral or observation about life, but their chief purpose is entertainment.

Myths may include features of sagas, legends, and folktales. What makes one of these tales a myth is its serious purpose and its importance to the culture. Experts usually define a myth as a story that has compelling drama and deals with basic elements and assumptions of a culture. Myths explain, for example, how the world began; how humans and animals came into being; how certain customs, gestures, or forms of human activity originated; and how the divine and human worlds interact. Many myths take place at a time before the world as human beings know it came into being. Because myth-making often involves gods, other supernatural beings, and processes beyond human understanding, some scholars have viewed it as a dimension of religion. However, many myths address topics that are not typically considered religious—for example, why features of the landscape take a certain shape.

III

Common Types of Myths

No system of classification encompasses every type of myth, but in discussing myths it is helpful to group them into broad categories. This article concentrates on three major categories: cosmic myths, myths of gods, and hero myths.

A

Cosmic Myths

Cosmic myths are concerned with the world and how it is ordered. They seek to explain the origin of the world, universal catastrophes such as fire or flood, and the afterlife. Nearly all mythologies have stories about creation, a type of story technically known as cosmogony, meaning “birth of the world.” Creation stories also include accounts of how human beings first came into existence and how death and suffering entered human experience.

The oldest cosmogonies known today are those of Egypt and the ancient Near East. An example is the creation epic of the Babylonians, Enuma elish (When on high), which dates back to at least the 12th century bc. According to Enuma elish, in the beginning of the world there was only a watery void in which fresh waters mingled with salt waters of the sea. The fresh waters were personified as Apsu, a male being, and the salt waters as Tiamat, a female. The myth describes a conflict between these earliest gods and a younger generation that sprang from them. Ultimately the younger gods won the war, led by Marduk, a god of thunder and lightning who resembles the Greek god Zeus and the Norse god Thor. Marduk defeated the army of the elder gods and killed Tiamat—represented as a dragon—in single combat. He then split her carcass in two, forming heaven and earth from the halves, and established the sun, moon, and constellations.

Enuma elish contains several themes common to many ancient Near Eastern creation stories: the ordering of the world out of chaos, the central role of waters in the creation of the world, the victory of a divine king over enemies who represent chaos, and the creation of matter from the corpse of a world-mother. A very different type of creation story appears in the Spider Woman myth of the Native American Hopi people. According to this narrative, in the beginning the only two beings in existence were Tawa, the sun god, and Spider Woman, an earth goddess who lived in a shadowy, cavelike underworld. Human beings were created from clay by Spider Woman and animated by the gaze of Tawa. Tawa used his light and heat to create dry land, and the world took shape. Spider Woman led the humans and other creatures up to the earth’s surface, and each species was assigned its proper residence and role in the world. This myth features the common Native American theme of emergence, in which creatures emerge from the earth as if from a mother’s womb.

Other types of creation myth occur in the cosmogony of the Maya people, with its many cycles of creation and destruction, and in the ancient Hebrew account of creation by a single, all-powerful deity.

	More from Encarta
	•  Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be discontinued. Learn more. •  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain