| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
Well-known polytheistic pantheons in history include the Sumerian gods, the Egyptian gods, the Norse Aesir and Vanir, the Yoruba Orisha, the Aztec gods, and many others. Today, most historical polytheistic religions are referred to as "mythology", though the stories cultures tell about their gods should be distinguished from their cultus or religious practice.
Few ancient religions, indeed, were not polytheistic. Those that weren't include early Vedic Hinduism (which has been termed at the most henotheisticIn religion and philosophy, henotheism is a term coined by Max Muller, meaning belief in, and possible worship of, multiple gods, one of which is supreme. It is also called inclusive monotheism or monarchial polytheism . According to Muller, it is " monot with groundings of monotheistic, monotheistic and naturalist polytheistic philosophy), henotheistic GreekGreek mythology comprises the collected legends of Greek gods and goddesses and ancient heroes and heroines, originally created and spread within an oral-poetic tradition. Our surviving sources of mythology are either transcriptions of this spoken word, o and the RomanRoman mythology can be considered as two parts. One part, largely later and literary, consists of whole-cloth borrowings from Greek mythology. The other, largely early and cultic, functioned in very different ways from its Greek counterpart. Nature of Ear Classical Pantheon of gods, the Abrahamic religionAn Abrahamic religion (also referred to as desert monotheism is a religion derived from an ancient Semitic tradition attributed to Abraham, a great patriarch described in the Bible and the Quran. This group of largely monotheistic religions, which includes, dualistic ZoroastrianismZoroastrianism was adapted from an earlier, polytheistic faith by Zarathushtra ( Zoroaster) in Persia between 1400 and 1200 BC (although, in the absence of written records, some scholars estimate as late as 600 BC). Its alternative name, Mazdaism comes fr and MithraismMithraism was an ancient Hellenistic religion, based on worship of a god called Mithras who apparently derives from the Persian god Mithra and other Zoroasterian deities. Mithraism apparently originated in the Eastern Mediterranean around the first or sec, and possibly the short-lived AtenismAlternative use: the Aten asteroids, named after 2062 Aten Akhenaten and his family adoring the Aten Aten is a sun god in ancient Egyptian mythology, and represented by the sun's disk. His worship was instituted as the basis for the mostly monotheistic re promulgated by Akhenaton in Egypt in the 1350s BC.
In many civilizations, pantheons tended to grow over time. Deities first worshipped as the patrons of cities or places came to be collected together as empires extended over larger territories. Conquests could lead to the subordination of the elder culture's pantheon to a newer one, as in the Greek Titanomachia, and possibly also the case of the Aesir and Vanir in the Norse mythos. Cultural exchange could lead to "the same" deity being renowned in two places under different names, as with the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, and also to the introduction of elements of a "foreign" religion into a local cult, as with Egyptian Osiris worship brought to ancient Greece.