Dictionary Of God And Godedesses

Introduction to the First Edition ixunder Roman provincial rule, the makeup of itsreligion becomes increasingly confused.The classical religions of Greece and Rome supplantedthose of the ancient world as the dominantoccidental faiths. Greece was the pioneer and,although known properly from about 800 BC, coincidentalwith the rise of the city states, her deitieswere probably well established in much earliertimes, perhaps in the Mycenaean age which begancirca 1600 BC. Rome seems largely to have borroweddeities from Greece and renamed them.Her influence collapsed with the sack of Rome bythe Visigoths in 410 AD.Elsewhere in Europe the Celtic gods were probablytaking substance as early as the late BronzeAge in central Europe (circa 900 BC) but they comeunder historical scrutiny only from about 400 BC.Celtic culture was effectively a spent force inEurope by the first century BC with the defeat ofthe Gaulish rebellion under Vercingetorix, but itsinfluence continued in Ireland until Christianizationin the fifth century AD. The Celts were neverliterate and names of deities are known only fromRomano-Celtic inscriptions and the questionablyaccurate writings of Christian monks. The Vikings,with whom the Nordic Icelandic culture is mostclosely associated, began their major period ofinfluence in the eighth century AD, but their deitiesare often modeled on older Germanic gods whoprobably held sway from at least the first or secondcenturies AD. Their culture is better recordedthrough the Icelandic Eddaic literature.In India, Hinduism took shape perhaps as earlyas 1700 BC with the migration of Aryan peoplesfrom the southern steppes of Russia into the subcontinent.The development of the two great epicpoems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata,between 300 BC and 300 AD swelled the ranks ofdeities and the process of enlargement continuedwith the more recent literature of the Puranas andthe development of Tantrism. Though now associatedmore with the Far East, Buddhism began innorthern India with the teachings of GautamaBuddha in about 500 BC. It was introduced toChina in the first century and to Japan as late as thesixth century AD.Of the major Meso- and South American religionsdiscussed, the earliest is that of the Mayans,in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, whose civilizationarose in the fourth century BC, reached itspeak during the seventh century AD and thenwaned in influence as the Toltec Empire began toflourish. The Incas, though established on partsof the Pacific coast of Peru in the fifth century BC,did not begin serious cultural expansion for severalhundred years and their brief empire period commencedin 1438 AD. The Aztecs, in Mexico, startedtheir rise to prominence about a hundred yearsearlier but were largely contemporary with theIncas. These pre-Columbian cultures came to anabrupt end with the arrival of the Conquistadors,Cortez routing the Aztec capital in 1521 andPizarro taking Peru twelve years later. Almost alltheir sacred literature was destroyed.To assist in placing the various cultures in achronological perspective, a chart is provided onpage xiii.It is notoriously difficult to pinpoint the momentin time at which a personality or a title firstbecomes identifiable as a deity. Frequently a nameis recognizable from a list or a text but it is not possibleto say with certainty whether that wordreflects an object of worship or some more secularnotion. The word may, at first, refer only to a phenomenon,such as the sunrise. Eventually the termfor sunrise is adopted as the proper name of a deitywho is the apotheosis of that phenomenon, butprecisely when that change in usage has taken placeis unknown. With rare exceptions, deities do notemerge “overnight.” They are slow to evolve, oftenderiving from the personality of an older god orgoddess. Likewise they may be highly tenacious,their worship dwindling imperceptibly, sometimesover many centuries. Rarely is the period of rever-