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Polytheism is the belief in or worship of more than one god. [1] [2] [3] According to Oxford Reference, it is not easy to count gods, and so not always obvious whether an apparently polytheistic religion, such as Chinese Folk Religions, is really so, or whether the apparent different objects of worship are to be thought of as manifestations of a singular divinity. [1]
1300 BCE – 1046 BCE: The polytheistic religion of the Chinese Shang dynasty reached its mature form. 1300 BCE – 1000 BCE: The "standard" Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh was edited by Sîn-lēqi-unninni. [26] 1200 BCE: The Greek Dark Age began. [27] 1200 BCE: The Olmecs built the earliest pyramids and temples in Central America. [28]
It is generally agreed that Sumerian civilization began at some point between c. 4500 and 4000 BC, but the earliest historical records only date to around 2900 BC. [24] The Sumerians originally practiced a polytheistic religion, with anthropomorphic deities representing cosmic and terrestrial forces in their world.
The Roman Emperor Julian, a nephew of Constantine, initiated an effort to end the ascension of Christianity within the empire and reorganize a syncretic version of Greco-Roman polytheism that he termed "Hellenism". Later known as "The Apostate", Julian had been raised Christian but embraced his ancestors' paganism in early adulthood.
Although his preaching began the conversion process, it took over 200 years for the majority to accept Christianity fully by the 11th and 12th centuries. Patrick Leigh Fermor noted that the Maniots, isolated by mountains, were among the last Greeks to abandon the old religion, doing so towards the end of the 9th century:
Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel and Judah. [1] An ancient Semitic religion of the Iron Age, Yahwism was essentially polytheistic and had a pantheon, with various gods and goddesses being worshipped by the Israelites. [2]
The religion declined following the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC and Egyptians began converting to Christianity. In addition practices such as mummification halted. The Ancient Egyptian religion was considered to have fully died in the 530s. Following the Arab conquest of Egypt under Amr ibn al-As, Egyptians started to convert to Islam.
Punic religion in the western Mediterranean was a direct continuation of the Phoenician variety of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion. However, significant local differences developed over the centuries following the foundation of Carthage and other Punic communities elsewhere in North Africa , southern Spain, Sardinia , western Sicily ...