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Water god in an ancient Roman mosaic. Zeugma Mosaic Museum, Gaziantep, Turkey. A water deity is a deity in mythology associated with water or various bodies of water.Water deities are common in mythology and were usually more important among civilizations in which the sea or ocean, or a great river was more important.
Freyr, god of fertility, rain, sunlight, life and summer; Iðunn the goddess of spring who guards the apples that keep the gods eternally young; wife of the god Bragi [4] Jörð, personification of the earth and the mother of Thor; Nerthus, goddess of the earth, called by the Romans Terra Mater; Njörð, god of the sea, fishing, and fertility
In Greek mythology, Proteus (/ ˈ p r oʊ t i ə s, ˈ p r oʊ t. j uː s / PROH-tee-əs, PROHT-yooss; [1] Ancient Greek: Πρωτεύς, romanized: Prōteús) is an early prophetic sea god or god of rivers and oceanic bodies of water, one of several deities whom Homer calls the "Old Man of the Sea" (hálios gérôn). [2]
In Greek mythology, the Old Man of the Sea (Ancient Greek: ἅλιος γέρων, romanized: hálios gérōn; Greek: Γέροντας της Θάλασσας, romanized: Yérondas tis Thálassas) was a figure who could be identified as any of several water-gods, generally Nereus or Proteus, but also Triton, Pontus, Phorcys or Glaucus.
The primacy of water gods is reminiscent of, and may even have been influenced by, ancient Near Eastern mythology - where Tiamat (salt water) and Apsu (fresh water) are the first gods of the Enuma Elish, and where the Spirit of God is said to have "hovered over the waters" in Genesis. Pontus is the primordial deity of the sea.
The name Nereus is absent from Homer's epics; the god's name in the Iliad is the descriptive ἅλιος γέρων ' Old Man of the Sea ', and in the Odyssey the combination of ἅλιος γέρων and Πρωτεύς ' Proteus '. [2]
The Drachenkampf mytheme, the chief god in the role of the hero slaying a sea serpent, is widespread both in the ancient Near East and in Indo-European mythology, e.g. Lotan and Hadad, Leviathan and Yahweh, Tiamat and Marduk (see also Labbu, Bašmu, Mušḫuššu), Illuyanka and Tarhunt, Yammu and Baal in the Baal Cycle etc.
Triton (/ ˈ t r aɪ t ɒ n /; Ancient Greek: Τρίτων, romanized: Trítōn) is a Greek god of the sea, the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite. Triton lived with his parents in a golden palace on the bottom of the sea. Later he is often depicted as having a conch shell he would blow like a trumpet. [citation needed]