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A creation myth (or creation story) is a cultural, religious or traditional myth which describes the earliest beginnings of the present world. Creation myths are the most common form of myth, usually developing first in oral traditions , and are found throughout human culture.
Also, Pherecydes combined Greek mythology with non-Greek myths and religions. According to Aristotle, he was innovative in his approach, because he broke with the theological tradition and combined mythology with philosophy. Pherecydes' creation story therefore had to be more rational and concrete than Hesiod's Theogony. [17]
Hesiod's Theogony, (c. 700 BCE) which could be considered the "standard" creation myth of Greek mythology, [1] tells the story of the genesis of the gods. After invoking the Muses (II.1–116), Hesiod says the world began with the spontaneous generation of four beings: first arose Chaos (Chasm); then came Gaia (the Earth), "the ever-sure foundation of all"; "dim" Tartarus (the Underworld), in ...
A creation myth or cosmogonic myth is a type of cosmogony, [2] a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] While in popular usage the term myth often refers to false or fanciful stories, members of cultures often ascribe varying degrees of truth to their creation myths.
Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson (1975) has argued.
Thus Greek and Hebrew founding myths established the special relationship between a deity and local people, who traced their origins from a hero and authenticated their ancestral rights through the founding myth. Greek founding myths often embody a justification for the ancient overturning of an older, archaic order, reformulating a historical ...
Some Orphic myths suggest that Zeus intends to pass the sceptre to Dionysus. According to the Athenian scholiast Damascius, Phanes was the first god "expressible and acceptable to human ears" ("πρώτης ητόν τι ἐχούσης καὶ σύμμετρον πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ἀκοάς "). [9] Another Orphic Hymn states:
Also in Greek mythology, Prometheus moulds a clay statue of Athena, the goddess of wisdom to whom he is devoted, and gives it life from a stolen sunbeam. [24] Pandora, from Greek mythology, was fashioned from clay and given the quality of "naïve grace combined with feeling". [25]