Uranus (mythology)
Encyclopedia : U : UR : URA : Uranus (mythology)
| Greek deities series | |
|---|---|
| Titans and Olympians | |
| Aquatic deities | |
| Chthonic deities | |
| Personified concepts | |
| Other deities | |
| Primordial deities | |
-->Uranus is the Latinized form of Ouranos, Greek name of the sky. In Greek mythology Uranus is personified as the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth. Ouranos and Gaia were ancestors of most of the Greek gods.
Other sources claim a different parentage of Ouranos. Cicero, in his work De Natura Deorum (The Nature of the Gods") claims that he was the offspring of the ancient gods Aether and Hemera. According to the Orphic Hymns, Ouranos was the son of the personification of night, Nyx.
His equivalent in Roman mythology was Caelus.
The Creation Myth
In the Olympian creation myth, as Hesiod tells it in Theogony, Uranus came every single night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him. Hesiod names the Titans, six sons and six daughters, the one-hundred-armed giants (Hecatonchires) and the one-eyed giants, the Cyclopes. He imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea. From the blood which spilled from Uranus onto the Earth came forth the Gigantes, the three avenging Furies—the Erinyes— and Meliae, the ash-nymphs. From the genitals in the sea came forth Aphrodite. For this fearful deed, Uranus called his sons Titanes Theoi, or "Straining Gods"Modern etymology suggests that the linguistic origin of Τιτάνες lies on the pre-Greek level..
After Uranus was deposed, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes in Tartarus. The fate of being castrated and deposed by his son was prophesied and came to pass for Cronus who attempted unsuccessfully to avoid the fate by devouring his young. It was also prophesied for Zeus, who avoided the fate.
These ancient myths of distant origins were not expressed in cults among the Hellenes (Kerenyi p. 20). The function of Uranus is as the vanquished god of an elder time, before real time began. After his castration, the Sky came no more to cover the Earth at night, but held to its place, and "the original begetting came to an end" (Kerenyi).
Cultural context of flint
The detail of the sickle's being flint rather than bronze or even iron was retained by Greek mythographers (though neglected by Roman ones). Knapped flints as cutting edges were set in wooden or bone sickles in the late Neolithic, before the onset of the Bronze Age. Such sickles may have survived latest in ritual contexts where metal was taboo, but the detail, which was retained by classical Greeks, suggests the antiquity of the mytheme.
Robert Graves' and others' identification of the name Ouranos with the Hindu Varuna is widely rejected. The most probable etymology is from Proto-Greek *worsanos, from a PIE root *wers- "to moisten, to drip" (referring to the rain).
Consorts/Children
All the offspring of Uranus are with Gaia, save Aphrodite, born of the Sea (Thalassa).
- # Cyclopes
- ## Brontes
- ## Steropes
- ## Arges
- # Hecatonchires
- ## Briareus
- ## Cottus
- ## Gyes
- # Titans
- ## Coeus
- ## Crius
- ## Cronus
- ## Hyperion
- ## Iapetus
- ## Mnemosyne
- ## Oceanus
- ## Phoebe
- ## Rhea
- ## Tethys
- ## Theia
- ## Themis
- # Erinyes, the three Furies.
- ## Alecto
- ## Megaera
- ## Tisiphone
- # Gigantes
- ## Alcyoneus
- ## Athos
- ## Clytias
- ## Enceladus
- ## Echion
- # Meliae, the ash-tree nymphs.
Notes
References
- Kerenyi, Carl, 1951. The Gods of the Greeks
- Graves, Robert, revised edition, 1960. The Greek Myths.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.