Ancient Near EastAncient Near East
1001 Arabian Nights
Miscellaneous Near East
- Kephera claims to have assembled "the best collection of Middle Eastern Mythology!" accessible from his Middle Eastern Studies page. His ancient mythology page includes copies of Stephanie Dalley's translations of four Akkadian language myths. He also has a couple of Canaanite Myths, and five Egyptian myths. He also keeps a dictionary of Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hittite, and Hebrew gods and assorted entities. (Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Pagans Online's Scrolls Catalogue - Ancient Near East collects some essays and translations of Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts. (Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Robert Best argues that Noah's flood was based on Sumerian accounts of an actual river flood and compares the two versions in this site promoting his book: Noah's Ark and the Ziusudra Epic: Sumerian Origins of the Flood Myth..
- Well, it's archaeology, not mythology, but The Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago has some interesting stuff including ABZU a guide to info on the Ancient Near East availible on the net.
- Father James W. Reites' course on the Origins of Western Religion contains a description and links concerning Religion in the Ancient Near East: Myths and Gods. He deals with Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Canaanites.
- A brief glossary of predominently Mesopotamian, Near Eastern deities explains the Names of the Computers at IIB.uam.es.
Anatolian
- Hittite Mythology REF This page contains a description of the pantheon, and history of the Hittites, who drew heavily upon the pantheon of their neighbors the Hurrians. These peoples lived primarily in the central and eastern portions of Anatolia during the second millenium B.C.E.
- Poems from the Turkish Epic is a collection of Altaic poems a dapted by Gene Doty from Gulten Yener's prose translation.
- Handan Oz's Turkish Mythology page contains Turkish myths (mostly in Turkish) as well as myths set in Turkey (mostly Greek and written in English).
The Levant (Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and coastal Syria)
- Canaanite/Ugaritic Mythology FAQ This page contains a description of the pantheon of the people refered to as Canaanites in the Bible, as recovered from the city of Ugarit in what is now western Syria. These people lived from at least 3800 years ago through 3000 years ago and were absorbed into neigboring peoples including the Phoenicians and the Hebrews.
- Biblical Beginnings in Canaan As you can probably guess, this has a good bit on Canaanite Mythology in a Biblical context.
- Brandeis University maintains a number of Selections from Ancient Near Eastern Texts including the Ugaritic myth of the Dying and Rising of Baal (Broken Link 5/12/00)
- Lilinah biti-Anat's Qadash Kinahnu - A Canaanite-Phoenician Temple as well as being a site for Canaanite neo-pagan information contains a extensive amount of mythological information about those gods. She also continues to translate many of the myths from Ugarit and some later sources.
- Salim George Khalaf's page on Phoenician Religion describes the deities and religious practicies of the Canaanites, primarily as witnessed by their neighbors, the Greeks and the Egyptians. He also has a page describing their Ethnic Origin, Language and Literature, delving into both Ugaritic and Greek accounts, as well as a page giving the Background to Religions in E. Mediterranean - which confines itself to the Aramaeans, Canaanite/Phoenicians, Philistines, and Moabites.
- Roger Crowley, aka. Village Fox, has assembled a Hebrew Mythology Library which explores some of the Genesis stories such as those of creation and the early patriarchs. He also examines the nature of Elohim, YHWH, and possible Hebrew goddesses. He appears to intend to expand his site to cover other Near Eastern regions, as well as stories from Native American groups, but at last check, those pages weren't nearly as developed as the one above. (Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Paul Brians et al. present an excerpt from their book Reading About the World, Volume 1 discussing The Hebrew Creation Narrative (Genesis 1-3) including a fair amount of commentary. Genesis and the other books of the Pentateuch were assembled in written form during the sixth century B.C.E., following the Babylonian Captivity.
- Donavon Marais of the University of South Africa presents his paper on The Cain Myth: a discussion of its historical roots and an interpretation. He introduces the Cain story by examining the Old Testament from a historical and mythological perspective and compares the tale to Egyptian and Canaanite stories.
- It's not to hard to find the Bible on-line - The King James translation was one of the most widely distributed e-texts before the advent of the web; however, if you want to find the books and stories that didn't make it in (most of which were written after the canonical books - later than 200 B.C.E. for the Tanach and later than 150 C.E. for the New Testament) try the Wesley Center's Noncanonical Homepage for Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha - books that might have gotten you tortured during the inquisition. This is where you'll find stories about the Nephilim, and seven or ten heavens and all kinds of escatological stuff.
- Alan Humm's Lilith page contains a large number of ancient and medieval sources.
- Renee Rosen's Lilith Shrine has extensive links and information about the legendary first wife of Adam.
- David S. Devon has written an essay on Science as Applied Kabbalah. While primarily religious and mystical in tone, this essay does give some insight into the Kabbalistic take on Jewish cosmology. (Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Charles Benton takes a mythological look at Angels and their different classifications. (Broken Link 5/12/00)
- Stephanie Connelly's Online Demon Dictionary is featured in Terzian's Vault: Demonolatry. Many demons have there sources throughout the religions of the Near East. (Broken Link 2/11/02)
- Dante Alighieri is guided by Virgil through the Inferno (Hell), and Purgatorio (Purgatory) on his way to Beatrice in Paradiso (Paradise) in his Divine Comedy. Written in the late 1200's and early 1300's Dante's cosmology is his own take on that of the medieval Roman Catholic church and has roots in Classical myth, the Bible, extra-canonical sources, and Dante's own politics. The link above takes you to both the Italian and Longfellow's translation.
- Drawing on the legends of the fallen angels from Genesis 6 and various extra-canonical sources, John Milton crafted his masterpiece Paradise Lost in 1664 with a revision in 1667.
- Bashar Barghouti has collected a pair of Palestinian Folk Stories at his site.
Egypt
- Shawn C. Knight's Egyptology Page. Reworked and reformatted for the web from the old Egyptian Mythology FAQ, this edition is also quicker to upload.
- Jimmy Dunn has put together The Gods of Ancient Egypt, an extensive document discussing the individual deities and the development of Egyptian religion over time. This document is mirrored here. Much of this is straight out of E. A. Wallis Budge's The Gods of the Egyptians (1904).
- April Arnold's Ancient Egypt: the Mythology contains extensive descriptions of the deities, retellings of the myths, and essays on the region. (Broken Link 2/10/02)
- Katherine Griffis of Griffis Consulting provides a number of Egyptology pages including her pages on the Goddesses of Ancient Egypt.
- The Egyptian Mythology Site provides brief descriptions of the deities, images, descriptions of philosophical concepts, and another translation of the Papyrus of Ani. (Broken Link 2/10/02)
- In addition to providing a teaser for his new book Hor, Peter Preston provides an overview and some notes on Egyptian Mythology.
- Deborah Howard's essay The Egyptian Culture Reflected in Worship presents an overview of Egyptian religion and mythology for Exploring Ancient World Cultures.
- The Papyrus of Ani: The Egyptian Book of the Dead translated by turn of the century Egyptologist, E. A. Wallis Budge. It should be noted that Budge's translations have fallen out of favor in the Egyptological community in recent years. While the gist remains the same, the serious scholar is advised to seek out something more current.
- Jimmy Dunn and Interoz also have a copy of Budge's translation of the Book of the Dead, but this version has a table of contents page which makes it more nicely segmented.
- The Legend of Osiris and Isis as told by Christine Hobson for the Baobab Project
- Rev. Stephanie "merry-Bast" Cass discusses the cat goddess in great detail in The domain of Bast.
- Mike and Chris Ward of Colorado's Social Science Data Lab have an Egyptian Gods Description page because of their computer naming scheme.
- The House of Netjer, a Kemetic Orthodox church - basicly an Egyptian group which uses the whole of ancient Egyptian religion - has put together a large collection of brief descriptions of the Egyptian deities in Netjer - the One God of the Ancient Egyptians
- Milo Shiff has compiled a Glosary of Deites providing capsule information for a large number of Egyptian deities, with a bit of a neo-Pagan slant.
- Taken from Mythtext, Mark de la Hey's Guide to the Gods v. 1.0 contains brief descriptions of the Egyptian deities.
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