Is greek mythology stolen egyptian studies?

Question

Is greek mythology stolen egyptian studies?

Answer 1

I think you're going to far.  Greek mythology incorporates many elements from previous traditions including the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Indians.  However, this is the nature of spiritual and cultural development.  Calling it theft is like accusing me of being a thief because I'm using an alphabet someone else invented to write this message.

Answer 2

Greek mythology is Egyptian mythology that developed over time into Greek mythology.

Answer 3

While there are elements common or similar in Egyptian, near Eastern & Greek mythologies; there are a variety of major differences.  And with any polytheistic culture, there can be more than one way of doing things.

The Gods in Egypt are benevolent.  The ones in Greece and the Near East tend to be less so.

While Kronos, then Zeus commit violence against their fathers to gain their thrones; Seth is the only major god to do likewise- and he did it to Osirus, who then became the god of the underworld.  Seth was not chief god, he was cast out.  Also, the Greek God of the Underworld was Hades, a brother of Zeus- and his dominion was decided by lots chosen by he, Zeus & their other brother Poseidon.

The Greeks believed in burning the body to release it to go to the underworld; the Egyptians believed the body had to be intact to stay in the underworld.

Now, they did associate Egyptian and Greek gods with another- but that tended to be more later, with the Hellenistic Greeks, and especially the Romans.  Alexander saw himself as a Son of Zeus, which he equated with Ra- the God of the Sun in Egypt.  The Romans equated Diana with Artemis who they also associated with Isis.

Answer 4

what we consider greek can be considered Babylonian  especially in mathematics and sacred geometry and such  

Answer 5

One culture doesn't "steal" from another; it adopts or borrows or acquires.  The original culture doesn't lose whatever the second one gained, any more than your cold goes away when you give it to someone else.  So if Greek mythology has roots in Egyptian mythology. why not?  However, one major difference is that the gods of Greek mythology were anthropomorphic.  Although Greek mythology includes some part-human creatures like centaurs and satyrs and Oedipus' Sphinx, it has no gods or goddesses with hawk heads, cat heads, or human heads on animal bodies.

Answer 6

There was correlation between Egyptian and Greek mythology, but as an above poster said, it was not "stealing". Are you "stealing" Japanese culture when you eat sushi, or "stealing" Italian culture when you eat spaghetti? Did Christianity "steal" from Judaism, or Islam "steal" from Christianity? of course not.

We also have to place this in a proper historical context. The rise of jealous deities did not occur on a widespread scale until the 3rd century A.D, when the cults of Mithras, Sol Invictus, and of course, Christianity, started preaching monotheism. Polytheistic religions had no canon, no holy books, nor is it considered sinful if you choose to worship one deity over another. It is a very fluid style of religion and one that is open to new ideas. There is always overlap in polytheism, especially when trade flourishes and new ideas are imported from far away lands. Furthermore, the polytheisms were not exclusive, and you prayed to certain deities as needed. If you were an ancient Greek, and you wanted the war to go well, you might make an offering to Athena or Ares. If you wanted your wife to give birth to a healthy baby, you'd make an offering at the temple of Hestor or Hera. If a foreign deity like an Egyptian God was introduced, it was not an indication of impiety if a person decided to make an offering to an Egyptian God.

Of course, each culture puts its own spin on things. The Egyptians were a very hierarchial society, and the people worshipped the gods in the same way that they were expected to worship the Pharoah, with the Gods acting like the Pharaoh in that they were distant protectors. The Greeks were hero-worshippers, as their civilization was ruggedly individualistic, much more so than the Egpytian civilization which placed emphasis on obedience to the Pharoah. If you had asked an ancient Greek who his favorite figure of religion was, he was much more likely to say someone like Achilles, Herakles, or Jason, instead of one of the gods. The Gods were not seen as omnipotent protectors, but as challengers. Herakles was by far the most beloved hero of ancient Greece, but in mythology he had frequently run afoul of several figures, especially his mother, Hera. The Theogony, which was the Greek history of the gods, played only a secondary importance in Greek religion.

Another Example of this is Roman religion. Where Egpytians valued obiscience and the Greeks individualism, the Romans valued their family. Ask a Greek to talk about his religion, and he might tell you a story, say, about Ulysses escaping the cyclops cave. Ask a Roman and he would be liable to break down his family lineage and trace it back to the ancient times when the gods roamed the Earth. When the Greeks went to war, they prayed to Athena, the female goddess of war and statescraft, and were generally mistrusting of Ares, who was considered cunning and cutthroat. While the Romans worshipped Mars (the Roman Ares) as the god of honorable warfare, placing him in a position of honor second only to Jupiter himself, while Minerva (the Roman equivalent of Athena) was more a goddess of culture than one of statescraft. This is significant because the Greek and Roman pantheon were, for all intents and purposes, identical. It was simply a different set of values that interpreted the same story a different way.

Human civilization does not exist in a vacuum. When trade flourishes, and when societies are tolerant, cultures intermingle with one another, and ideas are spread. In an age where religions are not jealous and competing with one another for converts, this dynamic applies to religion as well.

Answer 7

Well it depends... what we deem "Greek mythology" is a lot more cut and dry than how it actually was back then. Each Greek city-state and territory (such as Asia Minor, Sicily, etc.) had their own local deities and their own particular gods and goddesses which they worshipped more than others. Some minor deities in Asia Minor were not even recognized as such back in the mother country.

You have to imagine that with the amount of contact which took place between the Greeks and Egyptians, esp. after Alexander the Great, made it inevitable that ideas, inventions, beliefs, etc. passed from one culture to another. We call it cultural borrowing more so than actual theft. The real theft that occurred was the Romans from the Greeks, as they literally incorporated wholesale the entire Greek religion.