Where the Olympians came from
Greek guides, part ii
Let’s say you’re on a school trip to Greece and the guide says the following:
“When the Dorians brought the 12 Olympian gods to Greece…”
You’ve got to wonder. Did I just hear that right?
This was in the context of an hour-long talk in the Agora of Athens, a fascinating place near the Acropolis that includes the Hephaestion1 and the Stoa of Attalus2 and a dozen other significant buildings in various archaeological layers and strata.
I didn’t expect our students to catch the oddity of that phrase. They were probably still processing the subway ride to the Thiseio station, right next door to the Agora site.
The Athens metro is fascinating in its own right.
The guide did her best to explain who the Dorians were, especially since one of the leitmotifs of the trip was the ability for students to differentiate between Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian column capitals.
It used to be that scholars thought the Dorians were a wave of Greek-speaking people who invaded from the north of Greece to the south (where, for example, we find the town of Sparta) at the end of the Bronze Age (1050-950 BCE) and took up residence there, where they left evidence of themselves in the Doric dialect of Greece.
The Dorians, so said the guide, were a warrior race, and so the Doric capital is simple, masculine, and unadorned.
Fair enough. The Doric capital is quite, shall we say, Spartan.
Now, according to people who should know, like Professor Eric Cline, there is absolutely no archeological evidence of this so-called Dorian Invasion.
Migration of language? Makes sense. Invasion? Not so much.
So what is the possibility that this group of Greeks “brought” the 12 Olympians to Greece?
That opens a whole other can of worms.
First, we should dispense with the idea that the Olympians were 12. They never were. But that’s an argument for another post.
Second, and more importantly, the Olympian gods and goddesses have an incredibly diverse set of origin points. They were never “brought” anywhere as a group, but were assembled over time—centuries.
Really, you can’t say that there was an Olympian “pantheon” before about 700 BCE, or whenever the Iliad was coming into its final form.
Let’s just review, (very) quickly, the provisional origins of the 21 (yes, 21) divinities who have a claim to being called Olympian.3
Mycenaean Bronze Age: 1700-1200 BCE
Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Dionysus and Hermes are all referred to by name in documents from various palace archives as divinities who receives offerings. There is no indication beyond their names about what people thought about these divinities—what stories were told about them, or what kind of prayers they might answer.
Athena is referred to (possibly) as someone named Lady Atana.
There is a god named Enyalios. This is later an epithet (nickname) of Ares.
There is a god named Paiwon. This is later an epithet (nickname) of Apollo.
That’s it for the Olympians. There are a bunch of other gods and goddesses mentioned that don’t make it into later Greek mythology (like Drimios, the son of Zeus).
Note, again, that the Dorians were supposed to have invaded after the Mycenaean Bronze Age. So here are the Olympian divinities—at least some of them—showing up in Greek religion before the Dorians (so it has been argued) were in Greece.
Iron and Archaic Ages 1200-600 BCE
Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hades, Demeter, Persephone, and Hephaestus all are certain to have been influenced in their creation by (if not outright copied from) gods and goddesses in west Asia and/or Egypt.
Aphrodite comes from the west Semitic/Mesopotamian goddess Asherah/Astarte combined with Greek creativity on the island of Cyprus.
Apollo has a lot in common with the west Semitic god Reshef. There is also a god in ancient Anatolia (modern Turkey) associated with the city of Troy whose name is Apaliunas.
Artemis has many characteristics in common with an eastern Mediterranean goddess from a. number of cultures known as the Mistress of Animals.
For Persephone and Demeter, see here.
Hades starts out just as a place, the underworld, and he is invented as a god (as far as we know) by early poets under the influence of a Mesopotamian and Assyrian model such as Nergal. Egypt, with its very well-developed ideas about the afterlife, has the great god Osiris.
For Hephaestus, there is a west Semitic divine craftsman called Kothar-wa-Hasis who has lots in common with Hephaestus, and the Egyptian god Ptah is in the same category. Linguists think this is impossible, but I like the idea that the name Hephaestus (which has no Greek etymology) is actually the Greek word for “the” (Ho) plus (Ptah). The Greeks always used “the” when they wrote someone’s name.
Finally, there are lots of storm gods with Zeus’s attributes in west Asia as well. This goes for Athena, too.
And what about Hestia?
Well, there’s little information about where she comes from. But she is supposed to be a sister of Zeus and the other elder Olympians, so she’s absolutely an Olympian.
That was quick, but…
This is just a very, very brief sketch, but it should give an idea about the diverse origins of the Olympian gods and goddesses. Homer’s Iliad did a fantastic job of making this motley crew into a traditional Greek extended family; before that document, there’s no sure sign that anyone ever thought of them that way.
So, no, the Dorians alone did not bring the 12 Olympians to Greece.
It was, like all creative accomplishments, a group effort.
The Hephaesteion is better preserved than the Parthenon, though not quite as spectacular.
My personal list of the Olympians includes Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, Hestia, and Demeter (the elder Olympians, children of Kronos and Rhea); Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Dionysus, Persephone, Ares, and Hephaestus (the children of Zeus); Eros (Aphrodite’s son), Hebe (goddess of youth), the Dioscuri (the divine twins Castor and Pollux), Ganymede and Heracles (later additions to the family). Homer also includes Dione (“Mrs. Zeus”), whom he tabs as Aphrodite’s mother.