TEOGNIA. — From θεός = god, γονεῖν = gene-ration, in the mythology of various peoples, the genealogy of the gods who presided over the organization of the world.
It may be considered as the fulfillment of cosmogony (v.) because while the latter describes the elements from which the life of the cosmos sprang forth (sky, earth, water, etc.), theogony gives them names and forms and presents them in descending order as the organizers and regulators of the universe that emerged, thanks to them, from primordial chaos. This occurs not only because the birth of the gods follows the formation of the cosmos, but also because the narrative tends to impose order on the divine world and to arrange the gods known to the group that venerates them in a hierarchical succession corresponding to the historical development of the group itself and to its ethical-social progress. Thus, the oldest gods or those not originally belonging to the group come first in the genealogical succession, but are dethroned in favor of the god of the victorious group.
Already Herodotus (II, 50-53) recognized in Hesiod (v.) the merit of having genealogically ordered the divine world, which in pre-Greek (=Pelasgian) times was unnamed, and later freely described by Homer with the creative efficacy of poetry. According to Homer (Iliad, XIV, 201-203; 246; 302), the father of gods and men is Oceanus, while Tethys is their mother; he knows of Cronus relegated beneath the earth and father of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades (ibid., XV, 187-96), and of the division among them of the three domains of the cosmos: sky, sea, and underworld.
In organizing the world of the Greek gods, Hesiod intends to coordinate into a system of national scope the various traditions, often confused and inconsistent, so as to offer, through this effort at condensation, a Hellenic pantheon that expresses the fusion of the various political, commercial, and other elements already at work in the Greek land. He therefore arranges the various deities according to a rigid plan of descent through four ages, each of which is a conquest over the preceding one, and in which account is taken of the bonds linking the creator gods to their creation.
Hesiod’s Theogony opens with cosmogony. From primordial Chaos (=void) come Gaia (=Earth) and Eros (=the fertile life-principle). From Chaos is born a first pair, Erebus and Night, and from this its opposite, Aether and Day. From Gaia come Uranus (the Sky), the mountains, and the sea. The arrangement of these elements of the world, that is, the true theogony, is accomplished by the pairs that succeed one another in the ordering of the cosmos.
From Uranus come Oceanus, the river that encircles the earth, and then the mythical figures of the Titans, Cyclopes, and Giants. Uranus imprisons the Titans in the depths of the earth, but Cronus, the last of the Titans, at the instigation of his mother Gaia, punishes Uranus by castrating him, and from the genitals that fall into the sea are born Aphrodite, then the Nymphs, and the Furies. Thus the reign of Uranus ends, and in his place succeeds Cronus, who mates with Rhea and begets Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus. But he, like his father, distrusts his children and swallows them as soon as they are born, which is why Rhea, grieving, hides Zeus in Crete, making Cronus swallow a stone in his place. Thus what Cronus feared comes to pass: Zeus dethrones him, forces him to disgorge all the children he had swallowed, including the stone (placed at Delphi), and takes his place. In this way begins the reign of Zeus. But his power is immediately threatened by the Titans, who rise up in a frenzied struggle against him. He, however, subdues them and imprisons them in the subterranean Tartarus, as distant from the earth as the earth is from the sky. Yet this is not all, for Typhon, son of Gaia and Tartarus, roused by his mother in defense of his other defeated children, rises in turn to battle with Zeus, but he too is defeated, and Zeus can thus establish his dominion over the definitively ordered world. From Zeus begins, through unions with immortals and mortals, the generation of heroes, and theogony thus comes to be linked with the mythical traditions of the heroic age.
Orphism also had its own cosmogony and theogony, not merely naturalistic like that of Hesiod, but philosophical-moral in accordance with Orphic thought. Damascius, a Neoplatonic philosopher of the 6th century A.D., has preserved its elements (De princ., 124 b), drawn from the lost Pentémachus of Pherecydes of Syros. There are three primordial essences: Zas (from Zy-vi-viere), which is the principle of life, Chronos the principle of time, and Chthonie the principle of matter. After the victorious struggle of Chronos against Ophionius, the serpent that is the principle of chaos, the ordering of the world takes place. To Damascius (De princ., 123) we also owe another version, called the "rapid" (Orphic), which posits as primordial principles Chronos, Aether, and Chaos. Chronos fashions from the bosom of Aether an egg, from which Phanes, the "Brilliant One," emerges. Phanes, mating with Night, produces the pair Earth-Heaven, from which is born Cronus, who in turn begets Zeus, who from Persephone generates Dionysus. With Dionysus, who in Orphism receives the name of Zagreus, the divine world is reconnected to the human.
Egypt developed, in its principal political centers, through the development of priestly schools, various cosmogonies and theogonies: the Memphite theogony in Lower Egypt, whose principal creative god is Ptah, whose creative power is exercised through his mighty word; the Hermopolitan in Upper Egypt, whose creative god Thoth, identified with Hermes, through an assembly of local gods, by means of an egg created by them, produces the sun god; and finally the Heliopolitan. According to this cosmogony, in the beginning there exists primordial chaos constituted by water, and Atum (i.e., Re), who generates a first pair: Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture); and a second: Geb (earth) and Nut (sky). From Geb and Nut, the former depicted lying on the ground, the latter raised high by Shu and supported on the earth only by the tips of her hands and feet, are born two pairs of children: Seth and Nephthys, Osiris and Isis, the latter progenitors of the human race. This is the Heliopolitan ennead, which served as a model for other local cosmogonies with elements drawn from popular imagination.
The Babylonian cosmology contained in the Poem of Creation (Enuma elish) describes the ordering action of the cosmos performed by Marduk, the solar god, at the beginning of things, when there was neither heaven nor earth, but only the two primordial principles Apsu, the ocean, and Tiamat, the sea, who mingled their fresh and salt waters in a chaos teeming with manifold life. From the first pair are born Lahmu and Lahamu, from the second Anshar and Kishar, and from the third the supreme triad Anu, Bel, and Ea. A struggle immediately arises between this triad, representing order, and Tiamat at the head of the other elements representing disorder. Marduk accepts the challenge, defeats the monster Tiamat, and divides her body into two parts, with one of which he forms the vault of heaven, regulates the movements, thus constituting the zodiac and the calendar.
The Phoenicians also left a cosmogony attributed to Sanchuniathon, whose most important version is due to Philo of Byblos; it reveals an Egyptian origin and an exotic influence, as is evident from the myth of the Uranids, but appears to have been elaborated in a Semitic milieu. In the beginning there exists an aeriform substance, from which is born Mot, the mud (analogous to Mut and the fertilizing silt of the Nile), and from the mud, through spontaneous generation, all beings and animals: first those without sensation, then the intelligent ones called Zophasmin, "contemplators of the heavens," doubtless human beings, who were at first asleep and were later awakened by the thunders provoked by the separation of the elements. Once these elements are divided, they tend to seek one another, to mate, and to generate life on earth and in the sea. The principal pair consists of Eliun and the "Lady" of Byblos. From them come Uranus (=Anu) and Ge.
Scandinavian mythology as contained in the Edda possesses a theology. From the original chaos there form in the north the land of ice (Niflheim) and in the south that of fire (Muspelheim). From the melted ice are born Ymir and the cow Adumbla, and Buri, progenitor of Odin, Vili, and Ve. These, having slain Ymir, create from his body the earth and the sea. The first men are born from two trees grown on the shore of the sea.
The universe is divided into three parts: Asgard, where the gods dwell and the castle Valhalla is found; Midgard, where men dwell; and Hel, the abode of the dead. This world will perish (the twilight of the gods) to make way for a new and happy generation.