Dying God

One of gods' major characteristics, that makes them different from humans is being immortal. But are all of them really immortal? Traditionally, gods are perceived as being invincible, eternally young and perfect in a lot of ways. However, there is a category in mythology that is called "dying god". Most cultures have a mortal god in its pantheon. The presence of a mortal god appears to be a mythological pattern but unlike humans dying gods are typically in some sense revived if not actually brought back to the living world. All myths in this category though created in various parts of the world have common motifs in them but at the same time they differ in many ways. The peculiarities of the dying god myths are rooted in cultural differences, differences in mentality and values of the people who crated those myths. Like any mythological narrative they carry a message about its' creators.

Why did people create myths about dying and resurrecting gods? The idea of being immortal has always been fascinating to the humans and they have been on the death conquering quest since the early ages. Ponce de Leon was searching for the Fountain of Youth in Florida, Arthurian Knights were searching for the Holy Grail, Alexander the Great was looking for the Waters of Eternal Life and many-many others were trying to find a way of escaping death. Since people could not actually find any real solution they incorporated the ideas of immortality and rebirth in myths they created. In a lot of ways the world of gods is modeled after the world of humans. This is why some gods are mortal. Gods are actually in many ways humanlike: "For like men they were composed of body and soul, and like men were subject to all the passions and infirmities of the flesh. Their bodies, it is true, were fashioned of the more ethereal mould, and lasted longer than ours, but they could not hold out for ever against the siege of time" (Frazer, The Dying God, p.4).

The "dying god" myths presented in this paper can be roughly divided into three categories: Christian, Norse myths and the ones of Egypt, Greece and Middle East. Narratives in a given category are united by the similarity of motifs in them. The idea of a mortal god is clearly present in religions of the Mediterranean area and Middle East. All mortal gods in this category are gods of fertility and vegetation and their death and revival represent the change of seasons, yearly rebirth of the nature. The aspect of changing of the seasons must have been really important in these cultures. For example, in Egypt life and agriculture depended on natural cycles: rain, mild temperatures, overflowing Nile, characteristic of the fertile season, followed by the spell of extremely dry and hot weather known as the dead season. It is same with the climate of the Middle East where the earth is like an oasis during the fertile season and becomes a desert when the vegetation god Dumuzi is in the underworld. S. H. Hooke in Middle Eastern Mythology actually considers Dumuzi "the prototype of all vegetation gods who die and rise again with the rebirth of vegetation in the spring" (p. 20) Thus myths of Osiris and Isis and Dumuzi and Innana are considered the most typical in the "vegetation" category.

In Greek mythology we can find quite a few myths of dying gods and goddesses: Dionysis, Adonis and Persephone. One can clearly see parallel between the stories of Aphrodite and Adonis on the one side and Attis or even Dumuzi and Innana on the other as well as Dyonisis and Osiris. Sir James Frazer points out that "the similarity of the two worships (meaning Greek and Egyptian) is sufficiently explained by the similarity of the ideas and customs on which they were founded" (p.3) But how did these ideas and customs happen to be similar? No doubt there was certain influence of Egyptian tradition on Greek mythology. Of course, there is a possibility of certain elements being simply borrowed, taking into consideration that Greek civilization is chronologically younger than Egyptian and the two civilizations are known to be in contact economically and culturally due to their geographic proximity.

The peculiarity of myths in this category is that in some of them the idea of a god actually dying is not very clear. Thus, in myths of Dumuzi and Innana and Persephone and Demeter gods and goddesses are not physically dying - they take a trip to the underground world for whatever reason but once there they cannot simply come back. They have to give up some of their freedom and spend part of the year in the world of the dead and this is the time when the nature is asleep.

Another interesting motif in "vegetation" myths is the motif of dismemberment or the loss of genitalia symbolizing the loss of fertility. In the Egyptian myth Seth cuts the body of the dead Osiris apart and scatters the pieces all over the country. Isis, the wife of Osiris, manages to find them all except for the genitalia and puts the body back together. In Greek myth the body of baby Dionysis is dismembered by the titans and his flesh boiled and roasted. Athena who happened to be present at the feast hid the heart of Dionysis and gave it to Zeus later. There are a lot of variations of the myth when it comes to the rebirth of this Greek god. The most common legend is that there was a drink made of the heart of Dionysis. It was given to Semele by Zeus and she became pregnant with Dionysis. In phrygian myth Attis - the year god - is castrated and buried. As we can see, there are a lot of common motifs in the "vegetation" myths of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It is also important to mention that all these stories of death are also stories of love and the loss of a loved one.

In Norse mythology the idea of dying god is not as popular as in myths of Egypt and Middle East. Norse mythology is mythology of heroes, kings, warriors. Apparently, in tough living conditions of Scandinavia and Iceland, namely, cold climate, constant conquest of other lands, exploring, death was accepted as it is. There was no way back. That is why we do not find any resurrecting gods in Norse mythology. There are two main myths of the dying god. One concerns the death of the father god Odin hanging on a tree and the other one is about the death of Baldr, everybody's favorite, like Adonis, Attis or Dionysos. He was killed by trickster Loki and had to go to Hel, the world of the dead. The whole world was mourning his death. His friend missed him so much that one of them volunteered to travel to Hel to bring him back. The queen of the Underworld, Hel, agreed to let him go on condition that Baldr's friends would give her proof that everybody and everything in the nine worlds wept for Baldr. And everybody and everything did except for the giantess Thokk, who was actually the sly Loki. And that