Questions
- If you were going to make a world from scratch, how would you do it?
- What would your ideal world look like?
- What would you make people out of?
- How would you make people differently?
- If you created the world, would you rule it too? Or just let it run itself?
Resources
Examples of Creation Narratives
The Orphic Theogonies
This picture shows the main creator god from these texts being born. He appeared from an egg.
You can read a summary of the story here.
In the Orphic Theogonies, Phanes is the main creator deities, when he comes out of the egg it is the moment the universe comes into being. If you want, you can read more about him here.
Hesiod’s Theogony
In this story, the parts of the world come into being when each of the gods are born.
You can read a summary of the story here.
The Vishnu Purana
This picture shows Vinshu inside the egg in which the world was created according to this text.
You can read a summary of the story here.
The Enuma Elish
In Babylonian mythology, the world was created from Tiamat’s body after she was defeated by Marduk.
This picture shows Marduk fighting Tiamat. In this version, Tiamat is represented as a dragon.
You can read a summary of the story here.
Longer Pieces of Reading on Ancient Creation Narratives
This is a Latin poem about transformations, including of the universe into its current form, written in the 1st century CE. The link takes you to the first book of the poem which includes the creation story.
Empedocles wrote a poem about the universe and its creation in the 5th century BCE. We now only have pieces of it. One of the key themes of the poem is that the universe is controlled by the forces of Love (eros) and Strife (eris), which rule it at different times. When Love rules, everything is drawn together until it is one mass, and when Strife rules, everything is pulled apart until all the atoms are separated. This part of the story is at sections 60-96 on this page.