Cosmic Winter Ch. 4 Extended Summary
Summary by Lee Vaughn - Myth Of Ends
The Sky Gods
Whatever the mysterious Heraclids really were, the ancient Greeks, after their Dark Age, believed they were the sons of Heracles—and that Heracles himself was a god.
At the same time, the Greeks were confused about the family tree of the gods. Even during the time of Homer (around 800 BC) and Hesiod (around 700 BC), myths about heroes came from many different sources. Sometimes even the same poet would tell different versions of the same story in different parts of their writing.
The stories about Heracles (later called Hercules by the Romans) were especially complicated. His tales include:
Battles with ancient monsters
A wild and dangerous side, where he sometimes lost control
A connection to death and the end of the world
Out of all his adventures, twelve were chosen to be his “official” Twelve Labors, which he was forced to perform by King Eurystheus of Mycenae. These were shown in Greek art by around 560 BC, especially at Olympia.
The myth said that Eurystheus was the son of Hera, queen of the gods. He feared and hated Heracles, the son of Zeus, and tried to destroy him by giving him twelve nearly impossible tasks. But Heracles completed them all—even one that involved fighting at Troy.
Six of these labors happened in the Peloponnese region of Greece, and this hints that the stories might be based on a real feudal prince who lived long ago. That means the earliest myths may actually preserve fragments of real events from around 1200–1100 BC, when Mycenaean warriors were fighting across the sea.
So by the 5th century BC, the growing Olympian religion had helped spread stories across Greece that combined myth, real history, and cosmic symbolism—especially through the figure of Heracles.
Many Greeks ended up mixing the stories of their gods with half-remembered tales of ancient tribal leaders from centuries earlier. For most people in Greece, the Mycenaean era eventually became the time when everything began. And Heracles became a symbol of strength, power, and eternal life—the greatest hero of all. More than anyone else, he stood between mortal humans and the immortal gods.
But it was only after traveling eastward that the Greeks began to question their own myths.
The Greek historian Herodotus (484–430 BC), who came from Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), noticed that Egyptians told very different stories about the same gods:
“In Greece, the youngest gods are said to be Heracles, Dionysos, and Pan. But in Egypt, Pan is one of the most ancient gods—one of the original ‘Eight Gods.’ Heracles belongs to the next group of Twelve. And Dionysos is part of a later group that came from the Twelve. The Egyptians say Pan appeared before the others, and that Dionysos appeared 15,000 years before Amasis, a recent Egyptian king. They say they know this because they kept careful written records.
But in Greece, Dionysos (son of Semele) only goes back about 1,600 years, Heracles (son of Alcmene) about 900 years, and Pan (son of Penelope and Hermes) only about 500 years—less time than has passed since the Trojan War.”
This is obviously a confusing mix of characters and names—Semele, Cadmus, Alcmene, Penelope, Hermes—but those details aren’t important right now. What matters is that the relationships between gods were unclear, even to the Greeks. And Herodotus was trying to expand their limited view of history.
Some people have accused Herodotus of exaggerating how ancient Egypt was, just to make his writing more impressive. Others say his Egyptian sources might have been biased and overly proud of their past.
But the order he gives still makes sense on its own, and doesn’t actually conflict with what we already know. For example, Amasis—the Egyptian king mentioned—really did rule in the 6th century BC.
The Egyptian king Amasis, who ruled in the 500s BC, gives us a reliable timeline—he lived just a century before Herodotus and during a time when Egypt and Greece were reconnecting after the long Dark Age.
Some scholars think the Egyptians counted time by months, not years, which might explain why their timelines seemed so long to the Greeks. Or perhaps the Greeks misunderstood how the Egyptians counted time using their priest-lists, which went all the way back to Egypt’s First Dynasty (around 3000 BC).
So it’s possible the Egyptian timeline should be reduced by a factor of 10 or 12, though no one knows for sure. Either way, Herodotus was clear: the Greek timeline for when the gods appeared was wrong, and Heracles likely lived around 1800 BC.
What’s really interesting is that Herodotus didn’t see the gods as symbols or myths. He talked about them like they were real people with family trees and birthdays—part of actual history.
Before the 400s BC, the Greeks had a very literal view of their gods. The gods were powerful beings, and just like in Egypt and Sumeria, it was common for kings or chiefs to claim descent from the gods to justify their right to rule. But in Greece, where no one dynasty held long-term power, those claims weren’t very convincing.
Eventually, the Greeks began to question the whole idea of gods. A man named Euhemerus suggested that gods were just real people who had been glorified over time. According to him, they weren’t divine at all—they were simply ancestors turned into legends by later generations.
This idea—that gods were made up—began to spread. And as Greek society became more rational and skeptical, people found it harder to believe in actual sky gods. If there were still real divine beings visible in the sky, maybe their belief would have stayed strong—but those signs were gone.
Still, it's no surprise that the early Greeks genuinely believed the Heraclids were real—and that Heracles himself was a real man with ancient roots in religious tradition.
There was a religious tradition called Orphism, supposedly started by a possibly mythical figure named Orpheus. At first, Orphism wasn’t very popular in Greece, but over time, its ideas about the gods and the soul spread widely—especially through the teachings of Pythagoras (around 530 BC) and Plato (427–347 BC).
Orphism taught that the body and soul were separate, and that the soul was immortal and could be reborn. These ideas remind us of Egyptian beliefs, which suggests Orphism may have come from Egypt originally. In fact, it’s been proposed that it was brought to northern Greece (Thrace and the Aegean) by priests fleeing Egypt after the fall of Akhenaten’s religious revolution (around 1350 BC).
One god from the Orphic religion was named Aion. He was described as:
“Unchanging, divine, one with the world, with no beginning, middle, or end.”
Aion was said to have been born from Earth and Water, and had the form of a snake with two heads—one a bull, one a lion—with a god’s face between them and wings on his shoulders.
This strange figure was also called Cronos Ageraos (meaning “Unaging Time”) or Heracles.
This shows how confusing Heracles’ identity was. Some Greeks, following Egyptian-like beliefs, thought he was ancient—part of the original gods. Others thought the world began around the time of the Trojan War, making Heracles a much younger hero.
But either way, Heracles was a major figure, and the Heraclids—those said to descend from him—were seen as powerful beings connected to the very creation of the world.
That kind of divine ancestry is an important clue about how seriously the destruction of Mycenaean civilization was remembered. These were not just foreign invaders—they were thought to be godlike forces tied to cosmic events.
The Orphic myths also include the story of a god named Phaethon, who went wild and set fire to the Earth. The poet Homer even linked Phaethon to Heracles’ labors, suggesting a connection between sky disasters and the fall of Mycenae.
There’s a picture called Plate 4, which shows how people in later Roman times thought of Heracles as the same being as the god of time, named Cronos or Aion. Aion was also seen as the same as Zervan, a winged lion-headed god from Persian Mithraic tradition, and as Phanes, a winged god born from a cosmic egg in the Orphic religion.
Both these images—Zervan standing on a world globe and Phanes surrounded by the zodiac signs—suggest the gods weren’t just spiritual ideas. They were also connected to the stars, time, and the cosmos. The cosmic egg, for example, symbolized the beginning of the universe.
Then the text talks about a story from Ovid, a Roman poet. He tells us about Phaethon, the son of the Sun god, who took over the Sun’s chariot but lost control. The result?
The sky caught fire, the Earth cracked, trees and crops burned, cities were destroyed, and entire nations turned to ash.
This fiery destruction sounds a lot like what happened at the end of the Bronze Age—massive disasters, cities destroyed, and civilizations collapsing.
The story of Phaethon and the burning Earth also reminds us of the later story of the Trojan Horse—a wooden object that led to destruction and fire. That story wasn’t in Homer’s Iliad, but was added later. Some believe it may have symbolized something cosmic, not just a clever war trick.
For example, the word “nightmare” may even come from fear of seeing bright fireballs or comets in the sky, which were often imagined as horses with fiery manes.
In ancient Arcadia, the god Poseidon was connected to horses and earthquakes, and he was also Zeus’s brother. This shows how myth and nature were deeply linked in ancient belief.
So these ancient myths—about gods, fires, horses, and disasters—may not be just stories. They might be memories of real, cosmic events, like volcanoes, comets, or earthquakes, retold using mythical language.
The chapter closes by saying there are two ways to understand myths:
Dismiss them as made-up stories with supernatural nonsense.
Or, take them seriously—as coded messages from people trying to explain real cosmic and natural events they witnessed.
People today often say the gods were just symbols or made-up stories. But another way to look at it is to say that something real must have happened—something so powerful that ancient people described it as divine. This doesn't mean ghosts or spirits, but something huge and out of human control, like a disaster or a cosmic event.
Most modern scholars prefer the first idea (that myths are just fiction), but if we pick the second idea (that myths are based on real things), then at some point we’ll have to figure out when people stopped believing in real sky gods and started treating them as just symbols.
For now, let’s keep exploring the older idea—that these gods were based on real events or beings—and see if we can find a connection between Greek and Egyptian views of the universe.
The story of Phaethon, who drives the chariot of the Sun and causes destruction, is unusual in Greek myth. But parts of this myth may come from even older traditions—possibly from Egypt, especially from the time of Akhenaton (around 1350 BC). Akhenaton believed the Sun was the supreme god, which was a new and strange idea in Egypt at the time.
So it makes sense that Phaethon’s solar story might come from this Egyptian view, even though most Greeks and Egyptians didn't normally worship the Sun as their main god.
Still, Greek and Egyptian stories about the universe—how it began and how it works—do share surprising similarities, even though they had different gods. Maybe they influenced each other after the Dark Age (after 1100 BC), or maybe they both just figured out some universal truths in their own ways.
In Egypt, even though there were many gods, there was always one main creator god—but he wasn’t the Sun. He had different names in different cities:
Atum-Re in Heliopolis
Ptah in Memphis
Thoth in Hermopolis
Khnum in Elephantine
But all of them pointed to the same being—a single great power that created everything.
In early Egyptian beliefs, the greatest gods—like Osiris and Seth—were said to be the first beings, and from them came many other sky gods, living things, and even humans.
According to one version of Egyptian teachings (from the city of Memphis), the god Ptah used his mind and voice to bring the next generation of gods into existence. These gods were called the Ennead, and they included the sun god Atum, all said to come from the primeval waters at the beginning of time.
This Egyptian idea is actually very similar to later Jewish and Christian beliefs. For example, in the Bible, the Gospel of John begins with: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That’s a lot like Ptah creating things through thought and speech.
Both Egyptian and Greek beliefs also said that gods and humans were very similar, not just in personality, but in origin. This idea shows up later in the writings of Plato, who believed that life on Earth and life among the gods in the sky were connected—that they were part of one big story.
In Egyptian thinking, there were two levels to the world:
The World of the Horizon – This was the flat Earth, called Geb.
The World of the Two Lands – This came out of the primeval waters and included the Sun’s path through the sky, also tied to the zodiac (the path of the stars).
This sky path arched over and under the Earth. The living world was called Shu, and the underworld was called Duat. The sky above was called Nut, and the sky below was Nannet (the mirror or opposite of Nut).
We now think of the whole sky as “heaven,” but Nut was imagined more like a long strip of sky stretching east to west. It was held up by four giant pillars from the mountains at the edges of the Earth—but these pillars didn’t match the north, south, east, west directions like we might expect.
The Egyptians saw this path as split in two, like two strips weaving together. This double nature was also connected to Ptah, who was called “Lord of the Two Lands,” and to the two gods Osiris and Seth, who often represented duality—like life and death, or order and chaos.
People today think this "Two Lands" idea refers to Upper and Lower Egypt, but originally it meant the upper and lower parts of the Nile River.
The Egyptians believed in two versions of the Nile River:
The Nile on Earth – the river that flows through Egypt and waters the land.
The Nile in the Sky – a celestial river, often pictured as the goddess Nut, whose body was like the Milky Way, filled with stars.
The heavenly Nile was believed to rain down and moisten fields, especially those outside Egypt, while the earthly Nile came from the underworld to bless Egypt alone.
Even though many modern people mix up these two ideas, the ancient Egyptians clearly saw them as separate. For them, the Nile in the sky and the Nile on Earth had different purposes and powers.
The Egyptians also believed there was often a conflict between the:
World of the Horizon – our flat Earth
World of the Two Lands – the cosmic, sky-based world that included gods and the Sun’s path
This tension was acted out in myths, such as the battles between Horus and Seth, and shown in the role of the pharaoh. The pharaoh wasn’t just a king—he was seen as a cosmic figure who kept the universe in balance.
They believed the cosmic forces (like gods and natural disasters) were real and dangerous. The pharaoh’s job was to hold everything together, acting as a bridge between Earth and the sky.
Many modern people assume the Egyptians were simply superstitious and believed in made-up stories. But it might be more accurate to say they were responding to real events they couldn’t explain, and used their beliefs to survive and stay united.
In their art and writing, the path of the Sun across the sky was often shown riding on a boat across the goddess Nut’s body, or carried by a star-covered cow goddess named Hathor (later called Isis).
In ancient Egypt, when things in the sky or nature couldn’t be explained, the pharaoh relied on experts—priests and astronomers—to help make sense of it all. These priests became very powerful and were responsible for creating cosmological theories—ideas about how the universe worked. Sometimes these theories were likely made quickly, as orders from the king, in response to big changes or crises.
During Egypt’s New Kingdom, the city of Thebes became the most important religious center. It combined several different religious systems (from Memphis, Heliopolis, and Hermopolis), and the priests there promoted the worship of Amon-Re—a god who combined the power of Ptah (the creator) and Re (the Sun god). Amon-Re came to represent the whole universe, including the sky and the underworld.
This was also the time when the idea of one universal god started becoming more popular. The pharaoh Akhenaton pushed this idea further by declaring that the Sun disc (Aten) was the one true god. But after Akhenaton died, his son Tutankhamun brought back the older religion, returning Egypt to the worship of Amon-Re. He claimed to have “restored order” as it had been at the beginning of creation.
Many Egyptians thought Akhenaton’s changes were a mistake, and some of the priests who followed his beliefs may have fled to the northern Aegean (around Greece). There, their ideas may have influenced the Orphic religion, which blended Egyptian and Greek beliefs and included more natural explanations for the actions of gods.
In early Greek cosmology, we see many similar ideas to Egypt’s.
The Earth (called Gaia, like Egypt’s Geb) was seen as a flat plain.
It was surrounded by a great river called Oceanus, which was like the Egyptian Nun, the watery chaos from which everything came.
Both Greek and Egyptian myths taught that gods and humans came from these early waters.
The Greeks believed that heaven and earth met at the horizon, in places called the Pillars of Heracles (what we now call the Strait of Gibraltar). This was where the Sun set in the west, thought to be the entrance to the underworld. On the opposite side of the sky, the stars rose. The underworld, called Hades (like the Egyptian Duat), was sometimes believed to be reachable through cracks in the earth, like caves or deep rocky places.
Greek gods were not seen as far above humans at first. In fact, the gods acted very much like people—with emotions, rivalries, and even bad behavior. They weren’t worshipped as perfect beings, but more like powerful warrior-kings.
Still, in the background of all these myths was a mysterious figure named Cronos. He could be compared to the Egyptian creator god Ptah. In Roman times, Cronos was called Saturn. For a long time, people thought Cronos was the same as Time (Chronos), but some scholars now question that idea.
However, it’s possible that Cronos might have been a real object in space—maybe a planet or something with a short orbit that passed close to Earth every so often. If that happened regularly, people could have used it to track time, using a special sacred calendar starting at a different time of year, like in November. Other cultures, like the Maya and Indians, also had sacred calendars that are hard to explain today. So maybe the idea of Cronos and Time really did come from an ancient cosmic event.
Now, let’s focus on Cronos as a creator. In mythology, Cronos had two groups of children:
The Cyclopes, powerful one-eyed beings
The Titans, who could hurl massive stones
These children fought each other in great battles, which often harmed the Earth in the process—even though Earth itself wasn’t part of the fight.
Eventually, Zeus, one of Cronos’s children, rose to power and became king of the gods. He may have fought others like Poseidon or Atlas, but he ended up controlling the whole cosmic realm. Zeus may be the same as the Babylonian god Marduk (mentioned in Chapter 1), and he took on the role of both nature god (controlling weather and storms) and chief ruler of the gods—most of whom he fathered himself.
Zeus, king of the gods, was believed to live high up on Mount Olympus, probably seen as a place in the sky. He was called the “cloud-gatherer” because he brought rain that made the earth fertile. But when he was angry, he hurled lightning bolts and could strike down both humans and gods who defied him. Over time, though, Zeus became less like a person and more like an invisible divine force, working in mysterious ways.
Myths about gods changed slowly over time, which makes things tricky for people who study them. But even with those changes, we can still see patterns. The ancient stories from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece all share some common ideas.
For example:
In Mesopotamia, the father-god was Anu.
In Egypt, it was Ptah.
In Greece, it was Cronos.
Each of these early father gods had children, and those children often fought among themselves. Eventually, new gods took over, like Horus in Egypt and Zeus in Greece. Around 1500 BC, the stories that gave these gods their power started to fade, and their characters changed again. Horus became linked with Amon-Re, the god who filled the whole universe, and Zeus also became more cosmic and distant, not just a powerful man-like god.
At this point, a new god appeared in both Greece and Egypt: Heracles (also called Hercules). He was said to be the son of Zeus. In the Egyptian and Greek stories, Heracles showed up during the great battles of the gods.
But in Orphic myths, Heracles may have actually been an old god returning again, reborn into a new time. The idea that things happen again and again—called recurrence—became a big part of Greek stories about the universe. We don’t know for sure if that idea started with the Orphic religion or came from even earlier.
What is clear is that:
The gods had children.
Heracles had descendants, called the Heraclids.
And through the Homeric stories, the Heraclids were tied to real events and kings from ancient times.
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