From Ur to Canaan—1900 B.C.
From Canaan to Egypt—1700 B.C.
From Egypt back to Canaan—1300 B.C.
10
Fairy-Tale Gods
There was once a man named Hellen—strange-sounding name for a man, isn’t it? He was not a Semite and not a Hamite. He was an Aryan. He had a great many children and children’s children, and they called themselves Hellenes. They lived in a little scrap of a country that juts out into the Mediterranean Sea, and they called their land Hellas. I once upset a bottle of ink on my desk, and the ink ran out into a wriggly spot that looked exactly as Hellas does on the map. Though Hellas is hardly any bigger than one of our States, its history is more famous than that of any other country of its size in the world. We call Hellas “Greece” and the people who lived there “Greeks.”
About the same time the Jews were leaving Egypt, about the time when people were beginning to use iron instead of bronze, that is, about 1300 B.C., we first begin to hear of Hellas and the Hellenes, of Greece and the Greeks.
The Greeks believed in many gods, not in one God as we do and as the Jews did, and their gods were more like people in fairy-tales than like divine beings. Many beautiful statues have been made of their different gods, and poems and stories have been written about them.
There were twelve—just a dozen—chief gods. They were supposed to live on Mount Olympus, which was the highest mountain in Greece. These gods were not always good, but often quarreled and cheated and did even worse things. The gods lived on a kind of food that was much more delicious than what we eat. It was called nectar and ambrosia, and the Greeks thought it made those who ate it immortal; that is, so that they would never die.
Let me introduce you to the family of the gods. I know you will be pleased to meet them. Most of them have two names.