and
Neptune'' ( or 1706) by
René-Antoine Houasse, depicting the founding myth of
Athens A
founding myth or
etiological myth (Greek ) explains either: • the origins of a
ritual or the founding of a city • the
ethnogenesis of a group presented as a
genealogy with a
founding father, and thus the origin of a nation (
natio 'birth') • the spiritual origins of a belief, philosophy, discipline, or idea – presented as a narrative Beginning in prehistorical times, many civilizations and kingdoms adopted some version of a heroic model national origin myth, including the
Hittites and
Zhou dynasty in the Bronze Age; the
Scythians,
Wusun,
Romans and
Goguryeo in
antiquity;
Turks and
Mongols during the Middle Ages; and the
Dzungar Khanate in the
early modern period. In the founding myth of the Zhou dynasty in China, Lady Yuan makes a ritual sacrifice to conceive, then becomes pregnant after stepping into the footprint of the King of Heaven. She gives birth to a son,
Hou Ji, whom she leaves alone in dangerous places where he is protected by sheep, cattle, birds, and woodcutters. Convinced that he is a supernatural being, she takes him back and raises him. When he grows to adulthood, he takes the position of Master of Horses in the court of
Emperor Yao, and becomes successful at growing grains, gourds and beans. According to the legend, he becomes founder of the Zhou dynasty after overthrowing the evil ruler of Shang. Like other civilizations, the
Scythians also claimed descent from the son of the god of heaven. One day, the daughter of the god of the
Dnieper River stole a young man's horses while he was herding his
cattle, and forced him to lie with her before returning them. From this union, she conceived three sons, giving them their father's greatbow when they came of age. The son who could draw the bow would become king. All tried, but only the youngest was successful. On his attempt, three golden objects fell from the sky: a plow and yoke, a sword, and a cup. When the eldest two tried to pick them up, fire prevented them. After this, it was decided the youngest son, Scythes, would become king, and his people would be known as Scythians. The
Torah (or Pentateuch, as biblical scholars sometimes call it) is the collective name for the first five books of the Bible:
Genesis,
Exodus,
Leviticus,
Numbers, and
Deuteronomy. It forms the charter myth of Israel, the story of the people's origins and the foundations of their culture and institutions, and it is a fundamental principle of Judaism that the relationship between God and his chosen people was set out on
Mount Sinai through the Torah. A founding myth may serve as the primary
exemplum, as the myth of
Ixion was the original Greek example of a murderer rendered unclean by his crime, who needed cleansing (
catharsis) of his impurity. Founding myths feature prominently in
Greek mythology. "Ancient Greek rituals were bound to prominent local groups and hence to specific localities",
Walter Burkert has observed, "i.e., the sanctuaries and altars that had been set up for all time". Thus Greek and Hebrew founding myths established the special relationship between a deity and local people, who traced their origins from a
hero and authenticated their ancestral rights through the founding myth. Greek founding myths often embody a justification for the ancient overturning of an older, archaic order, reformulating a historical event anchored in the social and natural world to valorize current community practices, creating symbolic narratives of "collective importance" enriched with metaphor to account for traditional chronologies, and constructing an etiology considered to be plausible among those with a cultural investment. In the Greek view, the mythic past had deep roots in historic time, its legends treated as facts, as Carlo Brillante has noted, its heroic protagonists seen as links between the "age of origins" and the mortal, everyday world that succeeded it. A modern translator of
Apollonius of Rhodes'
Argonautica has noted, of the many
aitia embedded as digressions in that Hellenistic epic, that "crucial to social stability had to be the function of myths in providing explanations, authorization or empowerment for the present in terms of origins: this could apply, not only to foundations or charter myths and
genealogical trees (thus supporting family or territorial claims) but also to personal moral choices." In the period after
Alexander the Great expanded the
Hellenistic world, Greek poetry—
Callimachus wrote a whole work simply titled
Aitia—is replete with founding myths. Simon Goldhill employs the metaphor of
sedimentation in describing Apollonius' laying down of layers "where each object, cult, ritual, name, may be opened... into a narrative of origination, and where each narrative, each event, may lead to a cult, ritual, name, monument." A notable example is the myth of the foundation of Rome—the tale of
Romulus and Remus, which
Virgil in turn broadens in his
Aeneid with the odyssey of
Aeneas and his razing of
Lavinium, and his son
Iulus's later relocation and rule of the famous twins' birthplace
Alba Longa, and their descent from his royal line, thus fitting perfectly into the already established canon of events. Similarly, the Old Testament's story of
the Exodus serves as the founding myth for the community of Israel, telling how
God delivered the
Israelites from slavery and how they therefore belonged to him through the
Covenant of Mount Sinai. During the Middle Ages, founding myths of the
medieval communes of northern Italy manifested the increasing self-confidence of the urban population and the will to find a Roman origin, however tenuous and legendary. In 13th-century
Padua, when each commune looked for a Roman founder – and if one was not available, invented one—a legend had been current in the city, attributing its foundation to the Trojan
Antenor. == See also ==