Uranus (mythology)

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(Redirected from Uranos)

Greek deities series
Titans and Olympians
Aquatic deities
Chthonic deities
Personified concepts
Other deities
Primordial deities
Chaos Aether Gaia Uranus	Eros Erebus Nyx Ophion Tartarus

Uranus is the Latinized form of Ouranos, Greek name of the sky. In Greek mythology Uranus is personified as the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth. Ouranos and Gaia were ancestors of most of the Greek gods.

Other sources claim a different parentage of Ouranos. Cicero, in his work De Natura Deorum claims that he was the offspring of the ancient gods Aether and Hemera. According to the Orphic Hymns, Ouranos was the son of the personification of night, Nyx.

His equivalent in Roman mythology was Caelus.

1 The Creation Myth
2 Cultural Context of Flint
3 Consorts/Children
4 References

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The Creation Myth

In the Olympian creation myth, Uranus came every single night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him and imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus. The one-hundred-armed giants (Hecatonchires) and the one-eyed giants, the Cyclopes, caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting that which was severed into the sea. From the blood which spilled from Uranus onto the Earth came forth the Gigantes, the three avenging Furies—the Erinyes— and Meliae, the ash-nymphs. From that which was cast into the sea came forth Aphrodite. For this, Uranus called his sons Titanes Theoi, or "Straining Gods", for their fearful deed. Another variation of the story is that Uranus' mass smothered Gaia, and in desperation she created the scythe or sickle to have Cronus castrate his father.

After Uranus was deposed, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hecatonchires and Cyclopes in Tartarus. The fate of being castrated and deposed by his son was prophesied and came to pass for Cronus who attempted unsuccessfully to avoid the fate by devouring his young. It was also prophesied for Zeus, who avoided the fate.

These ancient myths of distant origins were not expressed in cult among the Hellenes (Kerenyi p. 20). The function of Uranus is as the vanquished god of an elder time, before real time began. After his castration, the Sky came no more to cover the Earth at night, but held to its place.

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Cultural Context of Flint

The detail of the sickle's being flint rather than bronze or even iron was retained by Greek mythographers (though neglected by Roman ones). Knapped flints as cutting edges were set in wooden or bone sickles in the late Neolithic, before the onset of the Bronze Age. Such sickles may have survived latest in ritual contexts where metal was taboo, but the detail, which was retained by classical Greeks, suggests the antiquity of the mytheme.

Robert Graves' and others' identification of the name Ouranos with the Hindu Varuna is widely rejected. The most probable etymology is from Proto-Greek *vorsanos, from a PIE root *vers "to moisten".

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