Mythology

All cultures seek to explain how everything in this world was created. They come up with their own creation stories that describe the creation of themselves and the things around them. Most creation stories also attempt to explain mysterious phenomena, teach lessons to the listeners, and emphasize aspects of life that each culture finds important. The three creation stories that I chose to compare were the creation myths of the Mande, the African Bushmen, and the Egyptians. These creation stories, though extremely different do share some similarities.

The African Bushmen myth and the Egyptian myth both have lessons or morals to be learned from the story; specifically, they emphasize the importance of obeying laws. The Egyptian myth, “The Story of Re,” shows that men must obey the laws of Re, the creator, even if he appears weak in their eyes. When the men stopped obeying Re, they were slaughtered by his daughter, Sekhmet. The African Bushmen myth demonstrated that one should always obey the laws of the creator (in this case, Kaang) because it is usually for one’s own benefit anyway. The people disobeyed Kaang’s warning not to use fire and so their use of fire ended up scaring off the animals breaking off communication between people and animals.

All three myths reveal something about what its culture considers to be important in life—the myths indicate what these cultures value and what fascinates them. The Egyptian myth, “The Story of Re,” reveals the Egyptians’ fascination with bloodshed; there is a great deal of bloodshed when Sekhmet slaughters men and takes pleasure in their blood. The myth also indicates that Egyptians valued cunning deception and magic arts. The myth involves two instances in which a character tricks another character using clever and/or magical means. In one instance, Re tricks Sekhmet into drinking large amounts of alcohol by dying it red with red ocher, so that she thinks it is blood. In another instance, Isis tricks Re into telling...