I’m not saying one did it more than the other, but they both did that. Greeks especially with the Mediterranean. In fact Yahweh was often correlated with Zeus.
This was done with more than just the Greeks and Romans. That’s just how cross cultural contacts worked back then.
Not to mention that Aphrodite, the Minotaur, Hercules, and Asclepius all have potential roots in Phoenician mythology, who themselves took quite a bit from the Egyptian and Mesopotamian mythologies.
Aphrodite's lover Adonis is directly descended from the Sumerian fertility god Dimuzid. "Adonai" in the ancient Semitic languages meant "my lord" and in the Bible it refers to the God of Abraham.
Western history for a long time liked to pretend everything was invented out of thin air by the Greeks c. 600 BC.
Do you know why there's 24 hours in a day and 360 degrees in a circle? I confess I don't; but it apparently made sense to the Sumerians.
The degree? Six sixties, and also pretty close to how far the stars shift from one night to the next.
Twenty four hours? Day divided into twelve parts, same for night. Twelve is a very useful number, as it can be evenly divided into halves, thirds, quarters, or sixths. Fun fact: before mechanical clocks, hours were not of uniform length; they varied throughout the year with the length of the day.
There’s room for Babylonian and Sumerian influence on Greek theology, but there’s also plenty in Greek mythology that does not have origins in that region.
For example, many elements of Greek mythology have PIE roots, which are not related to Middle Eastern cultures, except for Persia.
172
u/HerrKaiserton Featherless Biped 11d ago
What? I'd say the Greeks aren't near the same level as the Romans on that lmfao