Pantheon: World Mythology

Pantheon sets the gods of thirteen traditions side by side, role by role, and puts the source beside every claim. Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Irish, Roman, Slavic, Vedic, Chinese, Japanese, Maori, the peoples of North America and the Yoruba: 117 figures, each quoted word for word from the book it comes from.

It is not a list of "the Norse Zeus" and "the Egyptian Venus". Thor and Shango never heard of each other. So every figure carries two sentences: what it is, and how it differs from the others in its row. In Hesiod the Earth is a mother who gives birth to the sky; in the Egyptian texts the earth is a god and the sky a goddess. In the Kojiki and in the Russian songs the sun is a woman. The differences are half of what there is to know.

COMPARE
• Twelve roles: the Sky Ruler, the Thunderer, the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, the Sea, the Underworld, the Trickster, the Smith, the Lover, the Warrior and the Sage
• Every tradition's figures in one row, with the quotation that puts each of them there
• A role a tradition's sources do not give is left empty, never filled with the nearest guess

THE CODEX
• All 117 figures by tradition, with the edition each one is quoted from
• Search by the name you know or the name the source prints: Amaterasu or Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity, Geb or Keb, Eshu or Elegba
• Each figure's page: what it is, each role with its source, and the myths it appears in

THREE LEVELS
Every block in the app wears one word. SOURCE: the words stand in the text, checked letter by letter against the edition named. COLLECTOR: a nineteenth or early twentieth century collector's own reading, with name and year, shown as it was written. MODERN: a sentence written for this app, including the roles themselves.

A MYTH A DAY
• 51 myths, retold from one passage each, with one quotation from it
• Prometheus and the fire, Isis and the secret name of Ra, Ishtar at the seven gates, Lugh at Teamhair, Maui and the sun, the White Hare of Inaba, Koshchei the Immortal, the Monkey and the Buddha's palm
• The day turns at your own midnight, and a home-screen widget shows the day's myth

THE QUIZ
• Twelve questions, and the result is a role, never a god
• The same answers always give the same result; if two roles are level, it says you lean two ways
• A card to share, with three figures who share your role from the Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Irish, Roman, Slavic and Chinese traditions
• The gods of the other living traditions stay out of the quiz

THE SOURCES
Hesiod in Evelyn-White's translation, Colum's Children of Odin, Budge's Legends of the Gods, the Seven Tablets of Creation and the Epic of Gilgamish, Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Máchal and Ralston on the Slavs, Griffith's Rig Veda, Werner's Myths and Legends of China, Chamberlain's Kojiki, Grey's Polynesian Mythology, Stith Thompson's Tales of the North American Indians, and Ellis on the Yoruba-speaking peoples. Every North American figure names the people who told the story and the person who recorded it.

Seven articles explain how the app is put together: why the roles compare and do not merge, why some cells are empty, and why the quiz is a game.

No account and no sign-in. The quiz card leaves your phone only when you share it, through your own share sheet.

Free to install, with ads. A single one-time purchase removes them.