Fallen Gods

Conquest The radiant queen of the Hittite heavens who crowned every king, her light extinguished when her empire turned to ash.

Conquest The storm-god who toppled his own father Kumarbi to rule the Hurrian and Hittite heavens, thrown down at last by the collapse of the empires that named him.

Conquest The god who was Assyria itself, who fell silent the moment his empire was burned to the ground — Assur sacked in 614 BCE, Nineveh in 612 BCE, his cult collapsing with the state.

Conquest The axe-wielding Luwian storm-god who drove a bull-drawn chariot through the thunder, his Neo-Hittite kingdoms falling to Assyria and his name dying with the last who spoke Luwian.

Replaced · Forgotten The thunder-king of the Rigveda who split the serpent Vritra with his vajra to free the waters, the god the early Indo-Aryans begged for victory — dethroned within his own living religion as Vishnu and Shiva rose above him. He still holds a minor seat in the heavens; the supremacy is gone.

Forgotten A name half-god, half-rite, demonized by scripture for the child sacrifices of the Valley of Hinnom, until King Josiah's reforms suppressed the rite.

Assimilation The Etruscan god of wells and the deep sea, the Greek Poseidon's counterpart, his trident handed over to Neptune as his own name slipped beneath the water.

Assimilation The Etruscan sky-king who hurled three kinds of thunderbolt, absorbed so completely into Jupiter that he kept no name of his own.

Assimilation The shape-shifting chief god of the Etruscan league, worshipped at the Fanum Voltumnae sanctuary near Volsinii until Rome absorbed Etruria and folded him into its own god Vertumnus.

Forgotten The violent maiden who waded thigh-deep in the blood of warriors to avenge her brother Baal.

Forgotten The remote sky-father worshipped at Uruk, at the very top of heaven, so far above that the prayers eventually stopped reaching him at all.

Forgotten Grain-god of Mesopotamia turned Philistine patron, whose idol toppled before the Ark of the Covenant and never rose again.

Forgotten The Mesopotamian shepherd-god, consort of Inanna, who died each year so the harvest could live — mourned for millennia, his name wept in the biblical book of Ezekiel, and now mourned by no one.

Forgotten Enki of Eridu — Ea to the Akkadians — the cunning god of fresh water and wisdom who saved humankind from the flood, now drowned in the silence of his own waters.

Forgotten Lord of wind and command, keeper of the Tablet of Destinies who from his temple at Nippur once decreed the fates of gods and men, his word now scattered like the air he ruled.

Forgotten Mesopotamian dread queen of the land of no return, who kept the dead — and even her sister Ishtar — behind seven gates, and now keeps only silence.

Forgotten The Sumerian queen of love and war, identified with the planet Venus, who descended into the underworld and returned, yet found no return from the silence that swallowed her temples.

Forgotten The slayer of the chaos-dragon Tiamat who rose, through the Enuma Elish, to king of all gods in Babylon, now silent under the desert that buried his city.

Forgotten Death itself, with a lip to earth and a lip to sky, who swallowed the storm-god Baal and was ground to dust by the goddess Anat for it.

Forgotten Divine scribe of Borsippa who held the stylus that recorded every fate on the Tablet of Destinies, his clay tablets now read by no worshipper.

Forgotten God of plague, war and the scorching noon sun, whose temple stood at Kutha; he marched into Ereshkigal's underworld to rule it, and there fell quiet.

Forgotten The Sumerian mountain mother who shaped humankind from clay alongside Enki, her nurturing name long since gone barren in memory.

Forgotten The all-seeing Mesopotamian sun god who handed King Hammurabi his law code, now blind to the worshippers who no longer look up.

Forgotten The primordial salt-sea goddess slain by Marduk, her body split to become the sky and earth, now as voiceless as the chaos she once was.

Assimilation · Forgotten Tyre and Carthage's king-god who died and rose each spring, later mistaken for Heracles and then forgotten entirely.

Assimilation · Forgotten Carthage's chief goddess and consort of Baal Hammon, her sign still scratched on Punic stelae long after Rome razed her city in 146 BCE.

Assimilation · Forgotten Phoenician goddess of love and war whose evening star — the planet Venus — outshone empires; condemned in Hebrew scripture as Ashtoreth, until the cult of Mary inherited her light.

Forgotten Baal Hadad, the storm-rider who slew Yam the sea and Mot the death-god, then watched his own worshippers turn to scripture's mockery.

Assimilation · Forgotten Sidon's healer-god, the Phoenician Asclepius, who castrated himself to flee a goddess and was reborn as her divine warmth.

Conquest · Forgotten King of the Gods of imperial Egypt and master of Karnak, the largest religious building ever raised. His oracle at Siwa hailed Alexander the Great as a god's son; he outranked pharaohs, and ended with the old religion.

Conquest · Forgotten The Egyptian sun himself — sailed nightly through the underworld and rose again each dawn for three thousand years. When the edict of Theodosius I closed the pagan temples in 391 CE, the sun kept rising, and no one prayed to it again.

Conquest · Forgotten An Anatolian mother goddess, the Magna Mater, shipped to Rome as a black stone in 204 BCE and installed as an official state cult. Her public worship was ended by the anti-pagan edicts of Theodosius I in 391–392 CE.

Replaced · Forgotten Once one of Rome's top three gods, ranked beside Jupiter and Mars in the Archaic Triad with his own flamen and the Quirinalia festival, and later identified with the deified Romulus. By the late Republic he had faded to an antiquarian footnote, his cult withered while Rome was still pagan.

Conquest · Forgotten Greek goddess of love, beauty and desire, worshipped from Cyprus to Rome and claimed by Caesar's family as their ancestress. Her sanctuary at Paphos held unbroken cult until 391 CE, when Theodosius I outlawed pagan worship and the temples closed.

Conquest · Forgotten The oracle-god of Delphi, whose Pythia was consulted by the whole Greek world before war and colony. When Theodosius I turned Rome Christian his sanctuary was closed and his oracle fell silent in 393 CE.

Conquest · Forgotten Patron goddess of Athens, wisdom and war in one figure, the Parthenon raised in her name on the Acropolis. When Rome turned Christian her temples were closed and her worship silenced.

Conquest · Forgotten The sea-god every Greek sailor feared, brother of Zeus and Hades, lord of storms, earthquakes and horses. His temples emptied when Rome turned Christian and the sacrifices stopped.

Conquest · Forgotten King of the Greek gods, thunder in his hand, the Olympic Games sworn in his name at Olympia from 776 BCE and Pheidias's statue of him counted among the Seven Wonders. The emperor Theodosius I banned his games in 393 and his temple was burned; the sky-father fell silent.

Conquest · Replaced The soldiers' mystery god of the tauroctony — Mithras slaying the bull — worshipped in windowless caves across the Roman frontier. For three centuries he was a serious contender for the empire's soul; then the empire turned Christian and Theodosius I walled him up.

Conquest · Forgotten The many-skilled god of the Gauls and the Irish — likely the deity Caesar called the Gauls' Mercury, with cities from Lyon to Carlisle carrying his name. In Irish myth he slew the Fomorian Balor with a sling; today he survives mostly as a date on the calendar: the festival of Lughnasadh and Lúnasa, the Irish month of August.

Conquest · Forgotten The jackal god who weighed the hearts of the dead against the feather of Maat and oversaw the embalming of Egypt. He died with the religion that needed him, when the last temples of the old gods were shut.

Conquest · Forgotten The falcon sky-god whose living image every pharaoh claimed to be. When Egypt's temples were shut under Christian Rome, he was silenced along with the rest of his gods.

Conquest · Forgotten Worshipped from the Nile to Roman Britain for more than two thousand years. The silence began c. 537 CE, when Justinian shut her last temple at Philae.

Conquest · Forgotten Egypt's god of the dead and of resurrection, who promised eternal life to anyone who knew his name. His own cult could not be raised again: when Justinian closed Philae's temple in 537, the last god of old Egypt went into the dark he ruled.

Conquest · Forgotten The Slavs' thunder-god, sworn on by warriors and raised over Kyiv. When Vladimir chose Christ in 988, they dragged Perun's silver-headed idol through the streets and threw it in the Dnieper, and the people wept on the banks.

Conquest · Forgotten The Allfather — god of war, wisdom and the hanged, who gave an eye at Mímir's well for knowledge and hung nine nights on the world-tree Yggdrasil. Christ's kings tore down his temple at Uppsala; now he survives mainly as Wednesday, the day that still carries his name.

Conquest · Forgotten The thunder god of the Vikings, god of the common people, whose hammer Mjölnir was the most-worn amulet and whose name was the most-given name of the age. Christianity switched him off.

Conquest · Forgotten Chief thunder god of the Balts, the last pagans in Europe. His sacred oaks and the perpetual fire tended in his honour were felled and put out when Grand Duke Jogaila converted Lithuania, the last pagan state on the continent, in 1387.

Conquest · Forgotten The serpent-skirted Aztec mother of the gods, killed by her own children, who conceived the sun-god Huitzilopochtli from a ball of feathers.

Conquest · Forgotten The hummingbird of the south, Aztec god of war born armed to slay his sister, who demanded human sacrifice to keep the sun alive.

Conquest · Forgotten Aztec lord of Mictlan, the lowest underworld — a blood-spattered skeleton who guarded the bones Quetzalcoatl stole to remake mankind.

Conquest · Forgotten The feathered serpent who gave humanity maize and his own blood, mistaken at the end for the Spanish conqueror whose seizure of Tenochtitlan in 1521 ended his cult.

Conquest · Forgotten The smoking mirror who saw every heart, lost a foot to the earth-monster Cipactli, and watched empires rise to fall at his whim.

Conquest · Forgotten The goggle-eyed Aztec rain-bringer whose paradise welcomed the drowned, fed by the tears of sacrificed children — until the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521 ended his cult.

Conquest · Forgotten The Aztec flayed lord who wore the skin of the sacrificed as new spring growth wears the dead husk of seed.

Conquest · Forgotten The golden sun whose son ruled as Inca, his Coricancha temple in Cusco stripped of its gold plates to ransom the captive emperor Atahualpa.

Conquest · Forgotten The creator who rose from Lake Titicaca to make the sun, moon, and men, then walked west across the sea and never returned.

Conquest · Forgotten The long-nosed Maya god of rain who split the clouds with his lightning-axe, fed by the bodies cast into cenotes, the sacred sinkholes.

Conquest · Forgotten The aged Maya creator known to scholars as God D, who taught writing, the calendar, and cacao, then was erased by the script of his Spanish conquerors.

Conquest · Forgotten The jaguar-clawed Maya moon goddess of childbirth and weaving, whose shrine on the island of Cozumel drew pilgrims across the sea.

Conquest · Forgotten The Maya feathered serpent god of Chichen Itza, cognate with Quetzalcoatl, who slithers down his pyramid El Castillo in light each equinox while its 365 steps still count the solar year.