Hermes

Hermes is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology. In myth, Hermes functioned as the emissary and messenger of the gods. He was often presented as the son of Zeus and Maia, the Pleiad. His attributes and symbols include the herma, the rooster, the tortoise, talaria, and winged helmet or simple petasos. His main symbol is the caduceus, a winged staff intertwined with two snakes copulating and carvings of the other gods.

About Hermes in brief

Summary Hermes Hermes is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology. In myth, Hermes functioned as the emissary and messenger of the gods. He was often presented as the son of Zeus and Maia, the Pleiad. His attributes and symbols include the herma, the rooster, the tortoise, satchel or pouch, talaria, and winged helmet or simple petasos. His main symbol is the caduceus, a winged staff intertwined with two snakes copulating and carvings of the other gods. His cult was established in Greece in remote regions, likely making him originally a god of nature, farmers, and shepherds. It is likely that Hermes is a pre-Hellenic god, though the exact origins of his worship, and its original nature, remain unclear. In Classical and Hellenistic Greece, Hermes was usually depicted as a mature man, lacking a beard, and dressed as a traveler, herald or pastor. When Logios left Greece, his attitude is consistent with the famous attribute of a Phidias statue of a young, athletic man with a beard. The image of Hermes evolved along with Greek culture and varied along with Archaic and Archaic art. In later myths, Pan was said to be the god of the wild in the mountainous region of Arcadia, after the cult of Pan was reintroduced to Attica. This remained the common image on the Hermai statues, which served as boundary markers, roadside markers, grave markers, as well as votive offerings.

The absorbing of the attributes of Hermes to Thoth developed after the time of Homer amongst Greeks and Romans; Herodotus was the first to identify the Greek god with the Egyptian, Plutarch and Diodorus also, although Plato thought the gods to be dis-similar. Other scholars have suggested that Hermes may be a cognate of the Vedic Sarama, a god who served as a mediator between the worlds of the visible and invisible. In Roman mythology, Hermes is known as Mercury, a name derived from the Latin merx, meaning’merchandise’ and the origin of the words’merchant’ and ‘commerce’ The earliest form of the name Hermes is the Mycenaean Greek *hermāhās, written in the Linear B syllabic script. The etymology of the word Hermes is unknown, but is probably not a Proto-Indo-European word. It may have been derived from a more primitive form meaning ‘one cairn’ or ‘one heap’ It is also possible that since the beginning he has been a deity with shamanic attributes linked to divination, reconciliation, magic, sacrifices, and initiation and contact with other planes of existence, a role of mediating between humans and the divine, especially Ishtar, and who was depicted in art as a Caduceus. The god may have existed as a Mesopotamian snake-god, similar to Ningishzida.