The year is 49 B.C. Civil war rages across the Roman empire. The violence spills into nearby Egypt where a teenage girl is thrust on to the throne of this mystical kingdom. She’ll go on to become one of the key power players of ancient history. Military might is not the only secret of her success. Mystery Files: Cleopatra, National Geographic 2010
Perhaps the key component of her legend as a magical Eastern temptress: is it possible the Romans like the Egyptians believe that a pharaoh is a god in human form? ibid.
In an age of deep religious conviction Romans would have been in awe of Egypt’s mystical past, and of the bizarre gods that watch over Cleopatra. To the Romans, Egypt is mysterious, exotic and frightening. ibid.
The great king, even though he has been dead for six hundred years, is a perceived threat to the province of Christ. Alexander is worshipped as a pagan god. Mystery Files: Alexander the Great
The Egyptian pharaoh occupied an unusual position: he was in effect an intermediary between Man and God. And by virtue of that, by the time of the nineteenth dynasty he was seen to be both human and divine. He was referred to as the living Horus. The god who is most closely associated with Egyptian kingship. Dr Kent Weeks, American University of Cairo
Amenhotep IV instigated one of the greatest revolutions in the history of Egypt: he swept away Egypt’s religion, abandoned thousands of traditional gods, and instead pledged allegiance to the one and only sun-god. Alastair Sooke, Treasures of Ancient Egypt II, BBC 2014
One of the most powerful pharaohs in history – King Akhenaten ... Akhenaten set out to build his personal paradise. Akhenaten founded a completely new religion – his cult was dedicated to the worship of the solar disc and to the king himself. At his side Queen Nefertiti. Akhenaten & Nefertiti – The Royal Gods of Egypt, BBC 2002
The most important god of the underworld – Osiris. For Egyptians Osiris is central because he sits in judgment over all the dead. In life Egyptians believe Osiris was the first pharaoh. Egypt: Secrets of the Dead, Sky 2019
In truth, even the mother of Christianity, Judaism, was awash with the worship of stones and stars. Philip Gardiner film Angels, Demons and Freemasons
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. Stephen Roberts
If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created the gods. That fancy, enthusiasm or deceit adorned them, that weakness worships them, that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve their own interests. Baron d’Holbach
People usually experienced the sacred as an immanent presence in the world around them and within themselves. Some believed that gods, men, women, animals, plants, insects, and rocks all shared the same divine life. All were subject to an overarching cosmic order that kept everything in being. Even the gods had to obey this order, and they cooperated with human beings in the preservation of the divine energies of the cosmos. Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Origin of Our Religious Traditions p15
Demons do not exist any more than gods do, being only the products of the psychic activity of man. Sigmund Freud
The Mayas and Incas of South America believe a race of Giants existed on earth before the great flood. So did many other civilisations. Some took them for gods, others left likenesses of them in stone or wrote about them in their histories. Evidence for Giants, Discovery Channel
The gods have no mercy; that’s why they’re gods. Game of Thrones s2e9: Blackwater ***** Queen mother, HBO 2012
The gods have a plan for us all. Game of Thrones s6e6: Blood of My Blood, mother to son
What’s the point of serving a god if none of us knows what he wants? Game of Thrones s7e6: Beyond the Wall ***** Sandor to Jon Snow
The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts. Alfred Lord Tennyson
‘The gods are later than creation.’ Vadic verse, cited Brian Cox, Human Universe II: Why Are We Here? BBC 2014
And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth. Joseph Smith’s Book of Abraham 4:1 (Pearl of Great Price)
The god Pele is responsible for the volcano. But of course in Polynesia the volcano has some positive aspects. And so you get one god who becomes in charge of two things. Professor Alan F Segal, Bernard College
Most witches don’t believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don’t believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman. Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Whom the gods love dies young. Menander, 342-c.292 B.C.
Which gods arse, though? There are so many choices.
See, the Muslims have one god.
The Christians have three gods.
And we Hindus have 36,000,000 gods.
Making a grand total of 36,000,000 divine arses for me to choose from. Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger p8
It’s true that all these gods seem to do awfully littler work – much like our politicians – and yet keep winning re-election to their golden thrones in heaven, year after year. ibid.
Gods and Goddesses: Egyptians couldn’t get enough of them. Immortal Egypt with Joann Fletcher I, BBC 2016
‘We are speaking god and goddess to one another, one another, and you ask me why I have come here, and I will tell you truly as you would have me do. Jove sent me; it was no doing of mine; who could possibly want to come all this way over the sea where there are no cities full of people to offer me sacrifices or choice hecatombs? Nevertheless I had to come, for none of us other gods can cross Jove, nor transgress his orders. He says that you have here the most ill-starred of half those who fought nine years before the city of King Priam and sailed home in the tenth year after having sacked it. On their way home they sinned against Minerva, who raised both wind and waves against them, so that all his brave companions perished, and he alone was carried hither by wind and tide. Jove says that you are to let this by man go at once, for it is decreed that he shall not perish here, far from his own people, but shall return to his house and country and see his friends again.’ Homer, The Odyssey V Mercury
‘When I had got the men together I said to them, “You think you are about to start home again, but Circe has explained to me that instead of this, we have got to go to the house of Hades and Proserpine to consult the ghost of the Theban prophet Teiresias.”
‘The men were brokenhearted as they heard me, and threw themselves on the ground groaning and tearing their hair, but they did not mend matters by crying. When we reached the sea shore, weeping and lamenting our fate, Circe brought the ram and the ewe, and we made them fast hard by the ship. She passed through the midst of us without our knowing it, for who can see the comings and goings of a god, if the god does not wish to be seen?’ ibid. X Ulysses
The wrath sing, goddess, of Peleus’ son, Achilles, that destructive wrath which brought countless woes upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes, and made them themselves spoil for dogs and every bird; thus the plan of Zeus came to fulfilment, from the time when first they parted in strife Atreus’ son, king of men, and brilliant Achilles.
Who then of the gods was it that brought these two together to contend? The son of Leto and Zeus; for he in anger against the king roused throughout the host an evil pestilence, and the people began to perish, because upon the priest Chryses the son of Atreus had wrought dishonour. For he had come to the swift ships of the Achaeans to free his daughter, bearing ransom past counting; and in his hands he held the wreaths of Apollo who strikes from afar, on a staff of gold; and he implored all the Achaeans, but most of all the two sons of Atreus, the marshallers of the people: Sons of Atreus, and other well-greaved Achaeans, to you may the gods who have homes upon Olympus grant that you sack the city of Priam, and return safe to your homes; but my dear child release to me, and accept the ransom out of reverence for the son of Zeus, Apollo who strikes from afar. Homer, The Ilyad I