Translation of selections from: Dictionnaire des mythologies et des religions des sociétés traditionnelles et du monde antique

Includes bibliographical references and index

1: The interpretation of mythology -- Toward a definition of myth -- The interpretation of myths: nineteenth- and twentieth-century theories -- Myth and writing: the mythographers -- Prehistoric religion -- "Nomadic thought" and religious action -- 2: Greece -- Greek mythology -- The history, geography, and religion of Greece -- Crete and Mycenae: problems of mythology and religious history -- Myth in the Greek City: the athenian politics of myth -- Philosophy and mythology, from Hesiod to Proclus -- Plato's mythology and philosophy -- The Neoplatonists and Greek myths -- Greek cosmogonic myths -- Theogony and myths of sovereignty in Greece -- Deities of water in Greek mythology -- Gods and artisans: Hephaestus, Athena, Daedalus -- The origins of mankind in Greek myth: born to die -- The powers of marriage in Greece -- Kinship structures in Greek heroic dynasties: the house of Atreus and the house of Labdacus -- Death in Greek myths -- The topography of hell in Archaic and classical Greek literature -- The powers of war: Ares and Athena in Greek mythology -- Heroes and Gods of war in the Greek epic -- Dolon the wolf: a Greek myth of trickery, between war and hunting -- Heroes and myths of hunting in ancient Greece -- Sacrific in Greek myths -- The semantic value of animals in Greek mythology -- Actaeon -- Adonis and the Adonia -- The Amazons -- Apollo -- Argos -- The Argonauts -- Artemis -- Asclepius -- Centaurs -- Demeter -- Dionysus -- The Dioscuri -- Eros -- Europa -- The Gorgons -- The Graiae -- The Harpies -- The cult of Helen and the tribal initiation of women in Greece -- Helios--Selene--Endymion -- Heracles: the valor and destiny of the hero -- Hermes -- The Hesperides -- Hestia -- Io -- Iris -- Ixion -- Marsyas -- Midas -- The Moirai -- The Muses and Mnemosyne -- Narcissus -- Nemesis -- Odysseus -- Oedipus -- Orion -- Orpheus and Eurydice -- Pan -- Pelops -- Perseus -- Phaethon -- The Pleiades -- Rhadamanthys -- Thetis -- The Winds -- Zeus, the other: a problem of Maieutics -- 3: Egypt -- Egyptian cosmogony -- Egyptian anthropology -- The divine and the Gods in ancient Egypt -- Egyptian rituals -- Death in Egyptian religion -- Meroitic religion -- The cults of Isis among the Greeks and in the Roman empire -- Isis the magician, in Greek and Coptic Papyruses -- The fate of the Egyptian gods from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century

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