D&D General An Alexandrian Pantheon for D&D

[RealAlHazred]

So, I want to connect Zeus and Osiris/the Apis bull.

Famously, Zeus, uh, "seduced" Europa, a Phoenician princess from Tyre, while she and her friends were picking flowers by the seashore. To do so, he took the form of a white bull. She noticed him among her father's herds and approached him, and he acted tame. She climbed on his back to ride him around, and he took off, running across the waves to the island of Crete, where Europa became the mother of King Minos and the Minoan kings.

This is interesting because points to another syncretism/absorption. Wikipedia notes:

The myth of Europa and Zeus may have its origin in a sacred union between the Phoenician deities 'Aštar and 'Aštart, in bovine form. Having given birth to three sons by Zeus, Europa married a king Asterion, this being also the name of the Minotaur and an epithet of Zeus, likely derived from the name 'Aštar.

I feel like I should be able to meld this with the myth of the Apis bull. Also, Zeus is much, much wilder than Serapis should be -- from what I've read, the Alexandrians, being a Graeco-Egyptian hybrid culture, preferred much soberer gods.

Once the connection is made, the bull is attacked by Serapis' enemies, and killed, similar to the Osiris myth; depending on the source, he was attacked by Set, or by Typhon, or by monsters sent by Set. So, the bull is killed, and Isis must put him back together again. But while she does that, Serapis must wander the Land of the Dead, where he becomes king. Once he is resurrected, he retains the kingship of the Underworld. I'm thinking instead of necessarily reassuming control of the Sky, he instead becomes regent for Harpocrates, the "young sun".

 

[Yaarel]

I was wondering about the eight gods of the "ogdoad", personifications of primordial origins of the universe. They correlate with Hellenist metaphysical speculation. They seem great for organizing the concepts of a theory of magic. The eight are four couples, often portrayed as frog-headed males and cobra headed females, but some iconographies have them fully human appearing.

Maybe go with the eldritch weirdness. Or possibly play more loosely, so that there are eight primary deities of the Egyptesque civilization. Then these eight can look and interrelate however makes sense.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I had been going with the Ennead of Heliopolis, which are somewhat easier to delineate -- the Ogdoad seem very metaphysical and, as you say, "weird." Not that I mind weird.

The Ennead has a good proportion of gods and has the advantage of keeping Set in the mix. In my conception, he's not necessarily Evil in alignment; it depends on the priesthood you're talking to whether he is Evil or just acts from aggressive self-interest (i.e., more towards Neutral). Since I'm doing a lot of syncretism here, I like that Set has, in some areas, relationships with the foreign goddesses Anat (who possibly originated as the upper Mesopotamian goddess Ḫanat) and Astarte (a Near Eastern goddess who may have originated as the East Semitic goddess ʿAštar who may have originated as the Babylonian goddess Ishtar who may have originated as the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna). With one of these goddesses he conceived, uh, the crocodile-headed demon-god Maga.

Uh, no comment.

But that I can probably link to Sobek, the crocodile-god. And, hey, the more the merrier.

It's worth noting that Set and Sobek, despite how they appear in D&D, were not considered evil -- they had protective qualities, and there were pharaohs who considered themselves the avatar of each (Seti I and Unis, respectively). Religion is complex, and deities should probably not have human-comprehensible alignments, even if their worshipers do.