1740 to 1744

A deity is a being held to be divine: to possess power beyond the human and, in most traditions, to govern some domain of nature, society or the inner life. The category gathers the gods and goddesses of the world's religions and mythologies, from the great pantheons of Greece, Rome, Egypt, India, Mesopotamia and Scandinavia to the local, household and ancestral deities of many peoples.

What counts as a deity varies. Polytheistic traditions recognise many, often organised into families and hierarchies; monotheistic traditions recognise one and reclassify the gods of others as figures of a different order; and some traditions blur the line between a high god, a deified ancestor and a powerful spirit.

Across traditions the gods tend to fall into recognisable roles (a sky-father, an earth or mother goddess, a storm or war god, a trickster, a god of the dead, a divine smith), and comparative study has long noted these recurrences without agreeing on why they occur. Each pantheon also has its own internal logic: succession myths, marriages and rivalries, and a division of the cosmos among its members.

The atlas records for each deity the tradition, the domains governed, the principal myths, and the associated symbols, animals, plants and planets. A single deity may appear under several names as a cult spread, and gods were often identified with one another across cultures, a process the Romans called interpretatio, the entries note these identifications where they are attested.

Because the category is large, the entries group by tradition (Greek, Norse, Hindu, Egyptian, Yoruba, Aztec, Celtic and many more), so a browser can narrow from all deities to one pantheon in a step. Some figures are dual-modelled, worshipped as gods in one setting and remembered as human founders or teachers in another; these carry a page here and also among the characters or historical figures, kept complementary so each view is represented.