Thursday Readings
Norse Mythology Neil Gaiman 6000 years ago in Sumer, at the roots of our present civilization, people worshipped Enlil, the god of air, wind, and thunder. Enlil was not a lone deity, the Sumerian pantheon had many other gods besides, but Enlil was one of the most important. In Sumer, gods and goddesses were closely associated with astronomy. Many deities were paired with specific stars or constellations. The most important gods were paired with planets of the solar system and Enlil's planet was Jupiter, which Sumerians new to be the largest planet in orbit around the Sun. A thousand years later, Babylonian thundergod and later the main god Marduk took the place of Enlil. Marduk was, like Enlil before him, associated with the planet Jupiter. When Ancient Greece flourished, it was Zeus, who was the god of thunder, the king of gods and the protector of the largest planet in the solar system. Naturally, that planet was then also called Zeus. Romans followed the Greek, and it