(Mythology) What religions other than Greek had generational conflict?

by Milkisanono

Generational conflict in Greek mythology is abundant, with Zeus defeating his father, fathers of all generations eating children, etc. What other religions have this same story?

rosemary85

The "succession myth", which is what you're talking about, is common to various Greek, Babylonian, and Hurro-Hittite poems on mythological themes:

  • Greek: four Theogonies dating from the 7th to the 4th centuries BCE;
  • Babylonia: the Akkadian Enūma Eliš ("when on high"), probably from some point in the 19th to 16th centuries BCE;
  • Hurro-Hittite: the Hittite poems known as Kingship in Heaven or the Song of Kumarbi, and the Song of Ullikummi.

The Babylonian and Hittite texts are conveniently available in Pritchard (ed.) Ancient Near Eastern Texts (3rd ed. Princeton, 1969), pp. 60-72 and 120-125 respectively... though now that I think of it, that edition is getting rather long in the tooth now.

M. L. West, in The East Face of Helicon (Oxford, 1997) believes there is reason to see evidence of a Phoenician succession myth in a much later Greek source, Philon (2nd cent. CE), who claimed to have access to a Phoenician History by one Sanchouniathon of Beirut; Philon's report of finding this story in ancient "Ammonite" tablets and cross-referencing it to "the works of Thoth" obviously has no credibility, but it's quite possible that there was a Phoenician text underlying his false story, though not nearly as ancient as Philon claims.

The Hurrian and Babylonian backdrop make it crystal-clear that the succession myth comes from non-Indo-European Near Eastern origins, though of course the evidence is too fragmentary to trace a chain of influences.

It's much harder to tie any of this to religion as such, at least in the Greek case. There it looks like a borrowed framework to tie together a messy pile of material, some Near Eastern, some Indo-European. The succession myth was obviously a popular and widespread backstory to a number of myths that were important in Greek cult, but it's a bit harder to see any cult significance in the succession myth itself.