Did ancient civilizations refer to the sky as a 'veil'?

annababy

New member
A lot of ancients believed that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sky was just a blanket or veil wrapped around it with the stars scattered across it, like fish caught in a net. They had no real concept that there were huge distances from one star to another, or that the stars were way far beyond the moon, etc. Some also believed that the veil was some sort of heavenly fabric meant to hide heaven (or Mt. Olympus or whatever) from our view.

Check out Sogbo and Sogbata, an African creation myth, where the sons of the sun built a ladder to reach the the heavens. Greek myths frequently identified constellations with mythological personages, memorials the gods created to honor favored humans. Egyptian myths say Nut or Nuit was goddess of the sky, eating the sun at sunset and giving birth to it again in the morning, that she was the wife of Geb, the earth, but was eternally seperated from him by Shu, the air that lay between.

That's all I can think of for now....
 
I am interested in discovering the terminology that ancient civilizations may have used to refer to the sky or atmosphere? Was it called a veil or a covering? Other than the Judeo-Christian deity, were there any gods whose kingdom was the in sky?
 
Yes. See the corresponding number in sources for links to more information.

1. The proto-Indo European deity De(iw)us P'hter was God of the day sky whose heaven was the sky itself. Deius would become Zeus in Greek, the word deus in Latin, Jupiter to the Romans.

2. El, the Canaanite father-god of the Elohim (a celestial body of 70 gods, including infamous Biblical favorites Baal, Asherah and Dagon), was a sky-god.

Those are the only two other examples, I believe, that share clear similarities. There are numerous other gods that bear certain traits that might excite the young scholar of comparative religion, but to my memory none of them contain the same "intensity" as those two. Others feel free to correct me.
 
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