People in ancient times did not yet understand the phenomena of nature or the death of congeners. They were afraid of lightning and thunder from the sky, floods and earthquakes, storms on the seas and in the oceans. Considering that someone sends them to the earth for the faults of people.
Original religion
The Old Gods and belief in them in different countries appeared in different ways. So that troubles would not recur, the ancient inhabitants of the Planet invented images of wood and stone, initially in the form of animals and worshiped them (totemism), asking for mercy from adversity.
Later, legends were created about some invisible, but nearby deities who are responsible for the sunlight and for the moon, for the terrible manifestations of nature and for a generous harvest, for the flooding of the Nile and death. According to their concepts - they are supernatural, divine and sacred.
After totemism came the turn of humanoid deities or, more simply, Gods. Ancient beliefs were polytheistic, with many people worshiped, forming pantheons of gods and goddesses.
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Gods of the highest civilization of North Africa
Totemism developed in Ancient Egypt into the deification of a local God in the guise of animals or an anthropomorphic creature - a man with an element of zoomorphicity, often on his head. The Egyptians considered the local Gods as the creators of other Gods, as well as general Egyptian, and even as the creators of the whole world. And in heaven there was the same hierarchy as in the earthly pantheon: Gods in the guise of father, mother and son. This triad also passed to Christianity.
Main deities
The main Gods of Ancient Egypt are Ra and Amon. The first is the majestic in the pantheon, the demiurge (the creator of the Cosmos), general Egyptian, all Gods, people, objects existed in him.
But Amun has a longer cult. It originated in the Old Kingdom - 4 thousand years BC, in the Middle Kingdom ascended to the local God, entered the New (1550–1069 BC) as a general Egyptian. The first mergers of the gods took place with him - with Ra, then Montu was added, in another variation Amon-Ra-chor and also Amon-Hapi. By the beginning of a new era, it was supplanted by others.
The Egyptians were not alien to the borrowing of gods from other territories. There were more goddesses - from Cyprus, Carthage, Palestine: Anat - Athena. In the 6th - 5th century BC, settlements of Greeks who traded in northern Africa appeared in Egypt, and later Alexander the Great walked there. And the "cohabitation" of the Egyptian, Greek and Roman Gods began. So, Amon began to correspond to Zeus and Jupiter, Ra to Helios and Salt.
Adoration of ancient Hellas
It could not be otherwise with the eternally militant ancient Greeks. If the Egyptians made the local gods as national gods, here the Pantheon of the Twelve was formed as a result of the ancient divine "revolution", in modern terms - the younger deities threw the elders from the heavenly throne.
In Greek mythology, the older Gods, or the second generation, were called titans. They appeared from natural elements. They were the twelve children of Gaia (Earth) with Uranus (Heaven) - half sons and daughters. In general, the Greeks did not mythologize anything good for themselves: from these spouses were born terrible cyclops and many-armed giants, and from incest "brother + sister" - the younger titans of the elemental deities.
A twelve-headed pantheon of gods and goddesses was created on it. In addition to Zeus, these were Hera and Athena, Hephaestus and Apollo, Artemis and Aphrodite, Poseidon and Ares, Demeter and Hestia and Hermes - the son of the Head of Olympus and the nymph Maya.
Hermes.
According to mythology, Hermes was a thief from infancy - he stole cows, then he cleaned his father and other members of Olympus. Later, Hermes, according to legend, invented the Greek writing, its first seven letters spied in a crane wedge. In the starry sky, he equalized the constellations, and sent the letter delta in flight. From this in the Universe today there is a constellation from the name.
The thirteenth companion of the younger titans could have been on Olympus. But he was considered the God of the underworld and did not appear in the world. Such were the Gods of ancient Greece.