Info Thursday
Greek Vs. Egyptian

I recently had an argument with my sister about the pervasiveness of Greek Mythology in modern times versus Egyptian Mythology. I argued that more people knew the stories and gods of the Greeks, whereas the archaeology, history, and culture of the Egyptians was more common knowledge than their mythology. My sister insisted I have actual data. Though I still think that the overwhelming presence of media for Greek myths, such as Hercules and Xena the TV shows, Hercules the Disney film, the Percy Jackson series, O Brother Where Art Thou, Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, and a myriad of other things, not to mention the the many stories indirectly inspired by Greek hero myths. And, yes, all of these things have inaccuracies to the actual myths but the point is that we know Greek monsters and creatures like Medusa and centaurs much more readily than we could recognize Egyptian counterparts. I can't even give any because I don't know any off the top of my head. Yes, Stargate and the Mummy movies have taught us the names of the Egyptian gods--Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Horus, Ra....crazy crocodile dude who weighs your heart to see if it's light as a feather. But can we recite any of the stories other than maybe the one where Isis brings Osiris back from the dead? Do we know any of their heroes or mythical creatures other than their gods? Did they even have any? I don't know.

The reason I don't know is the reason I believe the majority of people don't know--they didn't teach it in school. They taught us the Greek Mythology and Egyptian Archaeology. Not the other way around. I don't know why, but I have my theories. For the purposes of my argument, however, I just needed numbers so I started with research but was unable to find any relevant studies (in my opinion because it's obvious!). Then I suggested a Facebook poll but I knew that it wouldn't be a significant data set so I asked my sister if that would count. She said yes.

It seems she changed her mind. Thank you to all my friends who voted, though.

Okay, I'll be fair on my sister, mostly she just decided she found a better way to check this theory with a much larger data-set. I'm just annoyed I didn't think of it first.

So she googled Greek Mythology and got over 3,000,000,000 hits. Then she googled Egyptian Mythology and only got over 700,000 hits. Even with the Google margin of error (i.e. llamas labeled "Greek mythology") this is certainly enough significant data for my sister and enough for me (possibly even if it hadn't proved me right).