Greek / story↔ Versions
Persephone’s divided year
A mother’s refusal forces a settlement after her daughter is taken into the underworld.
2 min readStories, sources & the spaces between
Every story opens a world.
Meet gods and tricksters, follow a thread across tales, and discover how a story changes with the voice that tells it.
Plate 01The celestial sphere
An atlas of stories, not a single canon
Ancient and medieval texts, literary epics, and recorded folktales, with their differences kept in view.
Our approach01 / The collection index
More starting points. Countless questions.10 ways into the atlas.
01The shape of the divine
Greek mythology
Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and later Greek and Roman witnesses. Births, bargains, divine rivalries, and the histories of the texts that preserve them.
60 entries · Explore collection
02At the roots of the world
Norse mythology
Gods, giants, and the uncertain future in the Poetic and Prose Eddas. Read medieval Icelandic witnesses side by side.
50 entries · Explore collection
03Creation, kingship, renewal
Egyptian mythology
Creation spells, royal disputes, journeys, and restoration, grounded in Egyptian texts and carefully distinguished later accounts.
50 entries · Explore collection
04Stories in many voices
Folktales across regions
Named printed witnesses from Europe, South Asia, Japan, and Jamaica. Follow tellers, translators, helpers, and changing endings.
40 entries · Explore collection
05Cities, gods, and clay tablets
Mesopotamian literature
Selected Sumerian and Akkadian literary witnesses: divine journeys, city life, heroic encounters, and the limits of power.
50 entries · Explore collection
06Heroes, journeys, and obligations
Irish narratives
Selected Irish tales in named translations and adaptations: heroic deeds, difficult promises, extraordinary journeys, and contested households.
50 entries · Explore collection
07The worlds of the Mabinogion
Welsh tales
The Four Branches, heroic quests, romances, and the later Taliesin prose story, read through Charlotte Guest’s named translation.
50 entries · Explore collection
08Songs, craft, and impossible tasks
The Kalevala
The people, journeys, songs, and transformations of Elias Lönnrot’s compiled epic, with individual runos kept in view.
50 entries · Explore collection
09Islands, descent, and divine disputes
Early Japanese myths
Selected early Japanese mythic narratives in the Kojiki and related chronicles, with their textual settings and translation choices identified.
50 entries · Explore collection
10Choices in the Panchatantra
Indian story literature
Thirty stories and twenty linked guides to characters and themes in Arthur W. Ryder’s 1925 Panchatantra translation.
50 entries · Explore collectionThis edition brings together selected Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Irish, Welsh, Finnish, Japanese, and Indian texts, alongside recorded folktales across regions. Each collection names its witnesses and boundaries; coverage remains selective.
02 / Read the sourcesChange the source.
Change the source.
See the story shift.
Who are Aphrodite’s parents? The answer depends on the text. Explore relationships with a source attached to every connection.
Explore Aphrodite’s originsTwo textual witnesses
HesiodSea-birth from Uranus →Aphrodite
IliadDione and Zeus →Aphrodite
Different accounts, shown side by side.
No universal family tree.
03 / Open a story
All stories →A few threads to follow
Norse / story↔ Versions
Thor fishes for the world-serpent
An immense catch puts Thor face to face with the serpent that encircles the human world.
2 min readEgyptian / story
The Shipwrecked Sailor and the generous serpent
A survivor meets a frightening host whose own story of loss transforms a tale of danger into one of consolation.
2 min readIndian / story
The crow-hen, the snake, and the stolen chain
Birds unable to defeat a nest-raiding snake enlist unwitting human pursuers.
2 min readKalevala / story
The golden bride and the failed replacement
Ilmarinen can shape a beautiful body, but his craft cannot manufacture the reciprocal life of a marriage.
2 min readJapanese / story
How the gods bring light out of the rock dwelling
A shared response to Amaterasu’s withdrawal combines craft, divination, performance, surprise, and force.
2 min read