Pantheon
The whole company of a people's gods considered as a set — the "holy race of the deathless gods" Hesiod's Muses sing, the gods Zeus gathers to his house in the Iliad, the "twelve gods" and "eight gods" Herodotus counts in Egypt, the gods who meet at Ithavoll in the Voluspo, and the "Great Company of the Gods" of the Egyptian texts. The word is Greek (pan, all; theoi, gods) and modern in this sense; the sets are ancient.
Why this wins its question: Dictionaries define the word; this entry shows how each tradition's own texts assemble their gods into a set, with the passage for each.
Key takeaways
- A pantheon in the texts is an assembly (Il. 20), a genealogy (Theog. 104–113), a numbered set (Hdt. 2.4.2, 2.46.1) or a council (Voluspo 7); the word for the set is modern, the sets are not.
- Herodotus's three tiers — eight, twelve, and the later gods — are the oldest attempt to count a pantheon.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Hesiod's Muses are asked to "celebrate the holy race of the deathless gods who are for ever, those that were born of Earth and starry Heaven and gloomy Night and them that briny Sea did rear", and to tell "how they divided their wealth, and how they shared their honors amongst them, and also how at the first they took many-folded Olympus" (Theog. 104–113) — the Theogony is a pantheon told as a genealogy.
Homer shows the pantheon as an assembly: "Zeus bade Themis summon the gods to the place of gathering", and "being come to the house of Zeus they sate them down within the polished colonnades", not even Poseidon failing to come "forth from the sea to join their company" (Il. 20.4–13).
Herodotus counts the Egyptian pantheon in tiers: the Egyptians "first used the names of twelve gods (which the Greeks afterwards borrowed from them)" (Hdt. 2.4.2); Pan is "among the eight gods who, they say, were before the twelve gods" (Hdt. 2.46.1); Heracles "belongs to the second dynasty (that of the so-called twelve gods); and Dionysus to the third, which came after the twelve" (Hdt. 2.145.1).
The Norse gods act as a body: "At Ithavoll met the mighty gods, / Shrines and temples they timbered high" (Voluspo 7), and "sought the gods their assembly-seats, / The holy ones, and council held" whenever a decision is needed (Voluspo 6, 9, 24–25); Grimnismol gives them twelve dwellings, one god to each (Grimnismol 4–17).
The Egyptian texts have a word for the set: the dead king's body "shall be with the Great Company of the Gods who dwell in the Great House of the Aged One … in Anu" (Budge Lit. ch. II), and the historical inscriptions speak of offering "to the Nine Gods" (Budge Lit. ch. VIII).