In the mythology of Scandinavia, Thor is the god of thunder and the supreme creator. Named after the Germanic word for thunder, Thor wielded a hammer, called Mjollnir, which represented a powerful thunderbolt. If thrown, the hammer would return to him like a boomerang. In this wood carving, Thor employs his powers to reconstruct the world.
The oldest cosmogonies known today are those of Egypt and the ancient Near East. An example is the creation epic of the Babylonians, Enuma elish (When on high), which dates back to at least the 12th century bc. According to Enuma elish, in the beginning of the world there was only a watery void in which fresh waters mingled with salt waters of the sea. The fresh waters were personified as Apsu, a male being, and the salt waters as Tiamat, a female. The myth describes a conflict between these earliest gods and a younger generation that sprang from them. Ultimately the younger gods won the war, led by Marduk, a god of thunder and lightning who resembles the Greek god Zeus and the Norse god Thor. Marduk defeated the army of the elder gods and killed Tiamat�represented as a dragon�in single combat. He then split her carcass in two, forming heaven and earth from the halves, and established the sun, moon, and constellations.
According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus was the most powerful of all the gods. Greek sculptor Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall Statue of Zeus in about 435 bc. The statue, depicted in this engraving by 16th-century Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck, stood in Olympia and was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece.