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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/45680
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If you are following the design of classical civilisations and their pantheons, then it's worth considering two things. Firstly, the culture you're creating with inform how Gods with similar roles are different. Secondly, the main stories of these Gods will reflect prehistory.

Consider the difference between the Goddess of love in ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. Hathor and Aphrodite respectively. Ancient Egypt was generally speaking an okay place to be a woman, ancient Greece was generally speaking not.

Ancient Egyptian women enjoyed the right to own and inherit property, could represent themselves in court, even ride chariots. None of this was an issue. In Greece however attitudes to women were closer to those held by the Afghan Taliban. Women needed male guardians and were not, with some exceptions like Sparta, offered many rights or responsibilities outside of the home.

This cultural difference is reflected in Hathor and Aphrodite. Aphrodite was the Goddess of love, beauty, and sex. She was unfaithful to her husband, and generally considered bad tempered. Hathor in direct contrast was regarded as being good tempered, and had a diverse portfolio of responsibilities: love, beauty, sex, dance, music, cosmetics... and mining. Indeed we see a similar cultural difference with Norse mythology. Freyja was responsible for love, beauty, sex, war, death, fertility, and gold.

So the character of the Gods will surely reflect the cultures which they are tied to.

The nature of the stories will also have prehistorical significance. I have noticed, and assume others may have too, that there's a common theme with power being transfers from old gods to new gods. In Norse and Greek mythology the older and larger gods are destroyed or imprisoned by the smaller next generation. In Norse it was ice giants. In Greece it was titans.

This, I suspect, may be a creative retelling of conflict between settled farmers and nomadic hunters. Recent evidence suggests that early settled communities were actually quite malnourished, and consequently the people were small. The explanation is that farming was embarked upon out of desperation, due to overpopulation. Over time civilisation developed and settled folk were better able to organise and dominate socially, in contrast to the better nourished (but poorly organised) nomadic folk, who would have been bigger.

Point being, mythological stories likely have prehistoric origins which explain how social orders and culture changed. Just in rather grandiose terms.

You won't have any cliches if the environment and history you create isn't a cliche. So it's important to be aware of various mythologies (as you clearly are), and the histories of these societies, their relationship with their geography, etc. That will allow you to create unique societies which in turn have original pantheons.

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