Family claim

Caburus

Active Member
Claiming that your family descended from a great hero in Greek, Roman and other mythologies was a normal thing for rulers and leaders in times past.

Are there any modern families that actively claim descent from mythological figures. I know some families descend from past families who promoted such claims (eg modern British royals descend from Saxon kings who claimed descent from Woden; the Duke of Orlean is a descendent of Frankish kings who claimed descent from Antenor, prince of Troy), but does anyone do it today?
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Yes. The Emperor of Japan is supposed to be a direct descendant of the sun-goddess Amaterasu. There are numerous and various castes and clans in India who claim descent from ancient Hindu gods, such as the moon-god Candra (or Soma), the sun-god Surya, the creator-deity Prajāpati, and the [demi]god Kṛṣṇa [Krishna].

Some members of modern ethnic groups in Africa actively trace their descent to legendary or semi-legendary (and sometimes eponymous) ancestral heroes/heroines and/or deities. Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, who reigned in the middle of the 20th century, was the last king in a supposedly unbroken succession of 225 monarchs descended from King Solomon of Israel and Queen Makeda of Sheba. Presuming that Menelik I, the son of Solomon and Makeda, really did exist, the dynasty he founded is the longest-lasting in the history of the world. (But there have actually been a few interruptions in the Solomonid reign over Abysinnia [Ethiopia], particularly in medieval times.)

Years back I watched a story on the Discovery Channel which claimed that during War World II one of the highest echelons of the Nazi party was composed of a cabal of twelve [or thirteen] men who worshipped the old Norse gods, or had revived a version of their old cults, and one of them [can't remember his name] believed that he was a direct descendant of Thor.
 

Caburus

Active Member
Years back I watched a story on the Discovery Channel which claimed that during War World II one of the highest echelons of the Nazi party was composed of a cabal of twelve [or thirteen] men who worshipped the old Norse gods, or had revived a version of their old cults, and one of them [can't remember his name] believed that he was a direct descendant of Thor.
That sounds like Karl Wiligut, who claimed to be descended from an ancient line of divine sages from Atlantis, and was a great influence on Himmler and the SS occult pursuits.

Mentioning Haile Selassie - I guess anyone claiming Hebrew descent would point to some Biblical figure as their ancestor. And anyone of the many people who can claim descent from the family of Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, would also claim descent from the Biblical Abraham.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Speaking of Ethiopians and tracing one's heritage to Biblical characters, in recent research I've done into some East African ethnic groups (aside from Abyssinians, that is), there is a small body of scholarly work which attempts to link ancestors of modern clans and tribes (whose names occur in oral history) to the family of Noah, much in the same way that some medieval European folklore, following the Christianisation of the Continent, seems to have invented similar links to and stories about the same Bible character and his early descendants. For example, the Lebor Gabála Érenn (Book of the Invasions of Ireland) traces the ancestry of the Irish and the Scots to certain grandsons and other descendants of Noah who seem to be inventions of local authors. Interestingly, the ancestry of these peoples also, from these records, goes back to Africa when we have Egyptian Pharaohs and princesses giving their names to certain peoples and places on these European islands. Also in some versions of the mythology the Fomoiré are the parents of the Tuatha Dé Danann who in turn are ancestors of the Irish people; [some if not all of] the Fomoiré having been said to have come across the sea from Africa. A similar phenomenon occurs in Greco-Roman mythology, about half of whose characters are ultimately of Egyptian, Libyan and Ethiopian descent.

But I digress (as often :p)... So just like in the Lebor Gabála, there are modern East African tribes whose ancestry is linked to similarly extrabiblical descendants of Noah. (Maybe the same kind of scholarship/invention has been practised in other parts of the continent). But there is also a trend of traditions - some of which may or may not predate the Christianisation [or Islamisation as the case may be] of these clans, tribes and peoples at the advent of colonialism - which trace these peoples' ancestry to ancient Ethiopia (i.e. present-day Sudan) and Egypt, many of them claiming to have travelled along the Nile down to Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania (others going yet further all the way to South Africa). Some claim to be descended from splinter groups of Israelite tribes after their Exodus from Egypt, groups who did not go to the Promised Land but instead travelled further southwards and westwards into Africa. Among the Meru and Agĩkũyũ of Kenya specifically there are claims that the Ark of the Covenant is actually on top of Mt Kenya, effectively contradicting the tradition that this artifact is hidden somewhere in modern Ethiopia (Abysinnia) having been brought there by Menelik I after leaving his father Solomon back in Israel.
 
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