Death (personification)

Death, also known as the Grim Reaper, is a common element in culture and history. As a personified force it has been imagined in many different ways. In some mythologies, the Grim Reaper causes the victim's death by coming to collect him. In turn, people in some stories try to hold on to life by avoiding Death's visit, or by fending Death off with bribery or tricks. Other beliefs hold that the Spectre of Death is only a psychopomp, serving to sever the last ties between the soul and the body, and to guide the deceased to the afterlife, without having any control over when or how the victim dies. In many mythologies, Death is personified in male form, while in others, Death is perceived as female (for instance, Marzanna in Slavic mythology).

Mot (lit. "Death") was personified to Canaanites as a god of death. He was considered a son of the king of the gods, El. His contest with the storm god Baʿal forms part of the myth cycle discovered in the 1920s in the ruins of Ugarit. Lacunae obscure some of the details, but Mot apparently consumes Baʿal before being split open and mutilated by that god's sister, the warrior 'Anat. After a time, both gods are restored and resume battle before the sun goddess Shapash prompts a truce by warning Mot that, if forced to, El would intervene on Baʿal's behalf. The Phoenicians also worshipped death under the name Mot and a version of Mot later became Maweth, the devil or angel of death in Judaism.

Ancient Greece found Death to be inevitable, and therefore, he is not represented as purely evil. He is often portrayed as a bearded and winged man, but has also been portrayed as a young boy. Death, or Thanatos, is the counterpart of life, death being represented as male, and life as female. He is the twin brother of Hypnos, the god of sleep. He is typically shown with his brother and is represented as being just and gentle. His job is to escort the dead to the underworld, Hades. He then hands the dead over to Charon, who mans the boat that carries them over the river Styx, which separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. It was believed that if the ferryman did not receive some sort of payment, the soul would not be delivered to the underworld and would be left by the riverside for a hundred years. Thanatos' sisters, the Keres, were the spirits of violent death. They were associated with deaths from battle, disease, accident, and murder. The sisters were portrayed as evil, often feeding on the blood of the body after the soul had been escorted to Hades. They had fangs and talons, and would be dressed in bloody garments.

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