Posthumous Deification
| Who | Image | When | Notability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Imhotep | 2600 BC | Ancient Egyptian architect and physician, who two thousand years after his death, was raised to that of a god, becoming the god of medicine and healing. | |
| Queen Dido of Carthage | 814 BC | Founder and first queen of Carthage, after her death, she was deified by her people with the name of Tanit and assimilated to the Great Goddess Astarte (Roman Juno). The cult of Tanit survived Carthage's destruction by the Romans; it was introduced to Rome itself by Emperor Septimius Severus, himself born in North Africa. It was extinguished completely with the Theodosian decrees of the late 4th century. | |
| Homer (hero cult) | 8th century BC | Venerated at Alexandria by Ptolemy IV Philopator. | |
| Romulus and Remus (hero cult) | 771–717 BC | Founders of Rome, sons of Mars, Romulus served as first king. After his death, Romulus was defined as the god, Quirinus, the divine persona of the Roman people. He is now regarded as a mythological figure, and his name a back-formation from the name Rome, which may ultimately derive from a word for "river". Some scholars, notably Andrea Carandini believe in the historicity of Romulus, in part because of the 1988 discovery of the Murus Romuli on the north slope of the Palatine Hill in Rome. | |
| Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha | 563 BC(?) | Believed to be a god by some Mahayana sects, and worshipped as an avatar of Vishnu by some Vaishnavas. | |
| Hephaestion | 356–324 BC | Deified by Alexander the Great | |
| Alexander III of Macedon the Great (hero cult) | 356–323 BC | Some believe he implied he was a demigod by actively using the title "Son of Ammon–Zeus". The title was bestowed upon him by Egyptian priests of the god Ammon at the Oracle of the god at the Siwah oasis in the Libyan Desert. | |
| Jesus Christ of Nazareth | ~4 BC – ~33 AD | In Romans 1 St. Paul the Apostle of Tarsus described Jesus as being the Son of God and the Lord. Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria wrote in defense of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, orthodox Christianity adopted his teachings at the First Council of Nicaea in a Synod assembly of bishops in 325 AD called by the Roman emperor Constantine I the Great.
The Nicene Creed was formulated rejecting Arianism (one of two major strains of Christian thought; Trinitarianism, the other) and established Athanasianism as the Church's official doctrine, which within half a century, also became that of the state church of the Roman Empire. Jesus was declared to be God Incarnate, and is now considered to be God in most Christian views of Jesus, God the Son in Trinitarian Christianity. See History of early Christianity, Pauline Christianity, Constantine the Great and Christianity and Christology for details. |
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| Antinous | 111 AD–130 AD | Deified by Hadrian. He is the last non-Imperial human to be formally deified in Western Civilization. | |
| Mary (mother of Jesus) | 300 CE | In 300 AD she was worshipped as a Mother Goddess in the Christian sect Collyridianism, which was found throughout Saudi Arabia. Collyridianism was made up mostly of women followers and female priests. Followers of Collyridianism were known to make bread and wheat offerings to the Virgin Mary, along with other sacrificial practices. The cult was heavily condemned as heretical and schismatic by the Roman Catholic Church and was preached against by Epiphanius of Salamis, who exposed the group in his recollective writings titled Panarion. | |
| Guan Yu | 581 AD–618 AD | Guan Yu has been deified as early as the Sui Dynasty and is still popularly worshipped today among the Chinese people variedly as an indigenous Chinese deity, a bodhisattva in Buddhism and a guardian deity in Taoism. He is also held in high esteem in Confucianism. In Hong Kong both police and gangsters consider him to be a divine object of reverence. In certain schools of Taoism and Chinese Buddhism he has been deemed divine or semi-divine status. The reverence for him may date back to the Sui dynasty. | |
| Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib | 599 AD–661 AD | According to the Alawite faith, Ali is one member of a trinity corresponding roughly to the Christian Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. | |
| Sugawara no Michizane | 845 AD–903 AD | Japanese Imperial courtier banished from the capital and deified upon his death to appease his angry spirit. Worshipped as Tenjin, kami of scholarship. | |
| Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah | 985 AD- 1021 AD | Sixth Fatimid Caliph in Egypt, ruling from 996 to 1021. Many of the druze believe he is an incarnation of God and that he will come back as the Mahdi. | |
| Majapahit Kings | 1293-1597 | Javanese rulers of South East Asia's largest ever kingdom, in Indonesia. After death, they were depicted as Hindu gods (see for instance Raden Wijaya). | |
| Tokugawa Ieyasu | 1543-1616 | Deified posthumously with the name Tōshō Daigongen by his successors. | |
| L. L. Zamenhof | 1859–1917 | Considered a god by members of the Oomoto religion. | |
| José Rizal | 1861–1896 | Deified by some people in the Philippines due to his contributions to the Philippine Revolution. | |
| Wallace Fard Muhammad | ~1877 – ~1934 | Posthumously (?) deified by Elijah Muhammad. He is also given other titles by the Nation of Islam. | |
| Kanichi Otsuka | 1891 | Shinreikyo states of its founder "God became one with a human body, appeared among humanity, and founded Shinreikyo." | |
| George Washington | 1732–1799 | Worshiped as a kami in Hawaiian Shinto shrines. In the United States Capitol dome, he is also depicted ascending into Heaven and becoming a god, in the famous painting called The Apotheosis of Washington. |
Read more about this topic: List Of People Who Have Been Considered Deities
Famous quotes containing the word posthumous:
“One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)