Heroes across cultures: which ones match Heracles

The short answer

Three ancient identifications of Heracles are documented: Romans called him Hercules, and Herodotus connected him to the Phoenician Melqart and to the Egyptian Shu. Rustam and Cú Chulainn are compared with him on reference pages, and Gilgamesh, Sigurd, Hanuman and Beowulf are not. Of nine heroes below, three are Attested, two Scholarly and four Popular claim.

The better question is what these heroes share with each other. Heracles, Rustam and Cú Chulainn each lose a child or children to their own hand in at least one tradition, and each dies through treachery or poison. Gilgamesh and Heracles both go below the earth, and they end differently: Heracles is made a god, while Gilgamesh returns to Uruk and accepts that immortality is beyond his reach.

The Greek baseline: Heracles and Perseus

Heracles is the greatest of the Greek heroes, also regarded as a god. He was the son of Zeus and the mortal Alcmene, raised by Amphitryon, and Hera was the source of much of his suffering: she delayed his birth, sent snakes to kill him as an infant and drove him mad. In one tradition her madness led him to kill his children and his wife Megara.

He served Eurystheus, king of Argos, for twelve years, completing ten tasks and two more, among them the Nemean lion, the Lernaean Hydra, the golden apples of the Hesperides and Cerberus. For the last he entered the underworld, and Hades agreed to give up the dog if Heracles used no weapons. Deianira, deceived by the dying centaur Nessus, gave him a tunic smeared with poisoned blood. He built a pyre on Mount Oeta, burned away his mortal part and ascended to Olympus as a god married to Hebe.

Perseus shows another Greek pattern. The Perseus entry describes the son of Zeus and Danaë, set adrift in a chest by her father Acrisius, who feared a grandson would kill him. Polydectes tricks him into promising Medusa's head, and he beheads her with a harpe from Hermes, winged sandals, Hades's helm of darkness and Athena's shield. He rescues Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. The entry records Herodotus's version in which a son of Perseus, Perses, gave the Persians their name, and says the Persian name Pārsa is pronounced differently from the Greek Pérsai, which undermines the link.

Heroes across cultures

Each row gives the tradition, the hero, the story, and what the reference pages record about a match to Heracles. The marks are explained near the end of the article.

Where the matches hold and where they fail

Hercules, Melqart and the Egyptian matches

The Heracles entry lists the documented identifications. Romans called him Hercules, and emperors such as Commodus and Maximian often identified themselves with him. Herodotus connected Heracles to the Phoenician Melqart, and after the 4th century BCE Heracles became identified with Melqart. Herodotus also connected him to the Egyptian Shu, Heracles was linked with Khonsu, and Egyptians most often identified him with Heryshaf. His figure initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight. All of these identifications attach a Greek hero to a god, since Melqart, Shu and Khonsu are gods in their own traditions.

Rustam

Rostam is a legendary Iranian hero whose definitive account is Ferdowsi's 10th-century Shahnameh. He is the son of Zal and Rudaba, a princess of Kabul, and the Simurgh advised Zal on a Caesarean delivery that saved both mother and child. He is a native of Zabulistan, roughly today's Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan, and the Shahnameh describes Rostam and his predecessors as Marzbans of Sistan. His stallion Rakhsh was tamed by Rostam as a child and lived an exceptionally long life, and both die at the same time.

The entry calls his adventures his Seven Labours, including a journey to rescue King Kay Kavus, who was captured by the Divs of Mazandaran. He accidentally kills his son Sohrab and fights a tragic duel with Esfandiyar. His envious half-brother Shaghad throws him into a well of poisoned spears when he is about 600 years old. Rostam and Esfandiyar share stories with the Labours of Hercules, which is a comparison between story shapes, not an identification of the heroes.

Cú Chulainn

Cú Chulainn is an Irish warrior hero and demigod in the Ulster Cycle. At seventeen he single-handedly defends Ulster against Queen Medb's Connacht army in the Táin Bó Cúailnge, holds the fords by challenging champions one after another and fights Ferdiad, the man raised beside him, in a three-day duel. His battle frenzy, the riastrad, turns him into a monstrous figure that cannot tell friend from foe. Scáthach gave him the barbed spear Gáe Bulg, which is thrown with the foot, and he uses it to kill his son Connla.

Lugaid kills him with three magic spears after he has been weakened by breaking a geis against eating dog meat, and he ties himself to a standing stone so he can die on his feet. He is believed to be an incarnation of the god Lugh, who is also his father. The entry compares him to Rostam, Hildebrand and Heracles and suggests a shared Indo-European origin, and it does not mention Achilles. The Rostam entry lists the same shared motifs: defeating a beast as a young man, killing a son in combat, near-invincibility and death by treachery.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu

Gilgamesh is a hero of Mesopotamian mythology and protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh, who may have been a historical king of Uruk, ruling roughly c. 2900 to 2350 BC. In the epic he is two thirds divine and one third mortal, a brutal ruler until the gods create Enkidu as a punishment. Enkidu is a wild man created by the goddess Aruru, the oldest literary representation of the wild man motif, tamed by Shamhat and then Gilgamesh's friend.

Together they defeat Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Forest, and kill the Bull of Heaven, which Ishtar sends after Gilgamesh rejects her advances. The gods sentence Enkidu to death for those killings. Grieving, Gilgamesh seeks Utnapishtim, survivor of the Great Flood, fails the tests set for him, loses the rejuvenating plant to a snake and returns to Uruk.

The entry does not directly compare Gilgamesh with Heracles. It says most scholars think the epic influenced the Iliad and Odyssey, and lists parallels with the Odyssey: Ishtar and Circe both turn men into animals, Humbaba and Polyphemus are both defeated, both heroes visit the Underworld, Siduri and Calypso both tempt the hero, and both miss a chance at immortality. It mentions Alfred Jeremias arguing that Gilgamesh performed twelve labours like Heracles and says mainstream scholars rejected such claims.

Sigurd

Sigurd is a legendary hero of Germanic tradition who kills the dragon Fafnir and is later murdered. In the Völsunga saga, dated to the second half of the 13th century, he is the posthumous son of Sigmund and Hjordis, raised by the smith Regin, and he reforges his father's shattered sword and kills Fafnir at Gnita-Heath by stabbing him from a pit. After tasting the dragon's blood he understands the birds, who warn him that Regin plans to kill him.

He wakes Brynhild, a valkyrie sleeping in a ring of shields, and a potion makes him forget her. A quarrel between Gudrun and Brynhild leads to his murder. In the Nibelungenlied of c. 1200, Hagen stabs Siegfried in the back at a spring during a hunt. The entry compares Sigurd with invulnerable warriors who have a single mortal weakness: Achilles, Ferdiad, Duryodhana and Esfandiyar. It notes that Sigmund is said to have slain a dragon in Beowulf and that some scholars think the dragon story transferred from father to son. It makes no comparison with Heracles.

Hanuman

This section describes Hanuman as the page does. He is a deity in Hinduism, revered as a divine vanara and devoted companion of Rama, central to the Ramayana, and considered a chiranjivi, an immortal. Shaiva traditions regard him as an incarnation of Shiva, and most Vaishnava traditions describe him as a son and incarnation of Vayu, the wind god. Sent south to search for Sita, he crosses the ocean to Lanka, is captured by Ravana's court and escapes after setting fire to much of the city.

When Lakshmana is badly wounded, he lifts a whole Himalayan mountain to carry a healing herb back to the battle. The entry notes that veneration has grown significantly in recent times, with Tuesdays and Saturdays observed and Hanuman Jayanti celebrated. It says various scholars have suggested Hanuman may have influenced Sun Wukong, and it presents that as a scholarly suggestion and not an established fact. It makes no Greek comparison.

Beowulf

The Beowulf entry calls it an Old English epic poem of 3,182 alliterative lines, preserved in a single manuscript, the Nowell Codex, with a composition date disputed between the 700s and the 1000s. The Geatish hero Beowulf helps Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose hall Heorot has been attacked for twelve years by Grendel, and kills him with his bare hands.

He kills Grendel's mother with a giant's sword and, decades later as king of the Geats, kills a dragon but is mortally wounded, with only his young relative Wiglaf helping. The poem ends with his cremation and a burial mound. The entry says scholars have linked it to Grettis saga, the Hrolf Kraki story, the Bear's Son folktale and the Irish tale The Hand and the Child. Proposed links to Homer or Virgil are described as not proven.

What the hero stories share

Five motifs recur across the pages. A hero defeats a beast in youth: the Rostam page lists it as a motif shared with Cú Chulainn, and Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands. A hero kills his own child or children: Heracles in one tradition, Rostam with Sohrab, Cú Chulainn with Connla. A hero dies through treachery or poison: Heracles by Nessus's tunic, Rostam by Shaghad's well of spears, Cú Chulainn by Lugaid's magic spears, Sigurd by Brynhild's demand. A hero visits the underworld: Heracles for Cerberus and Gilgamesh in the Odyssey parallels. A hero's weakness is a single point: Sigurd, Achilles, Ferdiad, Duryodhana and Esfandiyar in the Sigurd page's list.

The two endings are the sharpest contrast. Heracles builds his own pyre and is made a god. Gilgamesh accepts that immortality is out of reach and returns to Uruk. Cú Chulainn dies on his feet tied to a stone, and Beowulf dies of his dragon's wound with a burial mound for a monument.

What the strength marks mean

On this page the mark rates the match to Heracles. Attested means a named ancient writer or a documented identification makes it: Romans for Hercules, Herodotus for Melqart and Shu. Scholarly means a reference page records the comparison, as for Rustam and Cú Chulainn, with the comparison noted as one of motifs. Popular claim means no page read for this article makes the match, though each hero is real in the tradition that holds the story.

The reference pages are secondary sources. The Shahnameh, the Táin, the Völsunga saga, the Ramayana and Beowulf were read only through them. Hindu tradition is a living religion, and Hanuman is described here as the page describes him.