Ame-no-Uzume vs Eos

Goddess of dawn, mirth, and revelry. Her wild, comedic dance lured Amaterasu from the Heavenly Rock Cave, restoring light to the world. Ancestral deity of performing arts.

When **Amaterasu** retreated into the Ama-no-Iwato cave and plunged the world into darkness, the eight million kami gathered in desperation. Ame-no-Uzume overturned a tub, stamped upon it, and performed an ecstatic, risque dance that provoked such uproarious laughter among the gods that Amaterasu's curiosity drew her forth.

**Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto** holds one of the most pivotal roles in Japanese mythology. When Amaterasu withdrew into the Heavenly Rock Cave and darkness engulfed the world, it was Ame-no-Uzume's bold, outrageous performance that ultimately saved creation by drawing the sun goddess back into the light.

The goddess of dawn, sister of Helios and Selene, who rises each morning from the bed of her mortal consort Tithonus to bring light to gods and men. Homer's formula 'rosy-fingered Dawn' marks the start of countless days in the Iliad and Odyssey.

Eos was born to the Titans Hyperion and Theia with her siblings Helios and Selene. Each morning she rises from the streams of Ocean at the eastern edge of the world to announce the sun.

Eos is the dawn made divine. Hesiod names her with Helios and Selene as a child of Hyperion and Theia, and he also makes her mother of the winds and the stars by the Titan Astraeus. In Homer she is chiefly a time-marker: the formula of 'early-born, rosy-fingered Dawn' opens new days again and again in the *Iliad* and the *Odyssey*.