Heracles, in Roman terminology called Hercules, popularly known for being the symbol of strength, power and masculinity, is the son of Greek king of the Pantheon, Zeus (Roman: Jupiter) and Alcmene, a mortal. 

Heracles is therefore said to be the protector of all mankind, having championed various Chthonics. His chronicles are detailed in both Greek and Roman literature, although the latter has an anecdotal addition owing to the fact that emperors like Commodus and Maximian identified themselves with the Olympian order called Heracleidae, to which Heracles himself belonged! 

Although this Graeco-Roman hero is widely known for having succeeded in completing the twelve ostensibly impossible labours that were set for him by his arch enemy Eurystheus, Heracles is also known to have sacked Troy, a generation before the Trojan War, as described in Homer’s Iliad, took place! 

Excavations around the world have brought much speculation about his identity though. Today, it seems that there had been one such Heracles in every advanced civilisation that existed back then. Are these stories related?

Yes, some are. 

But these depictions might not have exactly been what was Heracles’ own. For an instance, Herculean depiction in Buddhism include Vajrapani, a Bodhisatva and the protector of the Buddha. Zoroastrianism has a divine character called ‘Bahram’ who is often, with references to the sculpture erected at Kermanshah, Iran, called an incarnation of Heracles. Renowned Archaeologist and Orientalist, Sir Alexander Cunningham, in the nineteenth century, discovered a half desecrated statue at Mathura that he thought, corresponded to the Herculean glory as it represented a figure slaying the Nemean Lion (one of Heracles’ twelve labours). It has been often said that this statute is a work of an alienated classicist or might have been left behind sculpted by a foreign land architect. But, this statue, now kept at Indian Museum Kolkata, is also said to have relations with the Hindu God Krishna and the Vasudeva lineage, thus signifying that the legendary glory of Heracles spread as far as the then India and influenced the artistic culture of the Hindus, one of the world’s largest and oldest religions to ever exist.

Talking about Egypt, Heracles has always had a remarkable and striking similarity to the Pharaoh pantheon. Egyptian civilisation, besides that of the Hindus and the Graeco-Roman people, had a god for almost everything. Although striking similarities between Heracles have been found in the Egyptian lord Heryshaf, Greek Historian (born in Halicarnassus), Herodotus feels it more appropriate to relate the Roman hero to the Egyptian God Shu, one of the nine primordial deities of Heliopolis (Latinised form of Greek ‘Hēlioúpolis’), one of the oldest surviving metropolis of Ancient Egypt, known for being the progenitor of the cults of the Sun God Ra (Greek Equivalent for which is Helios) and the First God Atum (one who created himself from the primordial waters of the Nu, as per the Heliopolitan myth. 

Shu, the god of the peace, lions, air and the winds, and Tefnut, his sister and the goddess of moisture were both created from Atum himself, which some classicists consider to be from the feminine part of his body.

Nevertheless, the Greeks other than Herodotus, considered Shu to bear a resemblance of Atlas, since ‘they are both depicted holding up the sky.’

In the sunken city of Heraklion, Khonsu was said to be worshipped in the likeness of Heracles. However, most of the Egyptians associate the hero with the Egyptian lord Heryshaf. 

Heryshaf is a ram god, prevalent during the ancient times and worshipped in and around Heracleopolis Magna, capital of the 20th nome of the ancient Upper Egypt and known in Ancient Egyptian as Het Nesut.

His first association to Heracles is found in the text called Interpretatio graeca, one that aims to establish a comparative discourse on cross cultural similarities in literature and mythology between various civilisations.

However, Greek Grammarian and Classicist Antoninus Liberalis, in his only surviving work entitled Metamorphoseon Synagoge (the better version of which had been composed by Ovid and Lucius Apuleius), relates Heryshaf to the Greek God of vine and wine, Dionysus (Roman: Bacchus).

However, his relation to Heracles seems to have been more sensible, owing to the fact that the Greek term for Heryshaf was, “Harsaphes”, which after generations, might have transliterated itself into, “Heracles”.

Moreover, since he’s an Egyptian god, traditional names might have received vast interpretations in the Greek mainland, having thus been reanalysed to, “ḥrj-šf.t”, something that means “He who is over strength”, hence brining about a similarity to the Graeco Roman hero of strength, Heracles.