Side by side, from the sources
Agni vs Hermes
These two are identified with one another in the record, which is not the same as being the same figure. The carrier of offerings between humanity and the gods.
Deity · Vedic · c. 1400 BCE
Agni
also called Tejas
Fire as the mouth of the gods — the one who carries offerings upward, and so the messenger of the Vedic system.
- Alignment
- Disputed
- Rank
- God of Fire
- First attested
- Rigveda · c. 1500-1200 BCE
- Named there as
- Agni
- Texts naming it
- 3
- Powers attributed
- 4
90attestedVedic & Hindu
Deity · Greek · c. 700 BCE
Hermes
also called Mercury (Roman)
Herald, psychopomp, patron of boundaries and of thieves — the exact functional counterpart of Gabriel, plus everything Gabriel is not allowed to be.
- Alignment
- Disputed
- Rank
- Messenger of the Gods
- First attested
- The Iliad · c. 750 BCE
- Named there as
- Hermes
- Texts naming it
- 3
- Powers attributed
- 5
Where do they actually overlap?
Texts naming both
None. The two never appear in the same text in this corpus, which is worth knowing before accepting any confident claim that they are one figure.
Powers credited to both
Common questions
Are Agni and Hermes the same figure?
These two are identified with one another in the record, which is not the same as being the same figure. The carrier of offerings between humanity and the gods. ColossiansOne records the link rather than asserting the identity: where texts disagree about whether two names denote one figure, the disagreement is what gets shown.
Which is older, Agni or Hermes?
Agni is the older name: first attested around c. 1400 BCE, against c. 700 BCE for Hermes. Where the two dates are far apart, that gap is the whole reason the pair is worth comparing.
Do any texts name both Agni and Hermes?
No text in this corpus names both. That is not proof they were considered the same figure, but it is why the identification has to be traced through the scholarship rather than read off a page.