They didn’t copy the gods, they just said it’s the same guy under a different name and we worship them too.
It’s like foreign fans of a domestic TV show.
There were also cases of people adopting gods. Just going “hey, this god you worship is cool, going to worship the god as well”
When I decide to worship Gandalf, I’m declaring a fair-use exemption.
Some people consider their religion jedi, so I doubt Tolkien Estate can do anything to you ;)
While no modern copyright laws existed, there was a framework to protect intellectual properties and limit or prevent plagiarism in at least ancient Greece and Rome. The Athenian legal requirements to protect dramatic works is kind of the basis for our laws today.
Rather than go to war over the similarities between their gods, they went to war over the small differences in the copies.
I want to hear generic Beethoven
They’d have to prove they created the god in question first, which would undermine every other claim they made for it.
