Abstract: What are the definitory features of myths? This article offers a typologisation of defining “semantemes”, followed by considerations on the performative narrativity and the symbolic anchoring of myths, and an analysis of a myth of the origins, that of language diversification, as found in the story of the Tower of Babel. The examination of its creative elaboration is completed with an overview of its recurrence, over time and in diverse societies, that illustrates how a myth becomes a hypermyth.
