In some cases the creator is a deus faber, a craftsman god. In Egypt, Ptah is depicted in one myth as creating the world on a potter’s wheel. Several groups of far western Native Americans have myths in which the deus faber creates the world as a kind of tent, with poles representing the four directions. Two creation archetypes popular among other Native North Americans are the earth-diver creation and the emergence creation.

In the first, an animal usually dives into the primordial waters to bring up earth, which is placed on a turtle’s back and which expands into the world. In the emergence creation, the people emerge into this world from a world below the earth.