The Greek story of Arachne.

A young woman who is a weaver boasts she is better than anybody, including the gods. Athena hears of this and is enthralled. She disguises herself as an old woman in a crowd and warns Arachne to abandon her claims. Arachne refuses and Athena reveals herself. Athena then challenges Arachne to a weaving competition. During the competition, Arachne not only performs better but also mocks the gods in her depictions. This causes Athena to fly into a rage, destroys Arachne's weaves and transforms Arachne into a spider, mocking her.

The moral of the story is that you don't act superior to or mock the gods because they are always superior.

IMO, this story is shit. The gods are assholes but so what? They're gods. That's what's really going on in the story. I like Arachne. Athena is the goddess of wisdom but acts like a child throwing a temper tantrum. I suspect there is some misogyny going on about women having a tendency to be vindictive and bicker.

In a real world context, I think it reflects the political nature of ancient Greece. Greece was a collection of city-states, not a unified country. There was a series of small time tyrants and local kings. It's pretty common for people to make a connection between royalty and gods since it was thought monarchs had the blessing of gods and were likened to gods themselves so there might be some psychological tendency of there being some authority figure that you have to obey or get the shit kicked out of you, or killed.

I also think there is a connection between what kind of belief system a society has and their political structure. Greece was full of bickering and warring city-states and their gods also warred and bickered. Rome had the same gods while they were a Republic but as Rome became an empire, Jesus and God as the Trinity gained a stronger following. By the time you get to Constantine who legalized Christianity, Emperors were deified. Likewise, the Trinity became more and more focused as the sole source of power in the universe. Monarchs in Medieval times and afterward had a similar repertoire.