A lot of the Greek myths make you wonder why some of these deities were at all worshiped. Hera and Zeus come across as remarkably petty in so many of them....

I think that very pettiness was part of their appeal...they were ever so much more human than Ra n' Horus and the storm god of the Hittites and so on. I look at Zeus as sort of a divine Bill Clinton, sending down thunderbolts with one hand, sunshine and plenty with the other, sneaking away from his wife, and getting it on with all the pretty girls and Ganymede, too. Gods you could party with...not so big they make your mind explode.

Well, there's myths with the other deities which showed similar "human" qualities, but they tend not to have survived as well as the Grecian ones. Also, the surviving Egyptian myths have a lot of political motivations behind them :\

I guess it's also important to be careful about whose sense of morality and ethics you apply to the myths.

Yep. I do find the Greek gods to be useful descriptions of different states of soul. I can feel Marsy one day and Hephaistosesque another...while the Judeo-Christian pantheon is less applicable to describing the way I feel on a given day. I mean, if I wake up and feel like Jesus, I need to go see the doctor.