Georges Dumézil, the French philologist, historian, and sociologist, is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the modern period. His work led to an intellectual leap forward in the understanding of ancient history, particularly Indo-European history, and opened up new horizons for the study of the human mind based on an approach that mixed philology, history, and the sociology of religion. Using this approach, he dealt with the ideas and religious beliefs of the Indo-European people in unprecedented detail. Dumézil made comparative mythology topical again after it had gone through a period of stagnation due to research put forward by Friedrich Max Müller. This paper looks at the main stages in the development of Dumézil’s theory which culminated in the trifunctional structure.