Note 1066 — Chapter XIII · MANES AND THE MANICHAEANS

This Mother of Life is one of the most prominent, though not one of the most active figures in the Manichaean pantheon. Her identification with the Spirit of the Right Hand or first Power created by the Supreme God of Light has been mentioned above (note 1, p. 293 supra). She doubtless has her immediate origin in the great mother goddess worshipped throughout Western Asia, whose most familiar name is Cybele, but whom we have seen (Chap. II supra) identified with Isis, Demeter, and all the goddesses of the Hellenistic pantheon. See as to this, Bousset, Hauptprobleme, pp. 58 sqq., although he, too, falls into the error of identifying with her the Virgin of Light of the Pistis Sophia. That the name “Mother of Life” at least passed to all these goddesses is certain; but it also found its way into Egyptian Christianity; for in the Coptic spell or amulet known as the Prayer of the Virgin in Bartos (i.e. Parthia), studied by Mr W. E. Crum (P.S.B.A. vol. XIX. 1897, p. 216), the Virgin Mary is represented as saying “I am Mariham (Μαριάμ), I am Maria, I am the Mother of the Life of the whole World!”, and the popularity of the “Prayer” is shown by its frequent appearance in Ethiopic and Arabic versions (op. cit. p. 211). So, too, in the evidently Christian Trattato Gnostico of F. Rossi (Memorie della Reale Accademia di Torino, ser. II. t. xliii. p. 16) the magician says “I entreat thee, O God, by the great revered Virgin (παρθένος) in whom the Father was concealed from the beginning before He had created anything.” Bar Khôni, again (Pognon, pp. 209-211), speaks of the Kukeans, who seem to have been a semi-Christian sect, and who taught that the coming of Jesus to earth had for its object the redemption of His bride, the Mother of Life, who was detained here below, like the Helena of Simon Magus. Mother of Life is mentioned in all the Mahommedan and Christian writers who have treated of Manichaeism (for the references, see Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. 1ère partie, p. 511, n. 1), in the Pahlavi MS. discovered by the Germans at Turfan (F. W. K. Muller, Handschriften-Reste in Estrangelo-Schrift, pp. 47, 55), and in the Chinese treatise from Tun-huang (Chavannes et Pelliot, op. cit. p. 511 et al.). In this last, she is called Chan-mou, which is translated “the Excellent Mother,” and En Nadîm in one passage (Kessler, op. cit. p. 399; Flügel, op. cit. p. 100) calls her Nahnaha, which Flügel would translate “The Aversion of the Evil Ones.” It should be noticed, however, that her part in the cosmogony is small, and that she acts upon the world, like all these supercelestial powers, only through her descendants or “sons.” These are treated of later (see p. 323 and n. 1, p. 302 infra). Titus of Bostra as quoted by Flügel, op. cit. p. 210, speaks of her as δύναμις τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ οὐκέτι φῶς αἰσθητὸν ἀλλ’ ὡς ἂν φαίη προβολὴ τοῦ θεοῦ. “[The] Power of the Good One, no longer a perceptible light, but as if one should say, an emanation of God.” Some years ago, we could hardly have looked for her prototype or first appearance in the history of religions in any other direction than Babylonia, where the worship of Ishtar, her Babylonian counterpart, goes back as far as we can trace Babylonian religion. Now, however, it is plain that other races than the Babylonians may have been concerned in the spread of the worship of the Great Mother throughout Western Asia. In the Zoroastrian faith, she seems to appear as Spenta Armaiti, the one certainly female power among the seven Amshaspands, who in the Pahlavi texts is set over the earth, as Vohu Mano is made protector of the beasts, Asha Vahishta of the fire, and Khshathra Vairya is set over metals. But besides this, she is identified in the Gâthâs with the Wisdom of God (for references see pp. 136-137 of M. Carnoy’s article in the Muséon mentioned below), an identification which Plutarch (de Is. et Os. c. XLVII.) admits by translating her name as σοφία, and like the Sophia of the Gnostics is given as a spouse to her creator Ahura Mazda, to whom she bears the First Man Gayômort (Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta, t. I. pp. 128-129). Yet we now know that this figure may have come into the Zoroastrian pantheon neither from Semitic sources nor, as Darmesteter thought, from Plato. M. A. Carnoy in a study called Armaiti-Ârmatay (Muséon, n.s. vol. XIII. (1912), pp. 127-146) shows the identity of the Persian Amshaspand with the Vedic goddess Aramati. We have already seen that the Vedic gods Varuna and Mitra were worshipped by Hittites in Asia Minor before the XIIth century B.C., and Prof. Garstang believes that the Earth-Mother was the great goddess of the Hittites, and was the one worshipped in Roman times at Hierapolis or Mabug as the Dea Syria or Atargatis, a name that he equates with Derceto, the mother of Semiramis in classic legend, and declares to be compounded of Ishtar or Astarte and the Aramaic “Athar or Athe.” See Strong and Garstang, The Syrian Goddess, pp. 1-8, and notes 24, 25, and 30, on pp. 52, 53 and 30 op. cit. Zoroaster and Manes may therefore have taken their mother goddess from an Aryan rather than from a Semitic original.