Abathur (the Third Life, weigher of souls)

Abathur, the Third Life, is the great judge-uthra of Mandaeism, glossed in the tradition as 'father of the uthras'. He is distinguished in two aspects: Abathur Rama, the lofty or celestial Abathur enthroned in the upper world, and Abathur Muzania, 'Abathur of the Scales', who is stationed at the frontier between light and darkness and there weighs the souls of the departed and their deeds in his balance, determining whether they ascend or are detained. Comparativists have likened this office to that of the Egyptian Thoth at the scales of the Book of the Dead. The Diwan Abatur, a richly illustrated scroll over twenty feet long, depicts him enthroned and maps the soul's passage through the purgatories. He is the son of Yushamin and the father of Ptahil.

Parentage

• Yushamin (the Second Life)

Children

• Ptahil (the Fourth Life, the demiurge)

Domains

• weighing of souls
• boundary of the light

Powers

• to weigh the souls of the dead in his scales
• to guard the threshold between the worlds of light and darkness

Epithets

• Abatur Muzania
• Abatur Rama

Relations

• subordinate to: Hayyi Rabbi (the Great Life)

Sources

• E.S. Drower, Diwan Abatur, or Progress through the Purgatories (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1950)
• Kurt Rudolph, 'Mandaeans ii. The Mandaean Religion', Encyclopaedia Iranica (online ed., 2008)
• Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)