Ptahil (the Fourth Life, the demiurge)
Ptahil, the Fourth Life, is the demiurge of Mandaean cosmology — the uthra who actually fashions the material world. Commissioned and instructed by his father Abathur, he condenses the stagnant dark waters into solidity to form Tibil, the earthly realm, and shapes the bodies of the first human beings. His work is, however, flawed and incomplete: he can form bodies but cannot endow them with living souls, so that the higher light-beings must intervene to set the divine spark within Adam. Because the material world is the product of this lesser, half-failing craftsman rather than of the Great Life directly, Mandaean theology regards the created cosmos with deep ambivalence. The name is variously derived from the Egyptian creator-god Ptah or from the Mandaic verb 'to open/fashion'.
Parentage
Domains
- fashioning the material world
- craft and demiurgy
Powers
- to shape the material earth from the primordial waters
- to fashion the body of the first man
Epithets
- Ptahil-UthraE.S. Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937) (secondary); Kurt Rudolph, 'Mandaeans ii. The Mandaean Religion', Encyclopaedia Iranica (online ed., 2008) (secondary)
Relations
- subordinate to: Abathur (the Third Life, weigher of souls)Ptahil acts on the instructions of his father Abathur, who supplies him the materials and the task of forming the material world.Mark Lidzbarski (trans.), Ginza: Der Schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandäer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1925) (primary); Kurt Rudolph, 'Mandaeans ii. The Mandaean Religion', Encyclopaedia Iranica (online ed., 2008) (secondary)
- ally: Ruha (the Spirit of the lower world)In the work of fashioning the lower world Ptahil is associated with Ruha and the planetary powers of the lower realm.Mark Lidzbarski (trans.), Ginza: Der Schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandäer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1925) (primary); Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) (secondary)
Sources
- Ptahil, the Fourth Life and son of Abathur, is the Mandaean demiurge who shapes the material world Tibil and the body of the first man, but cannot animate his creatures without a soul sent from above.: Mark Lidzbarski (trans.), Ginza: Der Schatz oder das grosse Buch der Mandäer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1925) (primary); Kurt Rudolph, 'Mandaeans ii. The Mandaean Religion', Encyclopaedia Iranica (online ed., 2008) (secondary); Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, The Mandaeans: Ancient Texts and Modern People (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) (secondary)