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'.