Tangri, the deified eternal blue sky, is the supreme deity of the pre-Islamic Turkic peoples and the head of the old Turko-Mongol pantheon. Proclaimed in the eighth-century Orkhon inscriptions as the power that raises and unseats qaghans and grants the heavenly fortune (qut) of rule, he was paired with the mother-goddess Umay. Among the Islamized Uzbeks the name endured as an everyday word for God, while the archaic sky-cult left traces in oaths, blessings, and the cosmology underlying the epic and shamanic traditions.