The Mandaic God Ptahil

Abstract

ONE OF THE most interesting figures of the Mandaic pantheon is that of the god Ptahil. Interest attaches to him readily because of his prominence in the bulky volumes of the Mandean texts, and because of the uncertainty which still exists to-day with regard to the interpretation of his person and his origin. Since the days when western scholars first began to concern themselves with the Mandean traditions, one thing has continually been evident about Ptahil, namely that he is the Mandaic demiurge, the creator of the present cosmos. Two questions, upon the answer to which the final interpretation of his person and his origin depends, have, however, never been satisfactorily answered. These questions are: (1) Is Ptahil, like the demiurges of other syncretistic faiths, essentially an evil deity ? (2) What is the etymology and the meaning of his name, and what light has the name to shed upon the problem of his origin and identity? These two questions have in the past received a disturbing variety of answers. Wilhelm Brandt evolved the conception that Ptahil was originally an evil power, which, under the influence of developing monotheism, was gradually freed of its dualistic associations and identified with a beneficent creative agent (Gabriel Sheliha), until there remained of its older evil self only the name proper to it at the beginning.' By contrast, Karl Kessler insists: Dieses ist urspriinglich gewiss ein guter Gott, aber da die alte manddische Spekulation die Weltsch6pfung bald als ein Werk der guten, bald als eines der bosen Gewalten ersieht, so schwankt sein Charakterbild jetzt in der Geschichte 2n.2 The two views are evidently mutually exclusive. With respect to the name Ptahil, a similar diversity of opinion exists. Since the days of Norberg, whose etymological enterprises were for the most part exceedingly unhappy, and up to the days of