RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESspell.^112 Myrtle, which was used for bridal wreaths, is mentioned in
one of the rare positive appearances of Ishtar on a Mandaic bowl
from Khuabir, on which she is invoked by saying, "You will come
with this wine and perfume and myrtle."113
In addition to these old indigenous religious traditions, gnostic in-
fluences were beginning to be felt by the end of the Sasanian period
by the people who used Mandaic. Except for the innovation "In the
name of Life!" which is also used to begin sections of the Ginza, there
is not much Mandaean gnostic content in the incantation texts from
Nippur.^114 It is probably significant that the incantation which is the
most Mandaean in content appears on one of the Syriac bowls from
Nippur, which invokes the "Word of God" (iilahii) and the "mystery
of heaven of the assembled waters and of earth." Mandaeans used
the Word of God to designate their supreme God, the King of Light,
and the "mystery of heaven" is compared by Montgomery to the
Mandaean Great Mystery who helped the angel (Uthra) Hibil-Ziwa
in his descent to Hell in the Ginzii.115
There is much more Mandaean content in the texts from Khuabir
and on bowls of unknown provenance but from the same period.
These texts contain references to Mandaean beings who occur in the
cosmology of the Ginzii. The Great Jordan of Life, who was emanated
from the King of Light, is mentioned. "The great, sublime Life," who
appears in the Ginzii as the "First Life," is invoked in these texts; he
was also emanated from the King of Light and was the deity that
governed the world and the chief object of worship. Abatur, the "Third
Life" in the chain of emanations and the being who weighs the souls
of the dead in his scales against that of the Uthra Shitil, is also invoked,
as is "Ptahil who built the house," the Mandaean demiurge. There
are references to the three hundred and sixty-six Uthras, the Mandaean
angels, and to specific Uthras such as Hibil Uthra and Ziwar Uthra,
"Son of Light." Manda d-Hiia, the incarnation of the three Uthras,
Hibil, Shitil, and Anosh (Abel, Seth, and Enoch), is also invoked.^116
112 Ibid., pp. 243, 253, 277.
113 Ibid., pp. 205-7. The Babylonian Talmud tells of cutting myrtle branches for a
wedding (Rodkinson, Talmud, 11, "Sabbath," 349; idem, Ill, "Erubin," 87) and one of
the Jewish incantation bowls from Nippur refers to "fresh myrtle for crowns" (Mont-
gomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 178-79).
114 Montgomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 39,252.
115 Lidzbarski, Ginzii, p. 155; Montgomery, Incantation Texts, pp. 242-43; Yamau-
chi, Incantation Texts, p. 42.
116 Lidzbarski, Ginzii p. 34; Yamauchi, Incantation Texts, pp. 39-40, 169, 209, 235,
237, 239, 249, 251, 253, 281.