MANDAEAN LITERATURE 543
With my fourth cry I made every plant and its seeds,
and each one was distinct from another.
With my fifth cry sinister reptiles came into being.
With my sixth cry there came a full structure of darkness.
With my seventh cry I made Ruha
and her seven sons, who are the planets.^17
Ruha the mother of evil and her seven sons came into being
and appeared before me.
When I saw them, my heart fell out of my body.CREATING ADAM
After the angel Ptahil came he said to the planets, "Let us create Adam and
make him king of the world." The planets conferred. They agreed to tell him
that they wanted to create Adam and Eve. After all, he belongs to them.
"Yes," the planets said, "we will make Adam and Eve the head of the human
family."
After they said what they were planning to do, Ptahil was profoundly
shaken. He thought, "If I myself create Adam and Eve the head of the whole
family, what will Adam's role be in the world?"
Then Ptahil Uthra^18 spoke to the planets, asking them. "Whom can we
trust? What is our authority in the world?" And he said to them, "Planets, you
will be his guardians and serve him in all ways."
They made Adam and laid him on the ground,
but he had no soul.
When they made Adam they couldn't cast a soul into him.
They called on the wind of the ether to hollow out his bones.
To hollow out his bones and let marrow form in them,
to let marrow form,
to make him strong and stand firm on his feet.
They called on the splendor of the living fire
to make his robe luminous.- On false wisdom and the planets see the cosmogony presented in the Secret Book of John
and other gnostic texts.
18. Ptahil, the demiurge, is also a light being (uthra).