The Coronation of Sislam the Great

Many years ago, when examining Mandaean texts in the British Museum, I became interested in a scroll listed in the catalogue as Or. 6592 for I had heard Mandaean priests speak of it as the canon consulted and used when the ordination of a priest takes place. Its title, The Coronation of the great Šišlam, refers to the mythical coronation of the proto-type of all priests, or rather of priest-kings, for every priest is a malka by malkia (a king son of kings). Šišlam --Rba, the great Šišlam, is one of the personifications of the messianic figure of Man as an ideal, known to initiates as the secret or mystic Adam. Adam represents Humanity, Man as conceived in perfection, King of the Universe, a numinous personification of all that spiritual Man is intended to be and achieve.

This is not the place to discuss the subject of sacral kingship in the Middle East. Its many aspects and its long history have been considered generally and in great detail by such scholars as Henri Frankfort, A. M. Hocart, E. 0. James, F. Thurean-Dangin, G. Widengren, J. Pedersen, C. J. Gadd, A. H. Hooke, P. Dhorme and Ivan Engnell, to name only a few, and Kingship was the theme of the eighth International Congress of the History of Religions at Rome, in 1955. The Mandaean, or preferably the Nasoraean, religion is syncretistic, and Iranian and Israelitic elements predominate in its attitude towards kingship, which has a long history in both civilizations.

The publication in 1960 by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissen-schaften zu Berlin of The Thousand and Twelve Questions, an im-portant Mandaean text in seven books, disclosed how important to Mandaeans is the training and initiation of the candidate for ordi-nation, the šualia or postulant. Conditions laid down for his ac-ceptance and those which invalidate his candidature are so exacting that even the approved šualia may be several times disqualified and have to recommence his term of probation. Whole sections of The Thousand and Twelve Questions are devoted to the šualia. Physically, he must be perfect, the loss of a finger on the right hand by an accident makes ordination void. His hair and beard must be uncut; no eunuch or son of a widow by a second marriage is eligible. He must be of the priestly caste and he may not marry out of it. His daily food is prepared by himself or his wife, and she must be a virgin when he marries her. After ordination, as an earthly repre-sentative of the divine Priest-King, the priest becomes the gada, the “luck” of his flock. He protects them against devils and disease-demons, writes them phylacteries and exorcisms, reads their stars for them and tells them when undertakings are safe or dangerous. When she needs meat the housewife brings lamb or fowl to him for ritual slaughter performed with prayer which removes the de-filement of blood. By him a Mandaean babe at birth is shielded from malign spirits and baptised, a ceremony repeated several times a year at the baptismal feasts and at all times when human beings are especially vulnerable to evil, such as before and after marriage ), after birth and menstruation, after contact with death or pollution, and when death is imminent. Should this final im-mersion be lacking, the departing soul can yet be provided with passports and viaticum by such ceremonies as the Blessed Oblation and masiqta.

The scroll of the Coronation of the great Šišlam was therefore of considerable importance, and I read with eagerness, transliterating it entire into a notebook. I made a rough translation, and should certainly have revised it and offered it for publication had it not contained two short passages which seemed to be so inexplicable and doubtful, that I decided to drop work upon the manuscript until I was able to compare it with another copy of the same text. As a result, the transcription lay by for more than twenty years and it was not until the present year, 1961, that I succeeded in acquiring a second copy, procured for me in Southern Persia by a friendly priest. The manuscript was nearly three hundred years older than the coronation scroll in the British Museum.

I read it carefully, only to find that the very passages which had puzzled me in Or. 6592 were missing in DC 54, the number allotted to the new acquisition in my collection of manuscripts. In Or. 6592 the sentences, or rather two slightly varied versions of the same sentence, occur during a repetition of part of the masiqta, the latter portion of the Coronation scroll being descriptive of that sacrament. Its successful celebration by the newly-crowned šualia terminates his period of probation. To perform this extremely complicated and difficult ceremony correctly is by no means easy, but until this is achieved, the new king is not admitted into his kingdom of priest-hood. During a first celebration of this rite, therefore, co-celebrants prompt and sometimes dictate to the young priest. The scribe who copied the text reproduced here, inserted the sentence referred to at a moment at which such prompting occurred. The scribe who copied the text three hundred years earlier omitted it.

The masiqta is the Nasoraean sacrament which most closely re-sembles the Christian mass, and the ‘Coronation’ text describes the celebration of the rite with unusual minuteness. The first line or lines of liturgical prayers are given at the various points of the ritual where they are to be recited; actions performed by the cele-brant are described or indicated, sacramental foods and vessels are enumerated and so forth. This part of the text, in fact, and a parallel description in a ritual text entitled The Great First World, are con-sidered by priests the most helpful in their libraries.

For interpretation of the mysteries of the masiqta other texts are consulted. They are not accessible to the layman; indeed, the esoteric meaning of ritual acts should, according to these texts), be imparted to a chosen few, although to the šualia some oral ex-planation is permitted. Much of this oral tuition has ceased. It formed part of the instruction of the šualia (postulant) by his rba ) (teacher), during first preparation and during days of isolation and test which preceded and follow coronation. Today it is only partial and imperfect, for a cholera epidemic in the nineteenth century wiped out the entire priesthood. Fragments of the so-called “secret” teaching survived, and references to it appear in some of the texts referred to above. They should be placed in the initiation hut.

The masiqta, the “raising up”, is celebrated primarily for the dead, but includes the living, since death does not separate those ‘in the body’ or ‘standing in the body’, as the liturgical phrase has it, from those who have departed from the body, for the Mandaean believes that at physical death there is no cessation of existence.The mana or nišimta the eternal and indestructible part of human personality, had pre-existence and continues to exist after the body has died. Owing to pollution incurred by life on the physical plane it is unable to leave the material world, however, until furnished by sacramental rites with a spiritual body. A long and difficult journey lies before it: it must be purified, protected and provided with sustenance and guidance.

To procure a spiritual vehicle for the disembodied soul the two great generating principles which united to form the Heavenly Man are invoked, Their union, the hieros gamos, is, according to priestly commentaries, enacted when water is poured into the wine-bowl. The two represent the positive and negative aspects of creative energy. As in the Christian mass, the “wine” in the bowl is called “blood”, conception being thought to result from unions of male sperm with blood in the womb. The mingled contents are drunk by the celebrant who becomes mystically united with the departed soul. He is “clothed” in, i.e. becomes identified and united with, the soul of the departed.

The ceremonies are complicated, and symbolism often appears to be confused. The new spiritual body after gestation and birth is “clothed” and this is mimed by wrapping the soft dough of the selected pihta ) about a myrtle wreath and anointing it. The wreath represents the living crown which the soul as microcosm will receive; for the Macrocosm, Adam Kasia, the Soul of Mankind, is crowned and anointed.

As for the unselected loaves, these represent the souls of the living and the dead, just as in the Orthodox Mass. However, some of the commentaries connect them also with limbs, organs and faculties formed for the disembodied soul in the womb of the Great Mother ), which are confusingly identical with (or so it would appear) with those of the great Body (‘ustun) of which all souls form a part. The fragments of ritual food laid upon each, represent viaticum ), heavenly nourishment for the soul upon its long journey upwards to the worlds of light.

It will be seen that the postulant has much to learn, and exact performance of each detail is so important that by a slip he can injure not only the soul and souls for whom the masiqta is celebrated, but also himself.

The description given in my book The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (MMII) of the training and initiation of the šualia was written at a time when I had not studied the texts which deal with it. Nevertheless, it will be found in the main to tally with that of our present manuscript, the coronation text. My informant then was Hirmiz bar Anhar, a yalufa, son of a pious priest. Although ignorant of tha1 which should be explained to the postulant at initiation, his description was detailed, graphic and full, and should be read with the Coronation text which it amplifies and to a certain extent modified without any serious contradiction. Had it not been for a note taken down from him at that time, I should not have arrived at what I believe to be a solution of the problem of the missing phrases to which I referred earlier.

To sum up what he told me as briefly as possible, he said that after examination by the assembled priests in the ‘ndruna ) and successful recitation of the Book of Souls ), the šualia puts on a new rasta ) and is presented with two new silken ‘crowns’, whilst cotton ‘crowns’ are distributed to all priests present. The rba, the šualia’s teacher and mentor, also receives two silken ‘crowns’, Rba and šuaiia spend that night in the ‘ndruna whilst priests, before leaving, erect near it a škinta, a reed hut of a more permanent character, fortified by washed clay.

The next morning, after again reciting the Book of Souls, the šualia enters the škinta, the newly-built hut, and the ‘ndruna which symbolised his former lay status is pulled down. In the words of the commentaries, he has ‘left the Mother’ ; for the ‘owner of a crown’, (i.e. ‘priest’), ‘is occupied with the mystery of the Father’ whereas a layman ‘is concerned with the mystery of the Mother’.

The škinta a corresponds to the sanctuary of a Nestorian church. After its purification and consecration no layman may enter it. In it, the young priest puts on another new rasta and is given regal insignia, namely his golden ring, the šum Yawar (so-called because engraved with the name of Yawar-Ziwa), his two crowns and his priestly staff, the margna. In the škinta the šualia lives for seven days and nights, leaving it only to relieve himself. The rba stays with him constantly and both observe the strictest rules of ritual purity. The postulant must make and bake his own bread, drink from the jordan (i.e. river or pool of flowing water) and must neither touch or be in contact with any person ‘unclean’ in the ritual sense, for any chance contamination may cancel the whole proceeding and the week must again begin. The rba, usually a ganzibra, spends the week in intensive instruction. Should either his wife or the postu-lant’s menstruate during the week, the ‘seven days’ are cancelled and begin anew. There are other conditions, but I must quote one short paragraph from Hirmiz bar Anhar’s account, for it could possibly refer to the enigmatic phrase which twice appears in Or. 6592. He told me, when describing what took place during the week of initiation in the škinta:

The words probably have their place somewhere in the liturgical prayers, hymns and formulae in which the young priest must be word-perfect. In such recitations and the correct performance of the ritual accompanying them, his teacher drills him intensively during the period of preparation, accompanying his teaching by theological explanation. Of the rites in which he must be proficient, the šualia is probably already familiar with baptism, at which sacrament he must often have officiated as šganda, server or acolyte. Baptism is performed often, publicly and repeatedly, and the sons of priests usually have the Book of Souls by heart long before the moment when they are required to recite it in the presence of the board of examining priests. The “Blessed Oblation” and the sacrament called the “Letter” need no great effort of memory.

It is otherwise with the masiqta. The liturgical prayers and hymns attached to this sacrament do not always follow each other in the canonical prayerbook in the order in which they are recited and they are repeated and re-repeated at various stages of the long and elaborate rite. Its celebration, together with that of the baptisms,ablutions and ritual acts which precede those, which take place within the sanctuary, occupies the better part of twelve hours. It is a merciful concession that, during the young celebrant’s first masiqta, formulae of mnemonic character are whispered to him especially at the most solemn moment of the “great mystery”, for an error in recitation or performance at such a stage could invalidate his ordination, or make him untouchable until he has been baptised by fellow priests three hundred and sixty times.

It is at such a moment, as said before, that we find in Or. 6592 the words which DC 54 omits. They are, according to the former text, pronounced by a prompting priest at the mingling of wine and water, a rite which occurs twice in the “masiqta of the sixty”, the masiqta to be performed by the šualia.
According to notes taken down by myself from Hirmiz, the words written in the dust were seven times three, that is twenty-one. I am convinced that I misunderstood my informant. He probably meant that seven words were written and then obliterated by the rba three times daily, that is at the three obligatory prayer-hours when the Rahmia must be recited. This was done that the šualia might memorise words, which did not appear in the canon but must be silently recited.

The scribe of Or. 6593 when inserting them into his copy of the text, knew that there were seven but, not quite certain of them when writing them in for the first time in the manuscript, telescoped two words into one. (Certain careless features in Or. 6593 show him to have been a hasty and by no means faultless copyist!) The first version he wrote was

                 Bil mikal ubil mištia ulh bilmirmia riha

By making a single word of bil mirmia he achieved the right number of words. In his second version he did better.

                Bil mikal ubil mištia ub’il mirmia riha

By omitting ulh he also changed the sense. It seems likely that, like myself when I first read the words, he took Bil to mean “Bel” i.e. Jupiter, a misapprehension which shows that he was probably more skilled in the art of astrology than in the high profession to which he was called. Any yalufa (literate, usually of priestly birth) can read the astrological codex, and is often asked for advice as to lucky or unlucky days and so forth. At the same time, propitiation of the planets is forbidden by religion and their worship condemned.

The planets, known as the šibiahia (seven brothers) are, indeed, considered little better than demons since actions swayed by emotion are harmful to the soul, and faults committed under planetary influence must be expiated after death in the matarata, realms equivalent to purgatories. The first version seemed to mean “Eating Bel and drinking Bel, and to him, Bel, casting incense”. That such words should be said at the most solemn moment of the masiqta was obviously impossible.

The second attempt of the yalufa or šualia to spell the formula he heard, or remembered, provides a key to understanding it. He begins with the misspelling Bil, but renders the word at its third repetition as b’il, which shows that the b is a prefix, ‘in’, so that b’il means “in ‘it” (or “with ‘it”).

The meaning still appeared doubtful, 'il appears in Mandaic literature as a Jewish name for God, and as such, is not esteemed; indeed, in one magic text he is addressed as a demon. The name occurs only exceptionally in a non-polemical sense as “God”, and in the canonical prayerbook appears in what is almost a quo-tation from Psalm 22, or from Mark xv 34. During the long prayer No. 75, Ruha, a personification of the emotional and passionate side of human nature, cries out like Sophia in the Christian-gnostic Pistis Sophia, lamenting in agony her fallen nature.

                Spirit (ruha) lifted up her voice:
                She cried aloud and said ‘My Father, my Father,
                Why didst Thou create me?
                My God, my God (‘il, ‘il), my allah
                Why hast Thou set me afar off?

Had the seven words been inserted at the moment when the celebrant consumes the pihta and drinks from the chalice, the words written in the dust might be taken to mean “eating and drinking God” in the sense that a Christian uses this metaphor for the act of communion in the mass. They are not applied to such a stage in the masiqta, but are inserted at the moment of the hieros gamos,’ the moment when the water is poured into the cup, an action which, according to the older and secret commentaries of the Mother ). Further, there is the difficulty of the expression b’il mirmia riha, for ‘Casting incense in (or with) El’ is meaningless.

‘il, however, means also ‘on’, ‘upon’, ‘above’, ‘the above’, not only in Mandaic, but in Aramaic (see Jastrow p. 1069, Levy’s Chaldäisches Wörterbuch, p. 215). If b’il be accepted as the prob-ably correct spelling of Bit, the sentence reads grammatically as “eating in the Above, drinking in the Above and casting incense in the Above”, meaning that in the celestial ether-worlds there are functions which correspond to eating, drinking and worshipping on earth.

The context in Or. 6592 (seep. 25 of the translation) indicates that just before the commingling of water and wine takes place, the celebrant is to take morsels from the top and bottom fatiria) of the pile before him and to add these to the selected wafer, the pihta. He thus expresses the unity of all souls, living and departed, with that of the soul especially commemorated. The repeated mention of “Water into wine, water into wine” connects the souls which the fauna represent and that of the person for whom the masiqta was commemorated, with the mystical Body (‘stun) of Adam, “All-Humanity” the generation of which by the Father in the Womb of the Mother) is reenacted in the commingling. The pihta is dipped into the wine-bowl, and swallowed, symbolising laufa, ultimate union of microcosm with macrocosm, for

Passages in sacred texts represent the blessed departed on their journey to the worlds of light sojourning for a time in Mšunia Kušta ), an Elysium, in which they eat from heavenly trees



There they:

Tiny morsels of fruit and vegetable put by the celebrant on each fatira when adding it to the pile as well as upon that selected for the pihta represent this heavenly food, and the seven words whispered by the celebrant refer to it.

The celebration of the masiqta is the culmination of the new priest’s ordeal. If he has celebrated it without any error, he is henceforth recognised as a true malka, as a king, son of kings. From now on he enters his kingdom.

lt is today, however, a kingdom that is crumbling. Disintegration had already set in when I first knew the Mandaeans. They had begun to neglect ritual rules, they had become accustomed to wear coloured clothes, cut their hair, and neglect baptism. Nevertheless, at Parwanaiia) there was a stream of baptizands. People when sick still went to their priest for exorcism, for medicines are forbidden. Few went to school, and most Mandaeans lived by crafts such as that of silversmith and boat-building.

Two generations have now known free education, easy transport, cinema, television, and prosperity. Boys enter the professions, serve in the army, travel, and desert the marsh villages for Baghdad and Basrah. Many are employed by the oil companies. Priests I knew as young men are now old, and those I knew as old are dead. Their sons are not becoming priests, and politics have usurped the place of religion. The extinction of the priesthood will mean the death of a gnostic religion, which has miraculously survived into our age. The handful of priests who still survive perform marriages and carry our death ceremonies. Few masiqtas are celebrated. They supplement their scanty fees by other work. Only a very few aging priests are sincere in their profession.

Kingship is near its end, and before long no more “coronations” will take place.