Tabiti
Tabiti | |
---|---|
Fire, the hearth, society, kingship | |
Gender | Female |
Region | Scythic peoples |
Offspring | Papaios |
Equivalents | |
Greek equivalent | Hestia |
Hinduism equivalent | Agni |
Iranian equivalent | Atar |
Tabiti (
Name
The name Tabiti (
History
The connections of her name to fire and warmth, as well as her role as the primeval fire attest of the role of Tabiti as a primordial sovereign deity of fire derived from the common fire-deity of the Indo-Europeans, whose iterations included the
Cult
Functions
Tabiti was the primordial fire which alone existed before the creation of the universe and was the basic essence and the source of all creation, and from her were born Api (the Earth) and Papaios (Heaven).[4][5][7] This attests of the paramount role of the fire-deity in the Iranian pantheon as an omnipresent element, and was a concept which was also present among the Indo-Aryan pantheon, where Agni was the fire which could be found throughout the Cosmos and which permeated the whole Universe, including the worlds of the humans and of the gods.[4]
According to the Scythologist Dmitry Raevsky , the status of Tabiti as the incarnation of the primordial fire is confirmed by a story recounted by Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, in which a dispute arose between the Scythians and the Egyptians over which of them was the most ancient people, and which consisted of an argument by each side about whether the world was initially fully flooded by water or covered with fire, which Raevsky considered to respectively be references to Nānaw and Tabiti.[4]
As a goddess of the Hearth, Tabiti was the patron of society, the state and families who protected the family and the clan, and, as a symbol of supreme authority, she was assigned the superior position over the other gods through her role as the guardian of the king, due to which as well as her to link to the common Iranian cult of fire, she was connected to the importance of fire and of royal hearths in Iranian religions. The king's hearth was hence connected with Tabiti, and was therefore an inviolable symbol of the prosperity of his people and a token of royal power, and Tabiti herself was connected with royal power, as attested by the Scythian king
The hearths of Tabiti
The "hearths" (
Iconography
Due to being a deity representing an abstract notion of fire and divine bliss, Tabiti was not depicted in Scythian art, but was instead represented by the fireplace, which constituted the sacral centre of any community, from the family to the tribe.[5]
See also
References
- ^ West 2007, p. 267.
- ^ Encyclopedia of Religion 2005.
- ^ Cheung 2007, pp. 378–379.
- ^ a b c d e f g Raevskiy 1993, p. 15-23.
- ^ a b c d e f Ustinova 1999, p. 67-128.
- ^ Harmatta 1996, pp. 181–182.
- ^ a b c Cunliffe 2019, p. 265–290.
- ^ Safaee 2020.
- ^ MacLeod 2013, pp. 116–128.
- ^ Parzinger 2004, p. 104.
Sources
- Bukharin, Mikhail Dmitrievich [in Russian] (2013). "Колаксай и его братья (античная традиция о происхождении царской власти у скифов" [Kolaxais and his Brothers (Classical Tradition on the Origin of the Royal Power of the Scythians)]. Аристей: вестник классической филологии и античной истории (in Russian). 8: 20–80. Retrieved 2022-07-13.
- Cheung, Johnny (2007). Etymological Dictionary of the Iranian Verb. ISBN 978-9-004-15496-4.
- ISBN 978-0-198-82012-3.
- ISBN 978-9-231-02812-0.
- Jones, Lindsay; ISBN 978-0-028-65733-2.
- MacLeod, Sharon (2013). The Divine Feminine in Ancient Europe: Goddesses, Sacred Women and the Origins of Western Culture. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-476-61392-5.
- ISBN 978-3-406-50842-4.
- Raevskiy, Dmitriy (1993). ISBN 978-9-548-25002-3.
- Safaee, Yazdan (2020). "Scythian and Zoroastrian Earth Goddesses: A Comparative Study on Api and Ārmaiti". In Niknami, Kamal-Aldin; Hozhabri, Ali (eds.). Archaeology of Iran in the Historical Period. University of Tehran Science and Humanities Series. S2CID 219515548.
- Ustinova, Yulia (1999). The Supreme Gods of the Bosporan Kingdom: Celestial Aphrodite and the Most High God. ISBN 978-9-004-11231-5.
- ISBN 978-0-199-28075-9.