Ay Ata

Also Known As: also Ay Atam and Ay Baba, “Moon Father”; in Anatolian folk speech Ay Dede, “Grandfather Moon”
Region/Culture: Central Asia
Mythos: Turkish Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is the moon itself, male and cold, the night’s single lamp, and in the oldest telling that carries his name he is also the first human being, baked out of cave clay.
Role in Mythos: He stands opposite a female sun as her husband, brother or pursuer depending on who is telling it, and his changing face measures out pregnancy, sickness and the working of the dark.
Relation to Humans: Children born under a full moon were given his syllable in their names, and pregnancy was counted in his months rather than the sun’s. He was treated as holy without ever being petitioned as a god, which is why he has lullabies and no temples.

Rain came down the black mountain carrying silt, and it ran into a cave, and inside the cave it found a cleft in the rock roughly the shape of a man. The water sat in that hollow and thickened. Then the sun entered the sign of the Crab and its heat baked the mould hard, and after that the wind blew across the packed clay for nine months without stopping. Something stood up and walked out. The fourteenth-century cosmic epic that preserves this calls him Ay Ata, Moon Father, and it takes care to add that he came down off the high ground afterwards, looking for a place with better air and sweeter water.

The cave in that account is doing an obvious job. It holds the clay for nine months, warms it, and delivers it, and the old tellers knew exactly what they were describing. In the Turkic Mamluk version the same first man is Ay Ata and the woman shaped immediately after him is Ay Va, so the pair arrive already named for the moon before anyone in the story has looked up at it.

That is the part of him with the deepest roots, and it is not the part people repeat. What circulates instead is a moon god, and the shape of that god is worth getting right, because the moon in Turkic tradition is stubbornly male in a way that surprises readers raised on Greek and Roman habits. The sun is the woman. She is the source of life, so she is the mother, and the moon is her cold consort, her brother, her husband or the lover who cannot catch her. Turkic tellings that reverse this and make the sun male are rare enough to be worth remarking on.

They were married, in one account, and they quarrelled. She picked up a handful of mud, or cow dung in the blunter versions, and threw it into his face. The marks never came off. Anyone can check the story against the sky on a clear night, which is presumably the point.

Other tales explain him differently. At the beginning the two lights burned equally bright, and God ordered part of the moon’s brightness taken away and added to the sun so that day and night would stop looking alike. In another they are a boy and a girl running from a cruel mother, who drink from a spring on a stranger’s advice and go up into the sky as stars. In most of them they chase each other endlessly without meeting. One reading says they do meet, briefly, during an eclipse. Another says they will be reunited on the last day and not before.

Eclipses had a harder explanation as well. In the Altai the seven-headed ogre Yelbeghen came for both lights out of spite and swallowed them, and when the moon went dark people said plainly that Yelbeghen had eaten it again. The remedy was noise.

His powers all follow from being the only light in a dangerous night. Illness was expected to sharpen after dark and to kill more often. Witches and spirits timed their work by his phases. Against all of that he was the lantern, and people watched him closely enough to give his three ages distinct characters: the new moon a modest and unspoiled child, the full moon a broad good-natured parent, the old moon wise and gone sour, quarrelsome and spiteful in its last nights before it died and was born again. Human beings were held to carry a hidden lunar force of their own, called aysar, and since pregnancy runs to nine of his months rather than the sun’s, births were expected at the full. Girls born then were named Aynur, Aysun, Aylin, Aysu, so that the syllable travelled down the generations attached to living people.

His limits are just as plain. He is the lesser light and always was, docked of half his brightness by decree to make the night legible. He is eaten on a schedule. He empties out completely once a month. He never catches his wife. And there is a deeper limit that scholarship has been firm about: the Turks held the sun and moon sacred as celestial spirits beneath the tent of the sky, but they did not make them gods. He was holy without ever quite being divine.

The exception is real but narrow. Uyghur rulers took throne names built on Ay Tengri, so that Qutlugh II, who reigned from 795 to 808, styled himself great-born at the Moon God, and Manichaean prayers in Old Uyghur ask the visible Moon god to save us. Manichaeism gave the moon a genuine divine office, and the wording followed the religion in. The Altun Yaruk, working the other way, is explicit that the sun is not a god but only a god’s light.

The moon also runs through Oghuz genealogy, though not the way the internet has it. Oghuz Khan’s mother in the Uyghur-script epic is Ay Kagan, Moon Khan, and his father is Kara Han; his second son is Ayhan. Popular retellings that promote a moon god to Oghuz’s father have quietly swapped a mother for a deity.

Which brings up the thing that has to be said. The tidy pantheon in which Ay Ata is a moon god living on the sixth level of the sky, formally married to the sun goddess Gun Ana, is not an ancient record. It comes very largely from Deniz Karakurt’s self-published Turk Soylence Sozlugu of 2011, a dictionary that gathered scattered Turkic material into a neat Tengrist family tree and was distributed free online, from where it was copied into English almost wholesale. The neatness is the tell. A rival list, equally popular, makes the moon a goddess called Yalchuk married to a sun god called Koyash, which is the same arrangement inverted. Both cannot be what the old Turks believed. What the old Turks actually left is rougher and better: a cold male moon, a hot female sun, a quarrel that left marks, bulls sacrificed at the equinoxes, and a man made of mud in a cave who was named for the moon before he ever saw it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ay Ata in Turkic mythology?

Ay Ata is the Moon Father of Turkic tradition, a male moon set opposite a female sun. In the oldest material carrying the name he is also the first human being, formed from clay in a mountain cave and named Ay Ata or Ay Atam. The familiar Turkish folk form of the name is Ay Dede, Grandfather Moon.

Is Ay Ata really an ancient Turkic god?

Only partly. Turkic peoples treated the sun and moon as sacred celestial spirits rather than gods, and the specific figure of Ay Ata as a moon god enthroned on the sixth level of the sky, married to the sun goddess Gun Ana, comes chiefly from Deniz Karakurt’s self-published Turk Soylence Sozlugu of 2011. The genuinely old attestations are the first-man creation legend, the folk figure Ay Dede, and the Uyghur royal and Manichaean use of Ay Tengri, Moon God.

Why is the moon male and the sun female in Turkic myth?

The sun is understood as the source of life and is therefore imagined as a mother, which leaves the moon as her cold male counterpart. The two appear as husband and wife, as brother and sister, or as lovers who chase each other and never meet. Turkic tellings that reverse the genders are unusual.

What causes the dark marks on the moon in Turkish folklore?

One widely told story says the Sun and the Moon were married and quarrelled, and the Sun threw a handful of mud, or in blunter versions cow dung, into her husband’s face. The stains stayed. A separate legend explains the moon’s dimness by saying God removed part of its light and gave it to the sun so that day and night could be told apart.

Was Ay Ata the father of Oghuz Khan?

No. In the Uyghur-script epic of Oghuz Khan his father is Kara Han and his mother is Ay Kagan, Moon Khan, while his second son is named Ayhan. Retellings that make a moon god Oghuz Khan’s father have confused the moon-named mother for a deity.