Gaf

Far below the earth, under layers of ground the colour of copper, the water is black. It hisses. It boils the way a cauldron boils and throws itself upward, and out of it, long before there was a human being to be afraid of them, climbed the giants of the dark. Two of them were called Gaf and Gafan.

The Mandaeans, the baptising people of the marshes and rivers of southern Iraq and Iran, set the story down in the fifth book of their great scripture, the Ginza Rabba. It is told by a visitor. Hibil Ziwa, a being of light, has been sent down through the worlds of darkness one at a time to learn what is brewing there, and he reports what he finds like a scout. He passes the world of Ruha. He passes the realm of Zartai-Zartanai, then the realm of Hag and Mag, and then, a distance below that which the text gives up trying to count, he comes to the world of Gaf and Gafan.

What he sees there is hard to hold in the mind. The pair are giants, and their shapes are somehow turned the wrong way about. They are like dragons. Their wives are like salamanders, ugly and twisted, with a chatter nobody can stand. Hibil Ziwa does not fight them. He speaks a binding over them, declaring them chained with the great fetter and tied up in their own sorcery and deceit, and he waits there unseen for ages before the mystery that travels with him tells him to move on.

That first glimpse makes Gaf half of a matched set, a male and a female power of darkness named in one breath. Mandaean priests who talked to the English scholar Ethel Drower in the 1930s still described them that way: Gaf and Gafan, male and female, counted among the five lords of the underworld alongside Krun, Shdum, Hag with Mag, and Zartai-Zartanai. Gafan was simply the female half of her lord.

Later in the same book, Gaf steps forward on his own, and he is easier to picture. He has a throne. He has a mother, Qin, the queen who is called Mother of Darkness, and two sisters, Ruha and Zahriel. The household sits together in the gloom, laughing and joking, restless with its own good looks. Qin proposes that her daughter Ruha be given to her brother. Both of them like the idea. Gaf tells his sister there is nobody like her, and from that day Ruha carries a child.

Then a stranger walks in. Hibil Ziwa has taken on the look of the dark ones, only more handsome than any of them, and he greets Qin as the great mother and asks for a daughter to marry. She takes him by the right hand to Gaf, and the visitor hails him as a mountain and a giant over them all, king of that world. Gaf does not follow a word of it. Qin has to explain. Once he understands, he jumps up from his throne, throws his arms round the man who has come to undo his family, and blesses his arrival.

So the lord of darkness plans a wedding. Gaf lays the marriage bed and hammers in the pegs of the bridal tent himself, and the giants of the place arrive with gold, silver, pearls, wreaths and golden cups to look at the groom. The bride is Zahriel. Hibil Ziwa will not eat or drink with them and keeps his distance from his new wife. He has come for secrets, and he gets them.

He also takes something Gaf never knew he could lose. Hibil Ziwa puts on the appearance of Gaf, goes to the pregnant Ruha, and tells her they are off to visit her parents in a world above. She follows her husband’s face out of her home. He shuts her in a world of her own, then goes back and locks the gate of Gaf and Gafan, moving its bolts and keys and sealing it with hidden names. When Ruha weeps in her prison, the figure who comes to comfort her again looks like Gaf. It is not him. The child she finally bears is Ur, the giant dragon who becomes king of the darkness, and from Ur and Ruha come the seven planets and the twelve signs of the zodiac. Gaf is grandfather to the sky’s whole machinery of fate, and he is not there for any of it.

The family tree does not sit still. One priestly scroll, the Baptism of Hibil Ziwa, makes Qin the consort of the great Gaf where the Ginza makes her his mother, and still calls Ur the eldest son Gaf begot. A storyteller of Drower’s acquaintance gave Ruha different parents and a different husband altogether, though he kept one telling detail: when Ruha set out, she was given a seal bearing the likeness of Gaf and of a scorpion to protect her on the road. No account says what became of Gaf after his gate was locked.

His strength is the strength of his element. He is huge, he is old, he rose from water that eats what it touches, and the arts the story credits to him and his kind are spellcraft and lying. He fathers the one creature the world of light takes seriously as a threat. Even shut away he keeps a place in the calendar: the last five days of the month Shumbulta were held to belong to the five lords of the underworld, Gaf and Gafan among them, and on those days no religious rite could be performed. The cult hut had to be consecrated afresh in the bright festival days that followed.

His limits are just as plain. He cannot see a being of light who chooses to stay hidden, even one sitting in his own hall. He is slow. He can be bound by words and locked in by names, and his own face can be worn by someone else to steal his wife. For a mountain and a king, he is remarkably easy to rob.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Gaf in Mandaean mythology?

Gaf is a giant lord of the World of Darkness in Mandaean belief. He is the brother and husband of Ruha and the father of Ur, the dragon king of darkness. His story is told in the fifth book of the Ginza Rabba, the main Mandaean scripture.

Who is Gafan?

Gafan is the female counterpart of Gaf. The two are named together as a pair of darkness giants who rose from black boiling water, and Mandaean priests described Gafan as the female half of her lord. No story gives Gafan a part separate from Gaf.

What does Gaf look like?

The Ginza Rabba says Gaf and Gafan are giants whose shapes are turned the wrong way about and who resemble dragons. Their wives are compared to salamanders. In a later scene Gaf sits on a throne, embraces a guest and sets up a wedding tent.

How is Gaf related to Ruha and Ur?

In the Ginza Rabba, Gaf is the son of Qin and the brother of Ruha, and Qin gives Ruha to him as a wife. Ruha becomes pregnant by Gaf and later gives birth to Ur. Another Mandaean text, the Baptism of Hibil Ziwa, calls Qin the consort of Gaf.

What did Hibil Ziwa do to Gaf?

Hibil Ziwa entered Gaf’s world in disguise and married Gaf’s sister Zahriel in order to learn the secrets of the darkness. He then took on Gaf’s appearance to lead the pregnant Ruha away, and he locked the gate of Gaf and Gafan with hidden names. Gaf never realised who his guest was.

Related Entries

Ruha, Ur, Hibil Ziwa, Manda d-Hayyi, Hayyi Rabbi, Ptahil, Abatur, Yushamin, Kingu, Tiamat