In the third volume of his autobiography, ‘ Adus al-Sura , al-Koni wrote:
In the language of its ancient people, ‘Libya’ means ‘possessed by the spirit of the Goddess Yit’, in other words by that fi rst beloved goddess, who bore the name
‘Yit’, which signifi es unity, ‘Tanit’, which means possessor of unity, ‘Tannes’ who created in Egypt the Kingdom of the Delta, ‘Tunis’, and likewise Athena, as Herodotus, the father of history attested. 13
Some of Ibrahim al-Koni’s novels contain frequent references to Tanit. He has explained:
Th e name ‘Tanit’ combines two parts: tan , which means ‘possessor of ’ and it , which is a feminine marker. In its combined form, the word means ‘possessor of the feminine’. 14
Tanit is clearly a moon goddess, and her Greek counterpart would be Selene. In his encyclopedia, though, al-Koni said that Athena ‘is the desert Tanit, as Herodotus affi rms’. 15 Herodotus wrote:
Now, it seems likely that Athena’s clothing and aegis, as shown on her statues, were copied by the Greeks from Libyan women. 16
Paul Cartledge’s note for the translation by Tom Holland observes:
Diff usionistic theories were dear to H., who tended to favour the notion of Greeks as recipients rather than donors of seemingly shared cultural practices. 17
Similarly, al-Koni is fond of theories that highlight Tuareg culture. Herodotus apparently understood Athena, Tanit and Neith to be the same goddess, because he used ‘Athena’ to refer respectively to Tanit in a reference to Libyan sacrifi ces and to Neith with regard to one of her temples in Egypt. 18 Al-Koni holds that, in addition to being Athena, Tanit is Isis, Hathor and Anath. 19
Th e apparently idiosyncratic detail in al-Majus , that the Dervish used boiling hot olive oil to cauterize his groin when castrating himself, 20 takes on an added level of meaning when we fi nd that Kerényi wrote of Athena:
When called Pandrosos . . . she displayed herself under another, bright aspect, which was associated with the olive. A sacred olive grew on the Acropolis, in the temple of Pandrosos. 21
Vincent Scully also observed of Athena: ‘She brought the olive and was attended by the snake . . .’ 22 In short, the Dervish’s self- mutilation is linked to his worship of the Goddess.
In his encyclopedia, al-Koni said the olive is a sacred cure- all, ‘which all nations of the Mediterranean Basin have worshipped’. 23 In al-Majus , when the Dervish stole the olive oil from his foster mother, the author rhapsodized:
Olive oil – legends say it fl ows from majestic, age- old, pharaonic trees distributed around Jebel Nefousa like black stars – dark beads in prophets’ strings of prayer beads. 24
References to the goddess Tanit and to her symbol, the triangle, appear frequently in al-Koni’s novel Th e Seven Veils of Seth ( Bahth ‘An Makan al-Da’i‘ or In Search of the Lost Place , 2003). Th e oasis’ sage, Elelli, exclaims for example: ‘I swear by the supreme goddess Tanit that this is the way prophetic messengers speak.’ 25 Amghar, the chief merchant of the oasis, refers to Tanit’s control over fertility when he says: ‘I promised a banquet to the goddess Tanit if one of my wives became pregnant.’ 26 Isan, an avatar of the Egyptian god Seth, is portrayed in a fl ashback as married to a woman who identifi es herself as Tanit.
When he says to her, ‘I see you’re speaking with the certainty of a priestess,’ she replies,
‘I am woman. I am the feminine. I am the mother. I am the earth. I am the goddess Tanit, whose soul was born from her soul and who created the entire desert from her fl esh’. 27
When Isan’s wife kills their child and presents him with the baby’s corpse, this infanticide may echo child sacrifi ces to Tanit. In any case, the ancient mythic fi gures Seth and Tanit exert a magnetic force on the novel’s plot through their avatars.
Since Isan is Wantahet, who is both Set/Seth and Typhon, Isan’s wife corresponds to Typhon’s mate, Echidna, who in Greek mythology was half maiden and half serpent. Some of their off spring were monsters slain in memorable ways. 28 Kerényi described Echidna in this fashion:
She was born in a cave, the divine Echidna . . . In half of her body she was a beautiful- cheeked, bright- eyed young woman; in the other half she was a terrible, huge snake, thrashing about in the hollows of the divine Earth and devouring her victims raw. 29
Perhaps it is a coincidence, but in al-Majus the Fetishists’ god Amnay (a natural stone formation that resembles a man), eats maidens sacrifi ced to him when they are thrown live into his pit. Here is another reference to a serpent- linked goddess, and it parallels al-Koni’s repeated references to the hissing of Wantahet, as in Th e Scarecrow .
In al-Koni’s novel Anubis , it is Tanit, rather than a male god or demon, who has top billing. In New Waw , al-Koni includes at least three references to her. In one passage the excavator, who eventually digs the well that creates the oasis,
makes four triangles with pebbles of diff erent colors in order to symbolize Tanit.
White and grey pebbles are arranged around a cross formed from gold and black pebbles. Th ese stones form a Tanit mandala. 30 In his encyclopedia, al-Koni says that a cross in the Tifi nagh alphabet represents the ‘t’ feminine marker. 31 Th is symbol was also used as a camel brand in Azjirr, 32 as well as the triangle. People have used the combined cross and triangle as an amulet symbolizing the goddess. 33 Al-Koni explained:
Th e triangle as a sign of the goddess, then, is justifi ed by the derivation of the three essential elements compounded as the principle of nature as existence , whereas the spirit , represented as a metaphysical concept is justifi ed by the goddess’s second symbol, which takes the form of a cross. 34
Some of al-Koni’s novels are clearly set in a mythic, ancient past and others at some period since, including the present. A reader might suppose a reference to Tanit places a novel in the pre-Islamic past, but the author has instead insisted:
Th e descendants of these emigrants have not abandoned their belief in the Unitarian goddess even today – their embrace of religions with heavenly scriptures notwithstanding – and not merely because they recognized their Law and ancient Unitarian belief in these new religions, as we previously stated, but because their attachment to the Beloved Goddess became deeply embedded in their souls. 35
In the same volume, but in a diff erent passage, al-Koni affi rmed: ‘Th e people’s worship of the primal goddess has not been diminished by religious or ritual distance.’ 36
In another volume of his encyclopedia, al-Koni said that the goddess is A spiritual value . . . a lost paradise about which primitive man in ancient Egypt sang praises to Sau or Asahu and that the Tuareg shaped into tunes of yearning called Asahag . . . metaphysical yearning for a lost homeland . . . 37
In his encyclopedia, al-Koni dedicated a chapter to Sau and Asahu and said that Egyptologists have found a link between them and a three- star constellation that Egyptian priests believed was their ancient homeland. 38 Th e Tuaregs also considered these stars as their lost homeland and called their songs of longing Asahag . 39 In al-Majus , when the Dervish is castrating himself:
He saw the stars, those white olives, hermits’ companions, the guide to men eternally lost in the earth’s desert and the sky’s desert. 40
In a discussion of Tanit, al-Koni said that an individual Tuareg tribesman:
Always strove upward toward the sky . . . from which he derived a spiritual existence more precious than his bodily, physical, terrestrial existence, which he never considered anything but a real exile in contrast to his original paradise. 41 In Marathi Ulis ( Th e Elegies of Ulysses ) the hero fi nds solace in gazing at the stars of the Pleiades. 42
Finally, one of Tanit’s avatars in Tuareg folklore is Tannes. Al-Koni has said that comparison of the legend of Tannes and Wannes with that of Isis and Osiris shows that:
Tannes is Isis, as scholars have agreed and Wannes, which means ascent, is Osiris, whose name means descent – because ascending to the sky, speaking mythologically, is equivalent to descending to the netherworld.
Both legends feature ‘the feverish love of the sister for her mischievous brother and her death- defying struggle to rescue this love . . .’ . 43 In Tuareg folklore the molla- molla bird off ered the mother of the evil co- wife of Tannes to tell her a secret if she would share some of her food, but she refused and so ate her own daughter’s fl esh. 44 In al-Majus , the dervish alludes to this legend when Udad is about to eat the fl esh of his totemic bird, which taught him to sing. 45 Th e legend of Tannes is told in al-Koni’s early novel al-Bi’r ( Th e Well ), 46 and she appears with her brother, Atlantis, in the quartet al-Khusuf ( Th e Eclipse ) of which al-Bi’r is the fi rst volume. 47 In Marathi Ulis , Atlantis and Wannes are mentioned as alternative names for the brother for whom Tannes sacrifi ces her life. 48