Summary
Mastiman is a god of the Moorish tribes of Tripolitania, known only from what the African poet Corippus says in his Latin poem Iohannis, around 550 CE, the poem from which Gurzil is also known. The poet makes him the Taenarian Jupiter, that is, the lord of the world of the dead, to whom human victims are slaughtered.
Corippus names him twice. The first time, the Byzantine general John's army meets the Moorish host; the priest of the Laguatan looses a bull in Gurzil's name as the first omen and a Roman horseman kills it; the war cries rise and the forest echoes them in the tongues of the tribes. The Moorish line shouts for Sinifere and for "fierce Mastiman", and the echo answers "Mastiman"; then they cry "Gurzil", and the hollow rocks give back "Gurzil". The second time, before the last battle, the Moors set up altars in their camp by night and drive their beasts round them, so that the blood runs over the meadows. Some sacrifice to Gurzil and to horned Ammon; others worship a god whom the Mazax take for fiery Mars and think mighty in war, Sinifere in Camps's reading of the line, where the 1820 text has "fiery" in place of the name; others sacrifice to Mastiman, which the Moorish peoples say is the name of the Taenarian Jupiter, to whom a victim of the human race is slaughtered with much blood. The poet cries out: what a crime! Groans fill the air; the priest drives the blade into the throats and urges the god with his voice, calling on him to come out through the dark shades and take the path of the sun; then they tear open the entrails of the beasts and ask them about fate. But the god stayed deaf to their chants, and no answer came to the priest.
The Taenarian Jupiter is a Latin poets' name for the lord of the dead. Taenarum is a cape in southern Greece where, says Apollodorus, is the mouth of the descent to the world of Hades, through which Heracles went down to fetch the hound of the underworld; Pindar calls it "the earthly mouth of Hades". So the editor of the 1820 edition wrote in his preface that the poem keeps the Moorish names of gods: Gurzil for Jupiter Ammon, and Mastiman for the Taenarian Jupiter, that is, Pluto. The historian Gabriel Camps calls Mastiman a god of the borders of Tripolitania whom Corippus calls fierce; the link to an African Pluto was proposed by Stéphane Gsell after a correction of the text, and Camps finds it uncertain; the name itself, he says, is clearly African.
The idea these accounts turn on is that the fighters buy their safety with blood. Before the battle the tribes stand between life and death: they slaughter cattle to Gurzil and Ammon and human beings to the lord of the dead, shout his name at the start of the fighting, and the priest calls on him to come out of the shades onto the path of the sun, from the world of the dead into the world of the living, to give his people an answer about their fate. Corippus is a Christian poet praising the general who defeated these tribes; he tells of their worship to mock it, and says the god did not answer.
We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. Corippus writes Mastiman with five consonants, m-s-t-m-n. These are, in order, the consonants of Arabic mustaʾman once its glottal stop has dropped, and Latin does not write the glottal stop. In Lane, istaʾmanahu is to ask someone for amān, protection and a promise of safety, and istaʾmana ilayhi is to enter within his protection. On this reading Mastiman is al-mustaʾman, the one of whom safety is asked, which is what the accounts make him: the lord of death who is called on at the start of battle and given victims by night so that he will keep his people from death. The root is that of Ammon, to whom sacrifice is made the same night: ʾ-m-n. The Amazigh Semitic-reading essay reads the syllable mas in the name of king Masinissa as "lord"; this meets the start of the name and leaves the rest unread.
Linguistic Root
| Form | Where it occurs |
|---|---|
| Mastiman | Iohannis 4.682 and 7.307 in the 1820 edition, 5.38 and 8.307 in modern editions |
| Mastimanque ferum | "and fierce Mastiman", in the war cry |
| Tenarium Iovem | "the Taenarian Jupiter", as the Moors called him in the poet's account |
The name Mastiman has five fixed consonants, m, s, t, m and n; mustaʾman has six, the fifth a glottal stop that drops in Latin, so the remaining consonants match the name's in order, and the vowels are close too: the long a of mas after the m, and the i of timan where Arabic has a after the t. The pattern istafʿala is Arabic and marks asking: istaghfara, to ask forgiveness; istaʾmana, to ask for safety; this is the reading's first limit, since no matching pattern is known in ancient Libyan. The second limit is that many names of Numidian and Moorish kings begin with the syllable mas, such as Masinissa and Masties, who left an inscription in the Aurès mountains, and the Amazigh essay reads that syllable as "lord"; the mas of Mastiman may be that syllable rather than the m and s of mustaʾman.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
Roman Pluto and Greek Hades receive the dead into a kingdom under the earth from which they do not return, whereas Mastiman's priest calls on the lord of the dead himself to come out of the shades onto the path of the sun and speak. In the East, Inanna goes down to Ereshkigal, queen of the dead, and comes out only by leaving a substitute in her place, as the Moors give the lord of the dead a human victim in place of themselves. Both stories belong to the descent to the underworld and who may come back from it.