Glossary

Artemis temple remains at Sardis, ancient Lydia's capital. This temple postdates Gyges; the photograph locates the site rather than his reign

Site

Lydia

Ancient kingdom in western Anatolia with its capital at Sardis; neither a modern state nor a synonym for Magog.

صيغ للاسم: Lydia

Gold stater issued in the name of Lysimachus, 286–281 BCE; the horned head is Alexander, not Lysimachus. The Met, 52.127.4

Person

Lysimachus

A successor of Alexander who ruled Thrace; his coins showed Alexander with Ammon’s horn.

صيغ للاسم: Lysimachus، Lysimachos

Funerary papyrus fragment depicting judgment before Osiris, Egypt, ca. 230–150 BCE; Metropolitan Museum 66.99.142. The scale contains a small figure of Maat

Entity

Maat

Ancient Egyptian right order, truth and rectitude, also divinely personified; represented in heart-weighing by a feather or a goddess’s figure.

صيغ للاسم: Maat، Ma’at

Modern conceptual illustration evoking the boat, horned fish, seeds and mountain in Manu traditions, especially the epic version; not an ancient artifact or documented location. © IL Archive, CC0

Person

Manu, Survivor in Indian Flood Traditions

A central human figure in several Sanskrit accounts of the flood and human renewal; his position and role differ across the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, Mahābhārata and Purāṇas.

صيغ للاسم: Manu، flood survivor Manu

A wild-boar sculpture from Göbekli Tepe in a Şanlıurfa Museum display. It illustrates the animal imagery Marc Verhoeven discusses, not his portrait and not the central pillars

Person

Marc Verhoeven

An archaeologist at RAAP in the Netherlands who on 13 June 2025 published a study of humans and animals in Göbekli Tepe’s imagery.

صيغ للاسم: Marc Verhoeven

Perkins Library at Duke University in the United States, dated 10 November 2006 in the source record. The photograph shows part of the university setting associated with Marc Zvi Brettler’s work in Judaic and Hebrew Bible studies

Person

Marc Zvi Brettler

Hebrew Bible scholar and professor emeritus at Duke, studying biblical texts historically and literarily.

صيغ للاسم: Marc Brettler، Marc Zvi Brettler

Modern guide to Marduk: Babylon, cosmic ordering, a creation plan executed by Ea, and connections to Nibiru and Jupiter. No claim to depict the god’s appearance

Entity

Marduk

Babylon’s god, elevated with the city’s history. Enuma Elish celebrates his rise and cosmic ordering; sources associate him with Nibiru and Jupiter. Earliest origins and functions remain uncertain.

صيغ للاسم: Marduk، Merodach

Ruins of the palace associated with Zimri-Lim at Mari, Tell Hariri. A photograph of the setting of the royal archives, not a reconstruction of its ancient appearance

Site

Mari

An ancient city and kingdom on the Euphrates, at Tell Hariri in eastern Syria.

صيغ للاسم: Mari، Tell Hariri

Ninth-century North African Qur'an folio with Sura 54:13–27. It illustrates later manuscript transmission, not Dhul Qarnayn's passage or Marianna Klar. Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.39.2.a

Person

Marianna Klar

Scholar of Quranic narrative in its late-antique literary contexts.

صيغ للاسم: Marianna Klar

Person

Mary Dzon

Medieval-literature scholar who studied Jesus and clay birds across traditions.

صيغ للاسم: Mary Dzon

Modern diagram of evidence relevant to the marziḥu; no reconstruction of El’s feast, guest count or ritual

Entity

Marziḥu

A banqueting institution or association in Ugaritic documents, with religious functions not reducible to one ritual.

صيغ للاسم: marziḥu، marzihu، marzeaḥ

Modern diagram of Deuteronomy 32:8: sons of Israel in the Masoretic text, sons of God in 4QDeutj, and angels of God in a common Greek reading. The variant alone does not establish that the Most High and Yahweh are distinct. Not a manuscript photograph

Entity

Masoretic Text

A Hebrew textual transmission and reading tradition, compared in textual criticism with ancient manuscripts and translations.

صيغ للاسم: Masoretic Text

Modern comparison of Enoch 8/10, Jubilees 10 and 1QM 13. Not one figure’s transformation. Jubilees 10:11 uses Satan in Mastema’s context; local overlap is not denied

Entity

Mastema

Leader of harmful spirits in Jubilees; requests some spirits and proposes Abraham’s test, subject to divine limits.

صيغ للاسم: Mastema، Mastêmâ

Modern conceptual illustration evoking the boat, horned fish, seeds and mountain in Manu traditions, especially the epic version; not an ancient artifact or documented location. © IL Archive, CC0

Entity

Matsya: The Saving Fish in Indian Traditions

The fish that saves Manu from the flood; the earliest surviving account leaves its divine identity unstated, the cited epic identifies Brahmā, and Purāṇic versions link it with Viṣṇu.

صيغ للاسم: Matsya، saving fish

The large statue of Ramesses II at Memphis/Mit Rahina, Egypt, photographed on 17 June 2007. It belongs to the New Kingdom in the thirteenth century BCE, one of the later phases in the city’s long history

Site

Memphis in Egypt

Memphis is an ancient Egyptian city near Mit Rahina south of present-day Cairo

صيغ للاسم: Memphis

Egyptian-alabaster vase shaped as a mother monkey holding her young, inscribed with King Merenre I’s name. The Met dates it to about 2255–2246 BCE; object 30.8.134. The royal inscription appears on the shoulder

Person

Merenre I

Merenre I was an Egyptian king of the Sixth Dynasty in the late third millennium BCE

صيغ للاسم: Merenre I

Merneptah Stele, JE 31408; photographed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in 2003. Perspective-corrected Wikimedia Commons version, reused unchanged

Artifact

Merneptah Stele

An Egyptian royal inscription containing an early external attestation of the name Israel.

صيغ للاسم: Merneptah Stele، Merenptah Stele

Mesha Stele, basalt, from Dhiban in Jordan, ninth century BCE; Louvre AO 5066 / KAI 181. Broken, reassembled and supplemented. Yahweh occurs in line 18 according to the published reading; no reading from the photograph is claimed

Artifact

Mesha Stele

Ninth-century BCE inscription of King Mesha of Moab; line 18 mentions Yahweh’s vessels, clear external evidence for the deity associated with Israel.

صيغ للاسم: Mesha Stele، Mesha inscription

The ziggurat of Ur in southern Iraq, in a modern photograph that includes restored parts of the structure. An example of a Mesopotamian site, not an image of the entire region or a reconstruction of all its periods

Site

Mesopotamia

A historical region associated with the Tigris and Euphrates, home to many societies and civilisations.

صيغ للاسم: Mesopotamia

Original conceptual illustration of a mid-cycle moon and tablet calendar; not an artifact photograph or reconstruction of a historical ritual. © IL Archive, CC0

Entity

Mesopotamian Hemerology

Texts assessing which days of a month suit particular actions, including warnings for some dates such as the seventh and fourteenth.

صيغ للاسم: hemerology، inauspicious days

Modern diagram of Metis’s role in Hesiod: pregnancy, a warning about succession, swallowing by Zeus and Athena’s birth from the head. Arrows order events; not an ancient image of the goddess

Entity

Metis

Divine figure and Athena’s mother in Hesiod; Zeus swallows her while pregnant to forestall a possible successor.

صيغ للاسم: Metis

Modern diagram of Michael: “Who is like God?”, with a human attestation in Numbers and a heavenly attestation in Daniel. Not an angel’s portrait or proof of a former Ugaritic deity

Entity

Michael / Mīkāl

Theophoric name asking who is like God; borne by humans and a heavenly figure in Daniel. It establishes no former Canaanite deity.

صيغ للاسم: Michael، Mīkāl

The Strand Building of King’s College London on 17 April 2020. The photograph illustrates the university setting associated with Michael Knibb’s work on the Old Testament and Ethiopic literature. He joined the college in 1964 and retired in 2001

Person

Michael A. Knibb

British scholar of early Jewish literature, Ethiopic versions and the Septuagint (1938–2023), known for work on Enoch.

صيغ للاسم: Michael Knibb، Michael A. Knibb

Person

Michael Beshay

Scholar of late-antique religions who studies traditions about Mary and Solomon across communities.

صيغ للاسم: Michael Beshay

Modern diagram of names in poetry and narrative. It draws no Midianite borders or certain Sinai/Paran locations, and does not equate a divine appearance with the origin of worship

Entity

Midian

Name for groups and a wilderness-associated landscape in Hebrew narratives; Moses’s link to its priest supports a hypothesis, not proof of Yahweh worship’s transfer.

صيغ للاسم: Midian، Midianites

Modern diagram of debate, showing arguments, politics and worship together. No claim that one decision immediately made all Christians agree

Entity

Modalism

Label for positions opponents argued erased Father/Son/Spirit distinction.

صيغ للاسم: modalism، Sabellianism، modalistic

Modern comparison of working definitions. Terms overlap and vary across scholars; arrangement does not date three successive stages for everyone

Entity

Monolatry

Worship of one deity without necessarily denying others; variable analytical term, not one uniform doctrine of all Israelites.

صيغ للاسم: monolatry، exclusive worship، exclusive Yahweh worship

Modern conceptual diagram: a single symbol illustrates the sole deity in the definition of monotheism. It is neither the historical symbol of a particular religion nor a sequence of religious development

Entity

Monotheism

Belief in a single God as the only deity, rather than merely the highest among several gods.

صيغ للاسم: monotheism

Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, photographed in 2013. 2 Chronicles associates Mount Moriah with the Temple site; this modern view illustrates that later association, not an independently located Genesis mountain

Site

Moriah

The land named in Genesis 22 as Abraham's destination; 2 Chronicles later associates Mount Moriah with the Jerusalem Temple site, not an independently located journey.

صيغ للاسم: Land of Moriah، Mount Moriah

K.3401 from Nineveh, a Neo-Assyrian witness to Sargon’s birth legend, British Museum. A copy later than the king, not Moses’ basket or an image of the infant. © Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.5

Person

Moses

Central figure in Exodus, Torah traditions and the Qur’an; childhood accounts differ in detail.

صيغ للاسم: Moses، Moshe

Modern diagram of passages read in the Guide; neither a portrait of Maimonides nor a summary of the entire book

Person

Moses Maimonides

Medieval Jewish thinker; wrote the Guide in Judeo-Arabic and examined incorporeality and attributes.

صيغ للاسم: Maimonides، Moses Maimonides، Rambam

Modern diagram of three points in Mot’s story; no proof of an annual agricultural rite or a complete revival mechanism

Entity

Mot

God of death in the Baal Cycle; an adversary who returns even after a violent attack.

صيغ للاسم: Mot، Motu

Jebel Aqra, also known as Mount Kasios, with the Mediterranean coast in the Syrian–Turkish area. Summer 2008 according to the photographer, Anthiok; the original August upload date does not establish the day of capture

Site

Mount Kasios — Jebel Aqra

Coastal mountain in the Syrian–Turkish border area, known as Jebel Aqra and by ancient names including Kasios.

صيغ للاسم: Mount Kasios، Jebel Aqra

Slopes of Mount Olympus, Greece, photographed in 2018. A geographical view; the gods’ residence in the epics belongs to their poetic representation of the world

Site

Mount Olympus

Mountain in northern Greece associated in ancient traditions with the divine community’s dwelling.

صيغ للاسم: Mount Olympus

The Green Dome and minarets of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, on 26 November 2025. This contemporary photograph shows part of the place associated with Muhammad’s life; the visible buildings reflect later architectural phases

Person

Muhammad, prophet of Islam

Muhammad is the prophet of Islam, living about 570–632 CE in the setting of Islam’s seventh-century emergence

صيغ للاسم: Prophet Muhammad، the Prophet Muhammad

Muses in a musical scene on an Attic white-ground pyxis, about 460–450 BCE; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 98.887. This caption leaves the depicted man’s debated identity open

Entity

Muses

A group of Greek divine figures associated with song and poetry.

صيغ للاسم: Muses

Clay tablet of Atraḫasīs at the British Museum. The photographer identifies it with the flood tradition, not the human-creation lines. Photograph: SpeakingArch, 2026 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; resized and converted to WebP for display

Entity

Namma

A goddess who asks Enki to relieve the gods’ labor in Enki and Ninmah.

صيغ للاسم: Namma، Nammu

Modern evidence comparison for Nanna, Ninlil and An, not divine portraits or birth order. Name clarity depends on sign and context

Entity

Nanna / Su’en / Sin

Moon god associated with Ur, with early name evidence that does not date every later myth.

صيغ للاسم: Nanna، Suen، Su’en

Cosin’s Hall on Palace Green in Durham, England. The original photograph dates from July 2006; this crop was made available later by the source. The building provides context for Durham University, where Nathan J. Chambers completed his thesis in 2017

Person

Nathan J. Chambers

Scholar of Genesis interpretation and Christian theology, studying Genesis 1 and creation from nothing.

صيغ للاسم: Nathan Chambers، Nathan J. Chambers

Aerial view of Shubayqa 1, northeast Jordan, Figure 1 in Richter et al. (2017), with a location map. Natufian architecture; no specific religious function is established

Period

Natufian culture

A late Epipalaeolithic Levantine archaeological culture, with some long-duration settlements before fully developed agriculture.

صيغ للاسم: Natufian، Natufians، Natufian culture