Manāt
Manāt (مناة), Old Hejazi: Manōt (منوٰة), Palmyrene: Manawat (مناواة), is the goddess of fate, fortune, time, death, and destiny and She also plays an important role in the Ancient Arabian understanding of time and fate. 53:19-20 "So have you considered Allat and Alʿuzza? and Manōt, the third - the other one?" Well, let us consider Manāt, who was revered by Arabs, particularly by the Aws and Khazraj tribes as well as Quraysh. The adherents made sacrifices to Manāt and had their own family idols of Manāt in their homes. She's pretty similar to the Greek Moirai, the three sister goddesses who represent fate. She represents *manāyā (*destiny) and She visits those who are dying or brings death closer to people. This isn't exactly dahr, it's more about individual fate or the preordained death of each individual while dahr or zamān is universal fate, or the impersonal fate of everyone. Dahr is fate-as-time that changes and wears things down while manāyā is fate-as-death. In the Greek tradition destiny was represented as a thread spun from a spindle while in pre-Islamic poetry we also see the archetype of rope connected to destiny as previously discussed. The poet Ṭarafa bin al-‘Abd stressed that human beings are linked to death by rope:
By your life, swear that Death, so long as he misses a strong man, is surely as the loosened halter, both folded ends of which are in the hands of the owner of the animal.
So that, if he wishes, on any day, he leads him off his life by his reins. And he who is tied by the rope of death, will have to submit.
Although manāyā itself was seen negatively and could not be pleaded with, the Goddess of manāyā, Manat, was worshipped and respected. The name Manat is generally thought to be derived from the same root manāyā comes from, m-n-y, which is often associated with counting or portioning out, implying individual fate has a determined portion for each person, and eventually reckoning the days of one's life and death across Semitic languages. This portioning out of days is mentioned by Abīd ibn al-’Abras:
The days of man are numbered to him, and through them all, the snares of Death lurk by the warrior as he travels perilous ways.
And he who dies not today, yet surely his fate it is, tomorrow to be ensnared in the nooses, his fate it is
The root itself means predestinate and is also cognate with Meni, a Canaanite deity. Manat finds Her Hellenistic counterparts in the Greek Tyche and Latin Fortunae, Goddesses of fortune. In Palmyra, Allat is found seated with Tyche and in the Nabataean temple of Khirbet Et-Tannur we find Nike holding up a bust of Tyche. Manat is also similar to the Greek Moirai and Latin Parcae, personifications of destiny. The Moirai personified the inescapable destiny of each individual and spun, measured, and cut the thread of life. Although they came to be synonymous with death and ruin they were still popular figures of cultic worship with sanctuaries where people made offerings and sacrifices at festival times in places like Athens, Delphi, Olympia, and Sicyon. Langdon argues that both the Greek Moirai, Tyche-Fortuna and the Arabian Manat are directly connected to Ishtar and her titles *ilat Menulim, "*Goddess of the fate of refusal," and ilat Menuanim, "Goddess of the fate of consent," and therefore the origin of the mythology of fate traces back to the cult of Ishtar or shares the same Semitic roots. But unlike Allat or Al-'Uzza, where we have Greek bilingual inscriptions equating them with Athena and Aphrodite respectively, there's no inscription equating Manat with the Moirai or Tyche or any another divinity.
In Nabataea, mentions of Manat are restricted to the northern Hejaz where She is mentioned in five Hegra tomb inscriptions. It must be significant that in four of these inscriptions She immediately follows the God Dushara and in three of the four no other deity is mentioned. The pair are also found together in an inscription just outside of Hegra in Jabal Ithlib. One inscription invokes Her with A'ra, a deity from Bostra that was identified with Dushara. Another invokes Her before Allat. Most inscriptions in Hegra's tombs are about cursing those who might tamper with the tombs such as one in which Manat, Dushara and a mysterious deity named Qaysha are called on to "curse anyone who sells this tomb or buys it or gives it in pledge or makes a gift of it or leases it." Qaysha is also closely associated with Manat and He appears only once in an inscription alone. He had a temple in Hegra but appears nowhere else in Nabataea. In two inscriptions (H 8 and H 16) we hear of mnwtw wqyšh "Manat and Her Qaysha." Qaysha might mean spouse or measure so its possible Qaysha was a consort of Manat as His name suggests. Measure might also be a reference to the measuring out of manāyā or the thread of fate. This is just speculation on my part and it should be kept in mind that Manat also had a special relationship with Dushara as pointed out above. Qaysha was only worshipped in Hegra and must be a local deity.
In Tayma, Manat is called 'lht 'lht', Goddess of Goddesses. Manat is found more in theophoric names than in prayers, however, especially in Dedan where we find 10 different forms of personal names that have Manat but only one prayer (JS 177). Manat is absent from Nabataea outside the northern Hejaz. There are no prayers to Manat in Safaitic but Manat does show up in two theophoric names. Outside of Nabataea, Manat was popular among Thamudic-writers across the peninsula and was frequently invoked in prayers. She is even called st slm mnwt, the Lady of Peace, Manat. Although She was not known in the northern centers of Nabataea, Manat is attested in Palmyra, often invoked with the God Ba'al Hammon. Inscriptions in the Temple of Bel mention the Arabian Manat along with the Aramaean Agibol, Babylonian Herta and Nanai, and Canaanite Reshef among others reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of the city. Manat and Ba'al Hammon were brought to Palmyra by the tribe Banu Agrud and were considered the Gads (Fortunes) of that tribe. Manat's cult even traveled with the Roman army and we find an inscription mentioning Her with Ba'al Hammon in Hungary, Roman Dacia, written by a Palmyrene. In South Arabia worship of Her was virtually non-existent aside from one inscription in Ma'in from the 5th century BC.
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