Abstract
The source from which the Mandaean king list was drawn was originally composed in Middle Persian and in the Pahlavi script, as is already evident from the names of the kings whose reigns are recorded within it, but it was not identical to the later Zoroastrian king list recorded in the same language and script. In the Pahlavi version underlying the Mandaic version, the years of Sagittarius evidently spanned 4,000 years from the death of Jamshid to the death of Alexander, from which event the years of Capricorn proceed. Subsequently, several rulers and their reigns were interpolated into the Mandaic account from different sources, resulting in the duplication of the reigns of Dahāg, Jamshid, and Ashak, and expanding the erstwhile “years of Sagittarius” well beyond their original 4,000. By that time, however, the Pahlavi glosses for the two zodiacal signs were no longer understood as such, and their names have survived purely as artifacts of the transliteration process.