Amtlai

By Joey Soloway

Amtlai

AMTLAI is the little known, entirely ignored, actually written-out-of-the-bible actual Mother of Abraham. Some say she raised Abraham on her own within her moon-based, goddess-worshipping Pagan religion before the well known encounter between Abraham and his father, Terach, around the idols in his shop. There is so little known (or asked) about Amtlai that a cursory google will confirm her invisibility. Muslims call her Umthallah, and Jewish spellings vary as Amtalai or Amtali. Her erasure and our collective forgetting to ask about the matriach of a matriarchal religion is inspiring scholars to investigate her life, her beliefs, and her death. Her mother, KARNEBO or Carnebo, grandmother of the Jewish and Muslim people, has been similarly erased, but both of their names have turned up recently in prayers to be uttered as spells for health and protection against plague.