Apam Napat is a deity in the Indo-Iranian pantheon associated with water. His names in the Vedas, Apā́ṁ Nápāt, and in Zoroastrianism, Apąm Napāt, mean "child of the waters" in Sanskrit and Avestan respectively. Napāt ("grandson", "progeny") is cognate with Latin nepos and English nephew. In the Rig Veda, he is described as the creator of all things. In the Iranian tradition, he is also called Burz ("high one," ) and is a yazad.

Alongside Mithra, Apąm Napāt maintains order in society, as well as Khvarenah, by which legitimate rule is maintained among the Iranian peoples. It is his duty to distribute water from the sea to all regions. and comparison with other Indo-European texts, have led some to speculate about the existence of a Proto-Indo-European myth featuring a fire deity born from water.

Other such mentions include the ninth-century Skaldic poem Ynglingatal, which uses the kenning sævar niðr 'kinsman of the sea' to refer to fire, and an old Armenian poem in which a reed in the middle of the sea spontaneously catches fire, from which springs the hero Vahagn, with fiery hair and eyes that blaze like sun.

Conjectured original fireless myth

Whether fire was an original part of Apam Napat's nature remains a matter of debate, especially since this connection is absent from the Iranian version. Hermann Oldenberg believed Apam Napat was originally an independent water deity who later came to be associated with Agni, in part because of an ancient Indian belief that water contained fire within itself,

'Swamp gas' conjecture

Based on the idea that this fire-from-water image was inspired by flaming seepage natural gas, attempts have been made to connect the name "Apam Napat" to the word "naphtha", which passed into Greek – and thence English – from an Iranian language.

However, there is only a modest amount of evidence for a link between the sacred fires of Iranian religion and petroleum or natural gas – although the account of the blowing of the 3 sacred fires out to sea from the back of the ox Srishok where, unquenched, they continue to burn on the water is suggestive – particularly in relation to hydrocarbon deposits in the Southwestern part of the Caspian Sea, exploited currently by the Absheron gas field near Baku in Azerbaijan.

The etymology of the word "naphtha" has been claimed likely to relate to the Akkadian napṭu, "petroleum".

See also

  • Ateshgah of Baku
  • Atropatene
  • Baba Gurgur
  • Eternal flame
  • Neptune
  • The Land of Fire
  • Yanar Dag

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