Umay: The Sky-Mother Who Breathes Life into Newborns
Long before the steppe khagans carved their names in stone, they asked one goddess for permission to rule — a woman invisible to ordinary eyes, whose favor decided whether an empire had heirs.
In the 8th-century inscription of Kul Tigin, carved into stone on the Orkhon steppe, appears the phrase 'under the auspices of my mother who is like the goddess Umay' — a comparison meant as the highest honor a Turkic ruler's family could receive. Umay was not a minor spirit tucked into the margins of belief. Alongside Kök Tengri, the sky god, she was one of the only named divine beings to appear in the earliest Turkic stone monuments, a mark of just how central she was to the imagination of the steppe.
Her name itself carries the story of her power. The Old Turkic word umāy originally meant 'placenta' or 'afterbirth,' the physical evidence of new life entering the world. In Mongolian, umai still means 'womb.' Linguists have traced possible echoes of this root even further afield, hinting at an ancient human vocabulary built around birth itself. From this humble anatomical term grew the name of a goddess who governed fertility, motherhood, and the fate of every child.
Umay lived in the heavens, unseen by ordinary people, dwelling in a mythic 'temple' atop Mount Ymay-tas, sometimes called Amay. There, it was believed, the souls of babies not yet born waited to enter the world. She was imagined as a woman of middle age rather than youth or old age, dressed in white, her white and silver hair falling to the ground, sometimes bearing three horns, sometimes taking the shape of a bird with wings, often seen beside a swan or a graceful horse.
Her devotion was deeply practical. Turkic women tied small cradle-shaped charms to strings, offering them to Umay in hopes of conceiving a child — a custom echoed among the Tungusic peoples of southern Siberia and the Altay. According to the Divanü Lügat'it-Türk, women who worshipped Umay were believed to bear sons. Those without children offered sacrifices to her, hoping to be remembered.
Umay's presence was read in the smallest of signs. A sleeping baby's smile meant she was near; a baby's tears meant she had gone. If she stayed away too long, the child grew ill, and shamans were called upon to summon her back. In her darker aspect, when she abandoned a household, the resulting child deaths were blamed on 'Kara Umay' — Black Umay — and she was said to send forth eerie, umacı-like beings associated with fear.
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