Note
Shing Moo and Ma Tsoopo of China
The name of Shing Moo, applied by the Chinese to their "Holy Mother," compared with another name of the same goddess in another province of China, strongly favours the conclusion that Shing Moo is just a synonym for one of the well known names of the goddess-mother of Babylon. Gillespie (in his Land of Sinim) states that the Chinese goddess-mother, or "Queen of Heaven," in the province of Fuh-kien, is worshipped by seafaring people under the name of Ma Tsoopo. Now, "Ama Tzupah" signifies the "Gazing Mother"; and there is much reason to believe that Shing Moo signifies the same; for Mu was one of the forms in which Mut or Maut, the name of the great mother, appeared in Egypt (BUNSEN'S Vocabulary); and Shngh, in Chaldee, signifies "to look" or "gaze." The Egyptian Mu or Maut was symbolised either by a vulture, or an eye surrounded by a vulture's wings (WILKINSON). The symbolic meaning of the vulture may be learned from the Scriptural expression: "There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen" (Job 28:7). The vulture was noted for its sharp sight, and hence, the eye surrounded by the vulture's wings showed that, for some reason or other, the great mother of the gods in Egypt had been known as "The gazer." But the idea contained in the Egyptian symbol had evidently been borrowed from Chaldea; for Rheia, one of the most noted names of the Babylonian mother of the gods, is just the Chaldee form of the Hebrew Rhaah, which signifies at once "a gazing woman" and a "vulture." The Hebrew Rhaah itself is also, according to a dialectical variation, legitimately pronounced Rheah; and hence the name of the great goddess-mother of Assyria was sometimes Rhea, and sometimes Rheia. In Greece, the same idea was evidently attached to Athena or Minerva, whom we have seen to have been by some regarded as the Mother of the children of the sun. For one of her distinguishing titles was Ophthalmitis (SMITH'S Classical Dictionary, "Athena"), thereby pointing her out as the goddess of "the eye." It was no doubt to indicate the same thing that, as the Egyptian Maut wore a vulture on her head, so the Athenian Minerva was represented as wearing a helmet with two eyes, or eye-holes, in the front of the helmet. (VAUX'S Antiquities)
Having thus traced the gazing mother over the earth, is it asked, What can have given origin to such a name as applied to the mother of the gods? A fragment of Sanchuniathon, in regard to the Phoenician mythology, furnishes us with a satisfactory reply.