Manuscript ligature question

Greek Learning Greek
1

Reading through the British Library Manuscript 11884 of Anabasis, I couldn’t make out the third word from this image.

The text should be: ἡ δὲ μήτηρ ἐξαιτησαμένη

However μήτηρ looks more like μᾶρ. Is that some abbreviation or ligature that I’m not aware of?

From a little further along in the text is this form, which looks like ἡ μῆρ. μηρ makes more sense to me as an abbreviation than μᾶρ. Maybe there some relation to the nomina sacra?

2

μήτηρ, πάτηρ, ἄνθρωπος, etc, are regular targets of nomina sacra. The name there obviously slightly misapplied. Often they decline, so something like πας (with the macron) could be πατρός. Here you have μαρ with the line for NS and the accent.

PS: If your question is why is it μαρ and not μηρ, I do not know, but it does indeed seem quite obviously μαρ.