Matronae Aviaitinehae

The Aviaitinehae are matrons that have only been handed down through a Roman consecration stone from Haus Bürgel near Düsseldorf .

Discovery and Inscription

In the 1850s, the stone in the west wall of the Maternus Chapel was discovered as a construction; There, in the vicinity of the manor, other matron and votive stones, or inscription carriers, were also found in some cases ( see image links under web links ).

The stone (38 × 41 cm with leaf and bud decoration on the right narrow side) was consecrated to the Matronae Rumanehae in company with the Aviaitinehae and is placed in the context of the other "Rumanehae stones" around the year 200 AD. The inscription is laid out in the usual capitalis in six lines and is damaged, especially with regard to the reading of the name of the Aviaitinehae (lines 3-4), there were deviations in older research.

"Matronis / Rumnehis / item Aviaiti / nehis C (aius) Iul (ius) / [V] italis d (onum) d (edit)"

"The Matronen Rumanehae as well as the Aviaitinehae as a gift [by] Caius Iulius Vitalis"

Siegfried Gutenbrunner presented the sequence of uncertain readings together as: ITAMAVIATI, ITEM AVILAITI, FEM AVIAITI. Max Ihm read the nickname as "Maviaitinehae"; Kern, for example, read the inscribed i as l to read Aulaitinehis . Today's reading has been scientifically established with Wilhelm Brambach and Karl Zangemeister in the CIL , and this reading has been confirmed to be correct by an autopsy by Robert Nedoma . Therefore the reading arises as AVIA I ṬINEHIṢ (dative plural) the I longa is part of the diphthong - ai -; the N and E of the suffix are ligated .

Epithet and interpretation

Due to the unclear reading of the epithet sequence for Gutenbrunner, he left open an etymologization and a more detailed interpretation.

Günter Neumann re- examined the form and, by separating the matron name suffix -nehae, first constructed the root word aviaiti- a two-part noun compound with a -ti formation in the second part / stem. For the first term of the compound, he uses germ. * Awi- = "sheep" and compares it with the feminine forms ahd. Ou , mhd. Ouwe . Furthermore with place names that show the tribe ( awi- ), such as the evidence from the 10th century Ouwiheim and for the 11th century Owiperch .

He puts the second link to germ. * Aihti = "possession" and the ti- formation to the root * aig- to got. Aihts , ahd. Êht = "Herrenland" as well as with ae. refers to the meanings of “property on land, house, residence” and “living property”, among others. Neumann derives the nickname from a place or settlement name that could carry the meaning of "property where there are (many) sheep" and puts his result on the 7th century place name Oxinvillare = "village that has many oxen" . In this context, he noticed a weak point that in relation to * aihti on behalf catalog of the Old High German period no Toponymbildungen with EHT is in short supply. Furthermore, he points out that with this interpretation the name for the first time does not depend on a "nature designation", the character of which requires a place name formation, but would show "a term of land law".

According to his strict system of deriving the majority matron name from a pre-Germanic (Gallo-Roman) place name based on hydronyms, Theo Vennemann uses a root word from an (unassigned) double hydronym * Av-i- (a) and * At (-a) . He constructs Αv-i + Ait-in-eh-ae and, according to Kern's reading, also includes * Au-l- (a) and compares his postulated stems with those in today's place names such as Euskirchen and Attendorn .

Nedoma recently opposed the usual topical derivation in order to achieve a “smoother” solution with a new determination based on the results of Neumann and Vennemann. He puts the first link AVI- to Germanic * awja and interprets it as Saṃprasārana-form, that is, that in inscription AVIAI- is formed by mutual exchange of the vowel i . From this he uses the root form * Awja-ai to * Awi-ai , which derives from the Indo-European verbal root * h ₁ eu̯H- = "help, promote, protect". He compares a single language, ancient Germanic sequels with supporting documents such as (runes) urnordische ᚨᚢᛅᚨ = auja ( Seeland-II-C (IK 98, KJ 127)) with the meaning of "happiness, help, protection" or gothic AWI liuþ, liud = "Thank you, thank you song ". Furthermore with old Germanic personal names such as Ostrogothic Augis ( Amaler genealogy ) and pre- old high German, runic awimund . Non-Germanic , Nedoma uses the Celtic theonym Avicanto and, in ancient Indian, Vedic ávati = “ please , help”. Furthermore, he modified Neumann's - ti formation ( * aiti ) by an n -extension to * aihtīn with the same meaning ("possession") to the full form * Awi-aihtīn (" possession of happiness, help, protection") + matron name suffix -eh -, -eih-. Nedoma therefore uses a promoting, protective function of the matrons as a naming motif.

See also

• List of matron names

literature

• Siegfried Gutenbrunner : Germanic god names of the ancient inscriptions. Max Niemeyer, Halle / Saale 1936, p. 177 f.
• Max Him : Aviaitinehae . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume II, 2, Stuttgart 1896, col. 2372.
• Max Ihm: The mother or matron cult and its monuments. In: Bonner Jahrbücher . Yearbooks of the Association of Friends of Antiquity in the Rhineland 83 (1887), p. 21, 153 no. 318.
• Robert Nedoma : Matronae Aviaitinehae. In: Die Sprache 48 (2009), pp. 118–126.
• Günter Neumann : The Germanic matron names . In: Matronen und related deities (= supplements to the Bonner Jahrbücher 44). Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne / Habelt, Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-7927-0934-1 , pp. 103-132 = Astrid van Nahl, Heiko Hettrich (eds.): Günter Neumann: Name studies on Old Germanic (= supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanic Antiquity, Vol. 59). de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020100-0 , pp. 253-289; here 276 f. ( Fee Germanic Altertumskunde Online at de Gruyter ).
• Hermann Reichert : Lexicon of Old Germanic Names , Volume I, Part 1: Text Volume, Part 2: Register. (= Thesaurus Palaeogermanicus , 1,1,2). With the collaboration of Wilibald Kraml and Robert Nedoma. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1987–1990, ISBN 978-3-7001-0931-0 , ISBN 978-3-7001-1718-6 .
• Rudolf Simek : Lexicon of Germanic Mythology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 368). 3rd, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-520-36803-X , pp. 34, 353.
• Theo Vennemann : Morphology of the Lower Rhine matron names . In: Edith Marold , Christiane Zimmermann (Hrsg.): Nordwestgermanisch (=  supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde ). tape 13 . de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 1995, ISBN 978-3-11-014818-3 , pp. 272-291; here 281 ( fee-based Germanic antiquity online at de Gruyter).

Web links

• Images of the matron stone

Remarks

1. ↑ CIL 13, 8529 , CIL 13, 8530 , CIL 13, 8532 , CIL 13, 8533 , CIL 13, 8534
2. ↑ CIL 13, 8531
3. ↑ Max Ihm: The mothers or matron cult and its monuments. Bonn, 1887 p. 153 no. 318.
4. ↑ H. Kern: Germaansche been in latijnsche Opschriften aan den Beneden-Rijn. 1872, p. 321.
5. ↑ CIRh 297
6. ↑ Alexander Riese: The Rhenish Germania in the ancient inscriptions. BG Teubner, Leipzig / Berlin 1914, p. 331 No. 3171 .
7. ^ Robert Nedoma: Matronae Aviaitinehae. In: Die Sprache 48 (2009), pp. 119f. Note 6.
8. ↑ For the specific criticism with reference to Vennemann's own system: Nedoma 2010, p. 120, note 8.
9. ↑ Winfred P. Lehmann : Gothic Etymological Dictionary. Brill, Leiden 1986, p. 52f.
10. ↑ Jordanes, Getica 14, 79 .
11. ↑ Runic inscription "Weimar II" buckle frame
12. ↑ CIL 12, 3077
13. ^ Robert Nedoma: Personal names in South Germanic runic inscriptions. Studies on old Germanic onomastics I, 1, 1. (= Indo-European library. 3rd row: Investigations ). Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 978-3-8253-1646-4 , p. 229ff.