Garmangabis

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Deae Garmangabis.jpg

Garmangabis ( Deae Garmangabi ) is the name of a Germanic goddess who has been handed down from the 3rd century by an inscription on a votive stone from the northern English town of Lanchester , Durham , south of Hadrian's Wall .

Discovery and Inscription

Deae Garmangarbi-Votivstein (narrow side left) .jpg

The votive stone was found in 1893 north-northwest in the immediate vicinity of the Roman camp "Longovicium" during construction work for water pipes and was first described scientifically in the same year. The stone has since been placed in the portal of the "All Saints" church in Lanchester.

The relatively large altar (137 × 61 cm) made of sandstone has survived almost unscathed, only on the back there is a major break in material on the right side. The stone is set at the base with a circumferential, offset base with relief profiles on the upper edge of the front and narrow sides. Above it is the narrower unmounted inscription panel and the capital, which is conspicuously decorated with round and star-shaped ornaments, which is made in the same width as the base. On the right, the narrow sides show the decorations by Culter and a jug (" Urceus ") as sacred tools for the sacrifice. The left narrow side shows a patera and a circular object that cannot be further interpreted with arcuate rays from the center to the edge.

The seven-line inscription field is clearly legible except for razors in lines 3 and 4 in the usual capitalis with (partly preserved) ring-shaped word separators.

"Deae Gar / mangabi / et N (umini) [[Gor [di]]] / [ani] Aug (usti) n (ostri) pr [o] / sal (ute) vex (illationis) Suebo / rum Lon (govicianorum ) Gor (dianae) vo / tum solverunt m (erito) "

By naming Gordian III. (whose name is affected by the shaving in lines 3, 4) the time of manufacture and erection is dated to around 240 AD. The donors were a Suebi vexillation stationed there .

Name and interpretation

The Germanic name is a compound from the terms Garman-gabi (s) . According to Günter Neumann, the first link consists of the stem Gar- and the noun-forming suffix -man- (from * -mon- , -men- ), which indicates the result of an action (like seeds = "what is sown"). The tribe Gar- represents ger- with the meaning of “desire, desire intensely” (from idg. Ĝher- ). Neumann explains the inscribed a instead of the expected e with the influence of the Celtic substratum on spoken Latin in Britain, as shown by regional spellings of the ethnonym Germanus as Garmanus .

The second transparent element -gabis found in other divine names in the documents of Friagabis , the Mantronenbeinamen the Gabiae and Alagabiae the trunk contained GAB is one of Gebhard "type" =. Neumann also compares with the Scandinavian (later) documents of Gefjon and with the nickname of Freyja Gefn, which makes the aspect of these goddesses as "donors" clear. Neumann assumes that the change from germ. I to ja in the case forms -gabi and -gabiabus is an old ablaut type that has been preserved from the Indo-European basic language, such as the old Indian devi = "goddess" from devyās (nominative plural). The type still preserved in the early Germanic period later entered the feminine -jō- tribes ( bandi , bandjos = "the binding, the bond").

Neumann, therefore, interprets the name as a compound word for the ruling body, meaning that "gives what is desired, fulfills wishes". Other interpretations such as that of Grienberger or von Kauffmann explain the name as "the plentiful donor" or as "the Germanic Gabis" as a connection to the ethnonym Germani .

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Remarks

  1. ^ AE 1893, 96