Hurstrga

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Hurstrga (inscribed Hurstrge ) or Hursterga is the name of a local Germanic goddess of the Batavians , who can only be identified by a votive stone dating from 150 to 250 CE. Z., which was found between the Dutch residential areas Kapel-Avezaat and Bergakker near Tiel ( Gelderland region ).

Discovery and Inscription

Votive stone for the goddess Hurstrga by Valerius Silvester, Decurio (city councilor) of Municipium Batavorum

The stone was found during partial excavations of a field in 1955 between Kapel-Avezaat and Bergakker and is now in the Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen. The limestone votive stone (20.0 cm W × 29.5 cm H × 12.6 cm D) shows itself in the traditional state of a simple habitus with broken material, with simple circumferential offset plinth and a flat inscription board, a simply profiled cornice and final attachment with side pads and in the middle with a gable-shaped or roof-shaped tip. The six-line inscription in the usual capitalis is partially rubbed, in particular the legibility of individual letters is impaired (line 4).

" Deae / Hurstrg (a) e / ex p (raecepto) eius / Val (erius) Silveste [r] / dec (urio) m (unicipii) Bat (avorum) / pos (uit) l (ibens) m (erito) . "

“Valerius Silvester, City Councilor of the Municipium of the Batavians gave her [i. e. Hurstrga] Orders placed according to this stone, gladly and according to the merit (of the deity). "

The inscription belongs to the group of revelation inscriptions on the Lower Rhine due to the “ex praecepto” formula (i.e. at the behest of the goddess) . The inscription has significance for the administrative history of Germania inferior through the evidence of Valerius Silvester as city councilor (Decurio) of the settlement Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum (Nijmegen), who was granted the rights of a municipality by Trajan , whereas the simultaneous establishment of the settlement Ulpia Traiana (Xanten ) received the legal status of a Colonia .

Name and interpretation

According to Siegfried Gutenbrunner , the inscribed / g / is a substitution of the Germanic fricative ʒ and stands for a / j /, so that a comparison with the Gothic dative plural formation ƕilftrjon in the meaning “the coffins” has a suffix germ. * Þrjōn , or represented consonant than trjōn is possible. It follows that the Dea Hurstrge would be a Germanic * Hurstrjōn . Furthermore Gutenbrunner concludes that the suffix apparently forms nouns from word stems. As such an education, he sees a parallel appearance in the New High German term "Horst" as a designation for the nest of a bird of prey or in Old High German Horst , hurst with the meaning for "undergrowth". However, he points out that the -t in these documents in contrast to the -t in Hurstrjōn is of different origin. Thomas Markey also gives the meaning of “undergrowth, thicket” for the element Hurst and, as a further option, the meaning for an elevation in topographical terms, as in the case of a Low German Bulte and the equivalent Lower Rhine Donke . The results of Markey's research lead him to believe that Hurst is related to ritual fires that refer to vegetation cults. Tineke Loojinga therefore interprets Hurstrga as the Onym of a special Batavian goddess who was worshiped as the fertility goddess in a grove on a smaller hill.

For this purpose, the topography and the toponomy of the site are used. The name Bergakker carries the meaning of an elevated position in relation to the local environment. Particularly in the Betuwe area , the arms of the Mass and the Rhine, the sediment deposits created stratifications and formed the Donke, the conditions of which were used for sacred purposes. The temple district of Empel for the Batavian Hercules Magusanus, which is located about twenty kilometers to the south, would be comparable, who was also built on a Donk in an oak grove. Furthermore, during the excavations right next to the votive stone of the Hurstrga, remains of building materials from the 2nd to 4th centuries such as tuff stone, plaster clay and fragments of Roman bricks were found, as well as finds of a number of various animal bones (cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs ); Ceramics such as terra sigillata , amphorae and provincial Roman earthenware. In the area of ​​the local find of the rune-inscribed Merovingian mouth plate , the runic inscription by Bergakker (4th / 5th century), other finds such as fibulae and a bronze plate with a matron configuration suggest a cult continuity on site, so that after Loojinga a Roman cult place of the Hurstrga " am “Bergakker is plausible. In the immediate vicinity of the site near Tiel-Passewaaij, an Iron Age Batavian settlement with a burial site was excavated in the 1990-2000s, dating back to the middle of the 1st century BC. u. Z. up to the 4th century a. Z. was dated.

literature

  • Siegfried Gutenbrunner : Altar No. 261. In: Herbert Nesselhauf , Hans Lieb: Third addendum to CIL XIII. Inscriptions from the Germanic provinces and the Treverer area. In: Report of the Roman-Germanic Commission. 40, 1959, pp. 214–215, here: p. 214. ( available online )
  • Tineke Looijenga: The Bergakker Find and it's Context. In: Alfred Bammesberger in editorial collaboration with Gaby Waxenberger (Ed.): Pfrozen and Bergakker - New Investigations on Runic Inscriptions. (= Historical Language Research - Supplement . 41) V&R, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-525-26231-0 , pp. 141–151. here pp. 145–147.
  • Thomas L. Markey: Germanic terms for temple and cult. In: Evelyn Scherabon Firchow, Karen Grimstad (Ed.): Studies for Einar Haugen - presented by friends and colleagues. Mouton, The Hague / Paris 1972, pp. 365-378.
  • Hermann Reichert : Lexicon of the old Germanic names . Volume I, Volume II. (= Thesaurus Palaeogermanicus. 1,1; 1,2). Verlag der ÖAW, Vienna 1987, 1990, ISBN 3-7001-0931-8 , ISBN 3-7001-1718-3 , p. 439, p. 552.
  • Rudolf Simek : Lexicon of Germanic Mythology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 368). 3rd, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-520-36803-X , p. 210.
  • BH Stolte : The religious conditions in Lower Germany. In: Wolfgang Haase (Hrsg.): Rise and decline of the Roman world . Series II, Volume 18, 1. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1986, ISBN 3-11-010050-9 , pp. 591-671, here: p. 655.
  • Jürgen Udolph : Name studies on the German problem. (= Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde - supplementary volumes . Volume 9). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1994, ISBN 3-11-014138-8 , pp. 776ff.
  • Ders .: place names of the Osnabrück area. In: Wolfgang Schlueter, Rainer Wiegels (ed.): Rome, Germania and the excavations of Kalkriese. International congress of the University of Osnabrück and the Landschaftsverband Osnabrücker Land eV from September 2nd to 5th, 1996. Universitätsverlag Rasch, Osnabrück 1999, ISBN 3-932147-25-1 , pp. 527-581; here 557–558.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Museum Het Valkhof. Inv no. 12.1967.30
  2. ↑ AE 1958, 0038 ; Photo .
  3. ↑ Elmar Seebold : Kluge - Etymological dictionary of the German language. 23rd edition. de Gruyter, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-11-017473-1 , p. 423.
  4. ↑ Nico Roymans, Ton Derks, Stijn Heeren (ed.): Een Bataafse gemeenschap in de wereld van het Romeinse rijk. Opgravingen te Tiel-Passewaaij. Uitgeverij Matrijs, Utrecht 2007, ISBN 978-90-5345-332-2 .