Mars Halamardus

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Mars Halamardus (inscribed in the dative Marti Halamarð (o) ) is the name of a Germanic god that has only been safely passed down through the Latin inscription of a consecration stone from the 1st century from the Dutch Horn near Roermond . The Germanic nickname is adequately interpreted as the "who kills (many enemy) fighters" or the "men, hero-murderers" as an indication that Halamarðus has a possible manifestation of the Germanic Tiwaz .

Discovery and Inscription

The stone was built into the wall of the parish church of Horn together with a votive stone for the Mercurius Arvernus and was probably originally carried away as building material from the vicinity of the church village from the unknown location and circumstances of the find. The stones were first mentioned in 1640, after which they were clearly visible in the building. In 1830, after the church building was demolished, both stones came into the possession of the Roemonders notary and antique collector Charles Guillon. Today both stones are in the depot of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden . The simply executed votive stone (53 × 42 × 35 cm) made of Nievelstein sandstone shows a relatively damaged state of delivery. Between the broken base (front and side surfaces) the inscription plaque is framed by a cornice running around the top with a semicircular profile. The ledge has broken off from the middle to the right-hand side and the material demolition runs diagonally downwards to the right outer edge into the writing field and further down the narrow side to the base.

The six-line inscription in the usual capitalis is easy and clearly legible except for the impairments of the right-hand material breakage (line 1 supplemented O at the end of the line).

"Marti / Halamard (o) / sacrum / T (itus) Domit (ius) Vindex / (centurio) leg (ionis) XX V (aleriae) V (ictricis) / v (otum) s (olvit) l (ibens) m (erito). "

“The sanctuary of Mars Halamardus. Titus Domitius Vindex, Centurion of the XX. Legion Valeria Victrix, who gladly fulfilled his vow. "

The stone was donated by Titus Domitius Vindex, a centurion of Legio XX Valeria Victrix . In research since Theodor von Grienberger, a German from the Batavian tribe has generally been seen in the person of the founder . The historical circumstances of the relatively short stay of the XX. Legion in the province of Germania inferior in the period from the middle of the second decade to the year 40 and the relocation under Claudius to Britain ( Castra Devana , today's Chester ), led to the dating of the inscription to the middle to second half of the 1st century . Furthermore, it is assumed by the purpose of the inscription that Vindex had donated this stone as a returning veteran. Stephan Malone points out that among the Lower Rhine Vindex names, which he considers unusual due to the meaning of the term in relation to distribution, another Batavers can be found.

Another possible inscription evidence for (Mars) Halamarðus cites Malone with an inscription that was found in 1926 in Lottum near Venlo in the Netherlands . The badly damaged and incomplete condition of this inscription, however, only provides the possibility of evidence with the help of extensive emendations or extensive conjectures for a corresponding reconstruction.

"[Marti] / H [alamardo] / T (itus) [3] / (centurio) [leg (ionis) 3] / [v (otum) s (olvit) l (ibens) m (erito)]."

"To Mars Halamardus (donated) by Titus ... the Legion ... who gladly fulfills his vows."

Epithet and interpretation

Due to the Germanic epithet, which is commonly transferred as the man or hero murderer , of the Roman Mars , Halamardus is interpreted as a possible manifestation of the Germanic god Tiwaz (Ziu / Tyr) . The etymology of the epithet as well as the typology of Halamarð-us as a manifestation of the Tiwaz as the addressed god of war differ from the character of the deity in the other relatively contemporary sources.

With Theodor von Grienberger's fundamental investigation of the Halamarðus document , the Germanic nature of the epithet and the accompanying manifestation of a “Germanic Mars” has been treated either positively or negatively in research. Before Grienberger, the private scholar Karl Christ saw a Germanic-influenced prescription from Merth for Mithras in the second term of the epithet Hala-marð and interpreted this as evidence of a Lower Rhine Mithras cult, which was otherwise centered more in the Germania superior , based on a comparison of the Upper Rhine inscription . Christ's deductions, however, were untenable, they lacked linguistic realities and were not pursued further.

In contrast to the relatively contemporary Christian, Grienberger recognized the two-part form of the name in the individual parts Hala and -marð Germanic lexemes. He compared Hala with Old Norse halr, halir (i-stem) and Old English hæle (jo-stem) to German man, sir . He put the -marð present in the second term to the basic word * marða- or * marðu- in German murder . With formal difficulties in the formation of the stem and word, he comes to the overall interpretation of the name and the function of the god as the man or man murderer and, in this regard, as a characterization of the warlike nature of the Tiwaz (Ziu / Tyr).

Siegfried Gutenbrunner criticized Grienberger's solution in the formation of the stem by pointing out that halir is based on an old dental stem þ (th) as it is in the evidence of the Old English form halēþ to Germanic * haliþz = hero. Contrary to Grienberger's postulate of an i-stem, hali developed from this dental stem . From this Gutenbrunner deduced that contrary to the inscribed hala , haleða would be expected. Gutenbrunner assessed this fact in terms of its weighting less than Grienberger's remarks on the second term -marð . Grienberger tried the inscribed -marð with reference to the evidence from the Middle High German mart , Old English meard and Old Norse mordr for "the marten" as a basic motive, since the marten is an insidious murderer. Gutenbrunner rejects this derivation in its entirety, since these documents provided by Grienberger do not mean “marten” in individual languages, but primarily “bride”. Ultimately, as a result of this, he does not see Halamarðus's Germanicity as reliably proven as Grienberger and Helm saw, in particular the interpretation of the name as “man murderer”. Furthermore, he suspected a mistake in the inscription that made it incomprehensible.

Jan de Vries followed Gutenbrunner's skepticism after first following Grienberger and his confirmation by Helm. With Gutenbrunner he refers to the dental stem in halr and evaluates Grienberger's assumption as "quite uncertain" without dealing with the second member of the name. Due to these linguistic circumstances, de Vries sees the figure of Mars Halamardus as a form of Tiwaz not convincingly proven in religious history.

Norbert Wagner sees in Halamarðus a compound phrase “hero-killing”. In the onomastic treatment of the old Germanic tribal names such as the Chalier, he starts from the basic Indo-European root * kalet for Held as the basis. He sees in the Hala first link a parallel evidence of a minor form that can appear with or without a dental suffix instead of a general dental shrinkage. In this respect, he sees Grienberger's basic approach as correct for the first member of the name and, in view of existing weaknesses (criticism Gutenbrunner, de Vries) for its overall interpretation of the name.

Rudolf Simek and previously René Derolez follow de Vries and Gutenbrunner in reluctance to see Halamarðus evidence of a manifestation of the Tiwaz. Derolez doubts that there is reliable evidence of a Germanic deity based on the findings of the inscriptions and in particular on the basis of the historical research.

Günter Neumann follows Wagner's solution to the linguistic and etymological problems and incorporates the evidence into his ethnological and naming studies of the Germanic populations on the left bank of the Rhine ( Germani cisrhenani ). Neumann sees in the names of Mars Halamarðus and Hercules Magusanus that the Germanic epithets are witnesses of a cultural phenomenon and show linguistic relics of a Germanic population that is under increasing acculturation in a Gallo-Roman environment .

For the difficulty of interpreting the name, Piergiuseppe Scardigli sees an examination of the linguistic range of the Rhenish matron names among others, exemplarily in Halamarðus, that old dialectal conditions exist in the older and oldest inscriptions, which are present in the dialects of primarily West Germanic known today Continuum were not continued or are no longer accessible today. This explains why the ad hoc recognizable Germanic roots and links in the name property appear opaque and dark in their composition. He also states that these dialectal forms can contain old Indo-European and pre-Indo-European language material.

See also

literature

  • JE Bogaers : Letters uit Lottum. In: AJ Geurts (ed.): Verwoord verleden: opstellen over het Noordlimburgse Maasdal en aangrenzend Duits gebied, aangeboden aan JGM Stoel ter liesheid van hair zestigste verjaardag. Historische Werkgroep Arcen, Lomm / Velden 1982, pp. 21–31.
  • Karl Christ : To the knowledge of Mithras . In: Bonner Jahrbücher 74, 1882, pp. 192–193.
  • Theodor von Grienberger: Germanic god names on Rhenish inscriptions. In: Journal for German Antiquity and German Literature 35, 1891, pp. 388–401; 36, 1892, pp. 308-316.
  • Siegfried Gutenbrunner: The Germanic god names of the ancient inscriptions. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle / S. 1936.
  • Karl Helm: Old Germanic history of religion. Volume 1, University Press Winter, Heidelberg 1913.
  • Stephen J. Malone: Legio XX Valeria Victrix. Prosopography, archeology and history. (= BAR International Series , 1491) Archaeopress, Oxford 2006, pp. 120f. ( Full version ).
  • Günter Neumann: Name studies on old Germanic. Edited by Heinrich Hettrich and Astrid van Nahl. De Gruyter, Berlin - New York 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020100-0 . ( Supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde , Volume 59)
  • Vladimir Orel: A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2003, ISBN 90-04-12875-1 .
  • Hermann Reichert: Lexicon of Old Germanic Names , Volume I, Part 1: Text Volume. With the collaboration of Wilibald Kraml, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1987, ISBN 978-3-7001-0931-0 , p. 417. ( Thesaurus Palaeogermanicus , 1,1)
  • Hermann Reichert: Lexicon of Old Germanic Names, Volume I, Part 2: Register volume. With the collaboration of Robert Nedoma, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1990, ISBN 978-3-7001-1718-6 , p. 534. ( Thesaurus Palaeogermanicus , 1, 2)
  • Nico Roymans: Ethnic Identity and Imperial Power. The Batavians in the Early Roman Empire. Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2004, ISBN 90-5356-705-4 . ( Amsterdam Archeological Studies , 10)
  • 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. 280-281.
  • Alexander Sitzmann, Friedrich E. Grünzweig: Old Germanic ethnonyms. A handbook on its etymology using a bibliography by Robert Nedoma . Published by Hermann Reichert. Fassbaender, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902575-07-4 . ( Philologica Germanica , 29)
  • BH Stolte: The religious conditions in Lower Germany . In: Wolfgang Haase (Hrsg.): Rise and decline of the Roman world, Vol. II 18, 1 Religion (Paganism: The religious conditions in the provinces) , de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1986. ISBN 3-11-010050-9 , Pp. 591-671.
  • Jan de Vries: Old Norse Etymological Dictionary. Brill, Leiden / Boston 2nd edition 1997, ISBN 978-90-04-05436-3 , p. 206.
  • Jan de Vries: Old Germanic history of religion. Volume 2, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 3. unchanged. (Fotomech. Nachdr. 2nd completely revised edition. 1957), Reprint 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-002807-2 , p. 11.
  • Norbert Wagner: Chali and Chalitani. In: Contributions to Name Research 18, 1983, pp. 62–66.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ CIL 13, 8709
  2. ^ Inscriptiones Trium Galliarum et Germaniarum latinae. edidit Alfredus Domaszewski; ediderunt Otto Hirschfeld and Carolus Zangemeister.
  3. ↑ CIL 13, 8707
  4. ↑ Stephan J. Malone: Legio, the Abruch XX Valeria Victrix. Prosopography, archeology and history. Oxford, Archaeopress 2006, p. 115.
  5. ^ Theodor von Grienberger: Germanic god names on Rhenish inscriptions. In: Journal for German Antiquity and German Literature 35, 1891, p. 389 ( full text ); Siegfried Gutenbrunner: The Germanic god names of the ancient inscriptions. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle / S. 1936, p. 50.
  6. ^ Stephan J. Malone: Legio XX Valeria Victrix. Prosopography, archeology and history. Oxford, Archaeopress 2006, p. 115.
  7. ^ Stephan J. Malone: Legio XX Valeria Victrix. Prosopography, archeology and history. Oxford, Archaeopress 2006, p. 115.
  8. ↑ AE 1987, 777
  9. ^ 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. 265; Jan de Vries: Old Germanic history of religion. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1957 [1970, 2010], p. 11; Günter Neumann: Name studies on old Germanic. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2008, p. 222.
  10. ^ Bernhard H. Stolte: The religious conditions in Lower Germany. In: Rise and Fall of the Roman World II 18, 2. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1986, p. 635.
  11. ^ Theodor von Grienberger: Germanic god names on Rhenish inscriptions. In: Journal for German Antiquity and German Literature 35 (1891), p. 388 f .; Jan de Vries: Old Germanic history of religion. Volume 2, reprint of the reprint of the 2nd unchanged edition 1970, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, p. 11.
  12. ^ Siegfried Gutenbrunner: The Germanic god names of the ancient inscriptions. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Halle / S. 1936, pp. 50-52.
  13. ↑ Jan de Vries: Old Norse Etymological Dictionary. Brill, Leiden / Boston 1997, p. 206
  14. ↑ Jan de Vries: Old Germanic history of religion. Volume 2, reprint of the reprint of the 2nd unchanged edition 1970, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2010, p. 11.
  15. ^ Norbert Wagner: Chali and Chalitani. In: Contributions to name research NF 18 (1983), pp. 62–66, here 63, 65.
  16. ↑ Rene Derolez: Gods and mythology of the Germanic peoples. Verlag F. Englisch, Wiesbaden 1975, pp. 131f.
  17. ^ Günter Neumann: Name studies on Old Germanic. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2008, p. 222.
  18. ↑ Piergiuseppe Scardigli: Language in the vicinity of matron inscriptions . In: Heinrich Beck (Hrsg.): Germanische Rest- und Trümmersprachen , de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1989 [Reprint 2012], ISBN 978-3-11-086471-7 , pp. 143–156, here p. 152.