Mars Thincsus

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Mars Thincsus (or Mars Thingsus ) is the name of a Germanic deity that is only recorded in an inscription on a votive stone from the first half of the 3rd century from Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall in Northern England ( Northumberland ). The nickname Thincsus is the Latinized form of Germanic * Þingsaz . It is derived from a basic word that is used in the term Thing (the Germanic people and court assembly) and is therefore used as the "patron god of the people's assembly and the fighting unit", as the "deity of time, the celestial phenomena, the judgment" and as a general "god of war" interpreted. Furthermore, this god is seen as a hypostasis , manifestation of the Tiwas / Tyr .

Discovery

On the north slope of Chapel Hill near Housesteads, in the temple district belonging to Castrum Vercovicium, the stone was excavated in situ in a separate Temple of Mars together with a door lintel decorated with sculptures (presumably a representation of Mars with a shield, spear and goose), so that there is the stone may have been one of the building's door posts. It was associated with other votive stones of the Alaisiagae, such as the one inscribed here for Beda and Fimmilena and the stone excavated in the early 1920s for the Baudihillia and Friagabis in the planum of the place of worship . At the same time, another stone was found, which is dedicated to the “Deo Marti” (without the nickname “Thincsus”) and the equally unnamed “Alaisiagen”. Both stones are in the depot and exhibit at Chester's Roman Fort and Museum in Hexham .

inscription

RIB 1593, reconstruction after a copy
RIB 1594

The columnar, rectangular "MARS THINCSO" votive stone made of light sandstone has an absolute dimension of approx. 182 X 58 cm in height and width with a pronounced, simple, decor-free base and top. On the right narrow side there is a female figure, presumably representing a goddess - probably one of the Alais sagas . The writing field shows the hardly disturbed inscription in eleven lines, only the initial DEO is damaged by abrasion.

"Deo / Marti / Thincso / et duabus / Alaisiagis / Bede et Fi / mmilene / et N (umini) Aug (usti) Ger / m (ani) cives Tu / ihanti / v (otum) s (olverunt) l (ibentes) m (erito). "

"To the god Mars Thincsus and the two Alaisi sagas, Beda and Fimmilena and the divinity of the emperor, the Teutons from the tribe of the Tuihanten, who willingly and gladly fulfilled their oath."

A second stone made of the same material and also assigned to this Germanic Mars is the "DEO MARTI" stone (127 X 55 cm). It is more elaborately designed and decorated on the narrow sides and capital. The ax and knife are depicted on the left, and the sacrificial bowl and jug on the right.

"Deo / Marti et duabus / Alaisiagis et N (umini) Aug (usti) / Ger (mani) cives Tuihanti / cunei Frisiorum / Ver (covicianorum) Se (ve) r (iani) Alexand / riani votum / solverunt / libent [es ] / m (erito). "

"To the god Mars and the two Alaisi sagas and the divinity of the emperor, the Teutons from the tribe of the Tuihanten, the Cuneus the Frisians from Vercovicium, loyal to Alexander Severus, who willingly and gladly fulfilled their oath."

By naming Alexander Severus , these stones can be dated to the reign of the emperor between 222 and 235 AD. They were donated by soldiers from contingents of the Tuihanten , previously only documented by these inscriptions , who belonged to a Roman auxiliary unit , the Cuneus Frisiorum Vercovicianorum . In addition to the tribal designation and the military assignment with ethnic reference, the superordinate self-designation Germani is striking. In the Notitia Dignitatum the place is as Borcovicium listed by the inscription Slip the prescription is boron < comparison obvious.

Thincsus as the god of justice

Since the first scientific description of the votive stone and the subsequent reception by Wilhelm Scherer , the assumption has prevailed in research that a hypothetical god * Þingsaz is to be interpreted as the god of things , of the people's and war assemblies.

The name-based and etymological interpretation of the epithet of Mars Thincsus and the associated function and the essence of God as well as its meaning for Germanic cultures have led to heated debates in research ( Otto Höfler vs. Klaus von See ). From 1939 the French religious scholar Georges Dumézil vehemently defended the thesis that it was a matter of a Germanic war diplomacy and legal god, who was to form a counterpart to the war god Odin , glorified during the Nazi era . The Norwegian historian Frode Iversen recently argued, based on Scandinavian sources, that there were indeed indications of the existence of a Germanic system of fixed legal assemblies called Thincsus , with special sessions and informal sessions named after the goddesses Beda and Fimmilena .

Linguistic

The inscribed form THINCSO shows a Latin o - declination and can be as a reflex of a Germanic a -declination whose root form was * Þings-a- . It is generally recognized in research that the inscribed C corresponds to the sound G. The name or the stem is formed from the Germanic root * þing-a- with a neutral a - declination from which the form * Þingsaz can be constructed for the theonym . This root is present as an appellative in the Old High German word thing with the broader meaning of the people's assembly , the place of such a hearing, the time and result of such a meeting, or generally the subject of a court assembly as in New High German means one thing, one thing (variants: Old English ðing , Old Saxon, Old Lower Franconian, Old Frisian thing and Old Norse þing ).

The inscribed C (see copy) has led to the fact that it was changed to the G in some (older) representations with regard to the etymological connection to * þing-a- . If a fricative ( rubbing sound ) were marked in C (Tiefenbach draws a comparison here with the ethnonym of Tencteri ), then the inscribed form could be set to Gothic þeihs . This paved the way for a second explanation in research.

In the Gothic lexicon, the term þing is missing from the other old Germanic idioms; in its place appears the document ( Bible-Gothic ) þeihs (<* þinhs- = "time") with the meaning of "fixed point in time" (in NT Greek καιρός, χρόνος , Latin ( Vulgate ) tempus ) with grammatical change from Germanic * þénχ . þeihs inflected as a neutral a-stem that was transferred from an original s-stem, so that, according to Tiefenbach, the same suffix could be present in Thincs-o. He refers to the comparisons made in research from the Langobard thinx , gairethinx as positive evidence for this suffix formation. From this, Klaus von See (with reference to Rudolf Much and Siegfried Gutenbrunner ) concluded that there was a "god of time, weather and sky" and vehemently rejected the reference to the legal institution of the thing.

Due to the singularity of the name and its connection with the Tuihanten, an attempt was made to find connections in the stock of place names (toponymy) of the narrower Lower Rhine region, such as in the name of Dinslaken . However, this approach did not provide any reliable evidence. Furthermore, in the name of the weekday Tuesday and its Low German and especially Dutch / Franconian variants ( dinx (en) dach, dinsen-, dincen-, dīs (en) -, dingesdach, dingse-, dinx (s) te- ) became a motif after the submission of the Interpretatio Germanica as a loan translation after the Roman model ( Marti dies ) for the weekday naming seen from Thincso . With this interpretation, according to Tiefenbach, the clarification of the sound substitution of t by d in the initial sound and a secondary nasalization as in comparison with Dutch Woensdag ("Wodanstag") remains open for Wednesday . Tiefenbach sees difficulties for a reliable judgment in relation to the derivation of the name of God in the large time lag between the inscription evidence and the high medieval forms of Tuesday writing , which have been inconsistently documented since the 13th century , with the general tendencies towards interpretations and substitutions for weekday names.

See also

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ John Clayton, WT Watkin, Emil Huebner, G. Stephens: On the discovery of Roman Inscribed Altars, etc., at Housesteads. In: Archaeologia Aeliana 2nd series, 10 (1885), pp. 148-172.
  2. ^ RIB 1593
  3. ^ RIB 1594
  4. ↑ Alexander Sitzmann, Friedrich E. Grünzweig: Old Germanic ethnonyms. A handbook on its etymology using a bibliography by Robert Nedoma. (= Philologica Germanica , 29) Edited by Hermann Reichert. Fassbaender, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902575-07-4 . Pp. 288-289.
  5. ↑ Emil Hübner : Borcovicium . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 1, Stuttgart 1897, Col. 720.
  6. ^ Wilhelm Scherer: Mars Thingsus. In: Report of the meeting of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1, Berlin 1884, pp. 571-582.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ↑ Bruce Lincoln: 'Rewriting the German War God: Georges Dumézil, Politics and Scholarship in the Late 1930s' . In: History of Religions 37 (1998), pp. 187-208.
  9. ↑ Georges Dumézil. Gods of the Ancient Northmen . University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1973. pp. 26-48, 82.
  10. ^ Heinrich Tiefenbach: Mars Thincsus. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde vol. 19. Berlin / New York 2001, p. 344. Elmar Seebold (editor): Kluge. Etymological dictionary of the German language. 24th reviewed and expanded edition, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, p. 201 (see also p. 199).
  11. ↑ Rudolf Much: The Germanic god of heaven. In: Festgabe for Richard Heinzel. Vienna 1898, p. 195.
  12. ^ Siegfried Gutenbrunner: The Germanic god names in the ancient inscriptions. Niemeyer, Halle / S. 1936, p. 30.
  13. ↑ Klaus von See: Old Norse legal words. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1964, pp. 118-120. That. in: Continuity Theory and Sacred Theory in Germanic Research. Athenaeum, Frankfurt / M. 1972, p. 15f.
  14. ↑ Elmar Seebold: Kluge. Etymological dictionary of the German language. 24th reviewed and expanded edition, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, p. 199. Different: Wolfgang Pfeifer : The Etymological Dictionary of German. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1993, p. 283. Pfeifer wants to abandon the derivation from * Þingsaz and postulates a * tīwas-dagaz for the Lower Rhine language area analogous to the rest of Germania ( online entry “Tuesday” ).