Matronae Alhiahenae

Illustration from the first publication

The Ahliahenae are matrons that have only been passed on through an inscription on a votive stone from the Baden-Württemberg community of Neidenstein ( Rhein-Neckar district ).

Discovery and Inscription

The exact origin of the stone is unknown. It is believed that the stone was found in the Middle Ages by farmers in the area of the Roman manor ( Villa rustica ) in the Gewann Buchfeld , which was excavated in 1971, near the boundary between Neidenstein and Waibstadt . In Neidingen, it was reworked for a long time and served as a holy water font - or baptismal font in the old, now demolished Catholic parish church. After that, the stone first came to Venningen Castle in Eichtersheim and finally in 1882 to the Grand Ducal Collection in Karlsruhe, from which the Badisches Landesmuseum emerged in whose provincial Roman department the stone is now located.

The votive stone is made of red sandstone and has the shape of a rectangular column with a profiled shaft and capital . A sacrificial bowl is incorporated between two volutes on the upper side . The sacrificial bowl was adapted for subsequent church use. It has a height of 94 cm, a width of 42 cm and a depth of 31 cm.

"Matronis / Alhiahen / abus / Iul (ius) Verani / us Super pr / o se et su / is v (otum) s (olvit) l (ibens) [m (erito)]"

"Julius Veranius Super honored the alhiahenic matrons for himself and his own vows happily and for a fee"

Epithet and interpretation

The inscription on the stone tells of the worship of certain matrons by a Roman named Julius Veranius Super. The matrons are mostly nicknamed after the places where or after the families by which they were worshiped, and are particularly widespread on the Lower Rhine in the Roman province of Germania inferior . The Neidenstein Matronenstein is one of the very few testimonies to the worship of the Matronae in the province of Germania superior .

The nickname Alhiahenae was equated with the Albiahenae from Elvenich on the Lower Rhine, which is documented in four inscriptions . The assumption has therefore been made on various occasions that the founder of the stone was a veteran from the Lower Rhine region. According to Siegfried Gutenbrunner and Günter Neumann , however, these assumptions are linguistically untenable. Albia-nehae is a derivation of a pre-Germanic, Celtic place name * Albini-acum, which is continued in today's Elvenich. The root word of the Ahlia-nehae can be found in the Gothic ahls = "temple" or in Germanic * ahl- = "elk", which is present in the place name of Ellwangen . Gutenbrunner's possible reference to the Alcis pair of gods handed down by Tacitus is ruled out by Neumann on the grounds that a parent word of an individual deity has not previously been used in matron's names. The naming after a temple, respectively. Sanctuary is unoccupied for matrons. Neumann assumes an underlying -ja- adjective formation from * alhja- which means a place name "the area where there are elks" after which the epithet was formed.

literature

Karl Christ : The Roman Elsenzgau . In: Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter 12, 1911, columns 253-259, here columns 253-254.
Siegfried Gutenbrunner : The Germanic god names of the ancient inscriptions. Niemeyer, Halle / S. 1936, pp. 189-190.
Friedrich Kauffmann : The matron cult in Germania . In: Journal of the Association for Folklore NF 2, 1892, pp. 24–45, here p. 33, no. 181.
Roland Kress: The Neidenstein matron altar (= contributions to the history of Neidenstein 2), Neidenstein 1989.
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 277 f. ( Fee Germanic Altertumskunde Online at de Gruyter ).

Ernst Wagner : Sites and finds from prehistoric, Roman and Alemannic-Franconian times in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Volume II. JCB Mohr, Tübingen 1911, p. 345. ( Digisat )

Web links

Remarks

↑ CIL 13, 6387

[1] CIL 13, 6387