Matronae Aufaniae

Altar of the Matronae Aufaniae, found under the Bonn Minster

Inscription for the Matronae Aufaniae from Nijmegen

The matronae aufaniae (also Matres Aufaniae or Deae Aufaniae , dative plural Matronis or Matris Aufaniabus ) are among the inscriptions and pictorial representations mainly in the province of Germania inferior occupied Matronae , Celtic-Roman mother goddesses .

Their veneration has been proven for Bonn , Cologne , Jülich , Nettersheim , Xanten , Zülpich , Nijmegen , Haus Bürgel near Düsseldorf, Mainz , Lyon as well as in Carmona in Spain , a total of about 100 inscriptions dating to the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Cult centers were u. a. the temple district of Görresburg near Nettersheim in the Eifel and under today's Bonn Minster .

The meaning of the name Aufaniae has not yet been clarified.

literature

• Hermann Steuding : Aufaniae . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1.1, Leipzig 1886, column 729 ( digitized version ).
• Christoph B. Rüger : A husband for the mother goddesses. Some observations on the Matronae Aufaniae. In: Rome and her northern provinces. Papers presented to Sheppard Frere in honor of his retirement from the Chair of the Archeology of the Roman Empire, University of Oxford, 1983 . Sutton, Gloucester 1983, pp. 210-221.
• 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. 642-649.
• Hermann Reichert : Lexicon of the old Germanic names . Volume 1, 1st publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1987, ISBN 978-3-7001-0931-0 , pp. 97-100 sv Aufani (evidence of inscriptions).
• 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. 31 sv Aufaniae, Matronenname .
• Wolfgang Spickermann : Germania Inferior. (= Religious history of Roman Germania. Vol. 2). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-16-149381-2 , esp. Pp. 160-162. 174-177. 189-194. 206-211. 213-215. 258.1 250.352 (index sv).
• Frank Biller: Cultic centers and matron worship in the southern Germania inferior (= Osnabrück research on antiquity and Antke reception. Vol. 13). Verlag Marie Leidorf, Rahden / Westfalen 2010, ISBN 978-3-89646-734-8 , pp. 29-53.

Web links

Commons : Matronae Aufaniae  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ AE 1930, 21
2. ↑ ^{a b} CIL 13, 8724
3. ↑ AE 1981, 663 , AE 1981, 664 , AE 1981, 665 , AE 1981, 666 , AE 1981, 667 .
4. ^ AE 1953, 36
5. ^ AE 1977, 566
6. ↑ CIL 13, 7920a , CIL 13, 7921 , CIL 13, 7897
7. ↑ CIL 13, 8530 .
8. ↑ CIL 13, 6665 .
9. ↑ CIL 13, 1766 .
10. ^ AE 1968, 226 .
11. ↑ Monuments of the Matronae Aufaniae from Bonn Minster in the Heidelberg Epigraphic Database ; Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn : Weihaltar for the Aufanische Matronen ( Memento of the original from October 15, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
12. ↑ Ernst Alfred Philippson : The Germanic mother and matron cult on the Lower Rhine . In: Germanic Review 19, 1944, p. 94: “die Überflussgebenden”; Siegfried Gutenbrunner : Germanic god names of the ancient inscriptions . Niemeyer, Halle 1936, pp. 159–161 also tended towards this name interpretation. Günter Neumann : The Germanic matron names. In: Heinrich Hettrich, Astrid van Nahl (Hrsg.): Name studies on Old Germanic. de Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-020100-0 , pp. 267–268 made the suggestion to interpret the name as "remote fenn" (= swamp ). Jan de Vries : Old Germanic history of religion . 3rd edition, De Gruyter, Berlin, 1970, Vol. 2, p. 294: "Several explanations have been tried, none of which are convincing".