Mercurius Hranno

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Mercurius Hranno is a Germanic god who is only attested by a dedicatory inscription from the 2nd to 3rd century in Bornheim - Hemmerich . The Germanic nickname is the Norse Odin -Beinamen Hrani associated and closed out of it, that by means of the resident votive inscription of Germanic Odin / Odin Ubier was honored. Hranno means "rough guy, polterer" and alludes to a trait of the common Germanic god.

Consecration stone for Mercurius Hranno, 2. – 3. Century AD FO. Hemmerich-Kardorf (Bornheim) district

Finding and describing

In Hemmerich in the first half of the 1980s, a badly damaged Mercurius statuette was plowed out while working in the fields and initially placed at the edge of the field without being noticed. In 1984 the epigraphic and archaeological value of the piece was recognized and handed over to the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn from private ownership via the city administration of Bornheim for scientific investigation. The statuette is equipped with a base that bears the dedicatory inscription.

The statuette made of Lorraine Jurassic limestone has broken off in the middle of the lower legs and is now 79 cm high, with the 31.2 cm deep base including the cornices being 58.8 cm. The back of the base is now badly damaged and was once only roughly smoothed. A crater with S-shaped handles is depicted on each side of the base, and ornamental foliage grows from the mouths of the craters. The lower legs of the fragmentary preserved Mercurius statuette in the form of an aedicula have been preserved badly damaged - especially the left lower leg or the foot - with the right leg shown as a supporting leg. A turtle on the left foot can be recognized by the preserved pictorial decorations, on which a rooster stood, the tail feathers of which have been preserved on the left calf. An angular object can be seen between the legs of Mercurius, which was probably once continued up to the head of the statuette and showed an arrow-like or spear-like object. In general, the execution is inconspicuous, does not deviate iconographically from other depictions of Mercury in Germania inferior and offers a frequent element, especially in the motif of the companion animals of the turtle and the rooster. Due to the findings of further Mercurius consecration stones in the Bornheim district of Sechtem , the place is considered a sanctuary for Mercurius in research. From this it follows that the Mercurius-Hranno statuette was also originally placed in this sanctuary and was later dragged to the site in Hemmerich. The stone is owned by the city of Bornheim, and the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn has a cast.

inscription

On the front of the base there is the almost intact dedication in the usual capitals for MERCVRIO HRANNON (I) in six lines on the approximately 43 cm × 48.5 cm writing field . The nickname was the inscription after only a i , expanding to which is interrupted in the second row right konjizieren . Hartmut Galsterer reads the nickname as Hrannond (i) differently .

"Mercurio / Hrannon / Nigrinia / Titula ex / visu monita / l (ibens) m (erito)"

"To Mercurius Hranno (donated) Nigrinia Titul (l) a gladly and deservedly after heed the warning."

The name of the founder Nigrinia as a derivation of the gentile name Nigrinius has the peculiarity that this is only recorded in the Gallia Belgica and the Germania. The nickname Titul (l) us shows a distribution focus outside the northern provinces with, for example, 35 specimens in the Gallia Narbonensis compared to only two specimens for the Gallia Belgica and both Germania together. The formula ex visu monita - in German after observing (or looking) the warning - is rated as unusual , as it is the first document for the Lower Germanic province and it is generally rare with three documents in the northwest (two documents in the Belgica, one Evidence in the Germania superior ).

nickname

The noticeable surname of Mercurius can be derived from the inscribed dative form of the nominative Hranno . The graphic germanic hr- continues according to indo-European law kr- ; thus the name is undoubtedly Germanic. According to the usual Interpretatio Romana , it can be assumed that this Mercurius represents the Germanic * Wōðanaz, Wodan / Odin . To clarify the nickname, Norbert Wagner used various documents from the Germanic name treasure trove.

First of all, he refers to the name of Odinsi , in this specific case as an alias . In the Fornaldar saga of the Hrólfs saga kraka , Odin appears disguised as a farmer with the name Hrani . The Hrolfs saga from the 14th century that is handed down today is a revised version of a much older model. The evidence from the saga can be added to other personal names and place names from early to high medieval Scandinavia. Basically, in the Old Norse language as in New Icelandic , Hrani has the range of meanings of "Polterer, rough man and boastful", ie with an appellative character. An adjectival form derived from it is hranalegr with the meaning of "harsh, rough, ruthless". From this it follows that in Old Norse the name Odinsi is an appellative.

Wagner uses an older document with the ethnonym Hronum , Old English dative plural to nominative plural Hronan , in verse 63 of the Widsith . Hronan has the meaning of "the rough, rough people, the bumblebee".

Both the inscribed Hranno and the Old Norse Hrani have a masculine n-stem, the only difference is -nn- to -n- , and show a common form that appears in other masculine n-stems in Germanic, for example Old High German scarce from knabbo to knabo - a difference that is not to be determined in the meaning, but in the expression. Wagner sees the meaning of the inscription form clarified on the level of the linguistic.

Norbert Wagner and Günter Neumann emphasize the importance of this epithet, which emphasizes the essence or an aspect of the Wodan / Odin, which, through the inscription evidence, receives early support from western continental Germania for the form from the saga literature, which was handed down much later. Neumann sees in Hranno the repeatedly observed phenomenon that the north of Germania was much more conservative and thus repeatedly offers conclusions and evidence that have passed in the West Germanic dialect area. The question of why a woman in particular has worshiped this explicitly masculine deity remains unanswered, depending on the fund.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ CIL 9, 6570 , CIL 8, 5907 , CIL 7, 5650 , CIL 7, 5655 , CIL 7, 5652 . Joachim Hupe: Studies on the god Mercury in Roman Gaul and Germania. In: Trierer Zeitschrift , 60 (1997), pp. 79-81. Percy Preston: Metzler lexicon of antique images . Translated and revised by Stela Bogutovac and Kai Brodersen , JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1997, ISBN 3-476-01541-6 , pp. 163, 215.
  2. ↑ See also: Norbert Wagner: Chvaiionius and Chamarus. In: Historische Sprachforschung 102, 2, (1989), pp. 216-219; here p. 216.
  3. ↑ Roman inscriptions database: ID 1990. ( Memento from July 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ AE 1988, 896 .
  5. ↑ Hermann Reichert: Lexicon of Old Germanic Names , Austrian Academy of Sciences in Commission Böhlau, Vienna 1987, p. 434. Personal names with Mr. Anlaut Hristo AE 1926, 66 .
  6. ↑ Jan de Vries: Old Norse etymological dictionary . Brill, Leiden / Boston 1977, p. 251.
  7. ↑ Ranii . See: Alexander Sitzmann, Friedrich E. Grünzweig: The old Germanic ethnonyms. A guide to their etymology. (= Philologica Germanica Vol. 29). Fassbaender, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902575-07-4 , pp. 225f.