Celtic head cult

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A monster with two têtes coupées
Five têtes coupées from Entremont
Detail of the gate of Clonfert

Celtic head cult , even skull mysticism or skull fascination that call Keltologen the cult of the Celts to têtes coupées ( French : "Cut off heads") or severed heads ( English ) how these artifacts are referred to by archaeologists. It is a headhunting ritual based on mystical ideas.

The head cult

Galician-Portuguese "cabeça cortada", which can possibly be related to the Celtic head cult.

The "skull fascination" of the Celts is based on the conviction that with the severed head of an enemy, on the one hand, he possesses his strength and his knowledge, and on the other hand , rendering the spirit of the dead in the Other World harmless. The head apparently stands as pars pro toto for the entire material and spiritual personality.

The Greek historian Diodorus reported in the 1st century BC. Chr .: "They embalm the heads of their most distinguished enemies and carefully keep them in a box, and when they then show it to strangers, they boast a lot of money, like one of their ancestors or their father or even themselves this head would not have given up. "

In many Celtic graves, the head and body were buried separately. At Mont-Troté (Manre in the Ardennes department ) of around 90 skeletons, 30 are headless ; in the Lankhills near Winchester , the head was severed post mortem and buried by the feet. It remains unanswered whether these were head-hunting motifs or ritual dismemberments, possibly to “banish” the dead.

Skull fragments have often been found in excavations amidst house remains. Smoothed and pierced, they were apparently worn as amulets . As offerings for the whole tribe, steles with real or carved têtes coupées are sometimes set up in cult places , as in Roquepertuse or Entremont . Recent archaeological research has shown that the skulls were attached to the inside of the pillars, that is, they “looked into” the cult area, and therefore probably had no protective function, but were part of the “skull mysticism” as an apotropaic act . Whether it was the heads of enemies, of charismatic personalities or of human sacrifices, cannot be determined. For the late Iron Age skulls from the Thames , an interpretation as deliberate dumping is being considered.

In Christianized Ireland church and monastery portals with stone-carved têtes coupées can be found, one example is the Romanesque cathedral of Clonfert (Irish: Cluain Fearta , German "Kleinfort") in the east of County Galway .

The headhunt

"The Helvetii force the Romans under the yoke" by Marc Charles Gabriel Gleyre (1806–1874)

Diodorus describes the headhunting of the Celts: “They cut off the heads of fallen enemies and hang them on the necks of their horses; but they give the bloody weapons to their servants and let them be carried in as booty amid war cries and chants of triumph. "

A Roman account of the Battle of Clusium (295 BC) describes the headhunting of the Celtic Senones - it was the last great Gallic victory in Italy: “The consuls only became aware of the calamity when Gallic horsemen came into view carried heads impaled on the necks of their horses or on their lances and sang their usual triumphant songs. "

The head of Modena in 216 BC. BC by the Celtic auxiliary troops of Hannibal , the Boiern , the Roman general Lucius Postumius slain was skeletonized and provided with a gold border and used for tranclibations in the tribal shrine .

Even at the time of the Gallic War of Gaius Iulius Caesar , headhunting is still handed down. A warrior with a tête coupée in his hand is depicted on a coin of the Aeduer prince Dumnorix .

In the painting by the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre , the scene of 107 BC is shown in the style of history painting of the 19th century. BC by the southern Gaulish Volcae-Tectosages , legionnaires driven through the yoke flanked by two centurion heads speared on poles .

mythology

In the Celtic heroic myths , headhunting is a topos of all legends. The heroes outdo each other with their tales of the number of heads captured, especially in the quarrel over the hero's bite . In the saga Scéla mucce Meic Dathó (“The story of the pig of Mac Dathó”), the Connacht warrior Cet mac Mágach fights with Conall Cernach for the hero's bite. The weaker cet eventually gives in, but claims that Conall would surely fear the hero Anlúan if he were present.

“'But he's there!' Conall called, took Anlúan's head out of his sack and threw it against Cet's chest so hard that a mouthful of blood splattered his lips. "

After Conall's death, his huge skull is kept as a relic, but is carried off to Munster . One prophecy, however, says that he will be brought back to Ulster and that the Ulter will then lose the “weakness before battle” given to them as a punishment if they water from the milk-filled skull.

The captured enemy skull also plays a major role in the gessi (taboos); For example, Fothad Canainne always had to have the heads of three slain opponents with him while drinking beer.

In the story Macgnímrada Con Culainn (“Cú Chulainn's boyish deeds”) the arrival of the most famous Ulster warrior Cú Chulainn in Emain Macha is described as follows: “[...] and it is terrible. He has the bloody heads of his enemies in the car. "

Sometimes the têtes coupées are also left behind at the battle site, as a traveler reports on Cu Chulainn's victory at the ford: “In the middle of the ford all he saw was the forked pole with four heads on it, their blood [...] in the flowing river dripped, and the hoof tracks of two horses and the tracks of a single charioteer and a single warrior who led from the ford to the east. ”Only after the victory against his former brother-in-arms Fer Diad does he give up the trophy out of mourning.

A special kind of trophy care is shown in the stories Cath Étair ("The Battle of Étar") and Aided Chonchobuir ("The Death of Conchobar mac Nessas "). The brain Mes Gegras is taken from the head of the decapitated opponent by Conall Cernach, mixed with lime, formed into a ball and stored like this: “So take out the brain. Cut it up with your sword, then mix in lime and form a ball out of it. "

When the Welsh King Bran the Blessed is killed and beheaded in Ireland in the Second Branch of the Mabinogi , his followers take the head back to Wales with them . He lives on, gives them advice on how to master the dangers and is finally buried in the "White Mountain" ( Gwynvryn ), probably the oldest part of the London Tower - with a view of France so that no disaster can come from the east .

See also

literature

  • Axel von Berg: The skull cult in the Celtic Iron Age. In: Alfried Wieczorek , Wilfried Rosendahl (ed.): Skull cult - head and skull in the cultural history of man. Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2454-1 , pp. 75-82.
  • Helmut Birkhan : Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. 2nd, corrected and enlarged edition. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 .
  • Barry Cunliffe : The Celts and Their History. German translation by Ingrid Lebe. 6th edition. Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 1996, ISBN 3-7857-0506-9 .
  • Petra Härtl: trophy skulls, skull masks and têtes coupées. On the head cult of the laten culture from an archaeological point of view. In: Alfried Wieczorek, Wilfried Rosendahl, Andreas Schlothauer (eds.): The cult around head and skull. Interdisciplinary considerations on a human issue. (= Colloquium volume on the occasion of the exhibition "Skull Cult - Head and Skull in the Cultural History of Man" in the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums Mannheim). Verlag Regionalkultur, Heidelberg et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-89735-769-3 , pp. 35–42.
  • Verena Schwartz: head cult of the Celts? Archaeological sources and island Celtic stories in comparison. In: Alfried Wieczorek, Wilfried Rosendahl, Andreas Schlothauer (eds.): The cult around head and skull. Interdisciplinary considerations on a human issue. (= Colloquium volume on the occasion of the exhibition "Skull Cult - Head and Skull in the Cultural History of Man" in the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museums Mannheim). Verlag Regionalkultur, Heidelberg et al. 2012, ISBN 978-3-89735-769-3 , pp. 43–54.
  • Béatrice Vigie: display of heads in the Kelto-Ligures. In: Alfried Wieczorek, Wilfried Rosendahl (ed.): Skull cult - head and skull in the cultural history of man. Schnell + Steiner, Regensburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-7954-2454-1 , pp. 83-86.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Limestone sculpture Tarasque de Noves , Dep. Bouches-du-Rhône , 2nd century BC BC, Musée Calvet , Avignon
  2. ↑ " Téte coupée in Celtic art is the (misleading) term for any representation of a human head without the associated body." Bernhard Maier : Lexicon of Celtic Religion and Culture (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 466). Kröner, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-520-46601-5 .
  3. ↑ a b c d Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , p. 817 f.
  4. ^ González-Ruibal. E-Keltoi Artistic Expression and Material Culture in Celtic Gallaecia
  5. ↑ a b Diodor: Διόδωρου Σικελιώτου Βιβλιοθήκη Ἱστορική (Latin Diodori Siculi Bibliotheca historica), Bibliotheca Teubneriana, Julius Friedrich Wurm (translator): Diodor's of Sicily historical library. Metzler, Stuttgart 1831-1839, Volume V, p. 29.
  6. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , p. 860.
  7. ↑ a b c d Barry Cunliffe : The Celts and their history. 7th edition, Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 2000, p. 82 f.
  8. ^ Richard Bradley, Ken Gordon, Human skulls from the River Thames, their dating and significance. Antiquity 62, 1988, 503-509.
  9. ↑ Titus Livius: Ab urbe condita libri CXLII (lat. "From the foundation of the city - 142 books"), X, 26.
  10. ↑ Titus Livius: Ab urbe condita libri CXLII (lat. "From the foundation of the city - 142 books"), XXIII, 24.
  11. ↑ Barry Cunliffe: The Celts and Their History. 7th edition, Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach 2000, p. 145.
  12. ↑ Rudolf Thurneysen: Legends from ancient Ireland. Berlin 1901, reprint Insel Taschenbuch 1301, Frankfurt / M. 1991, p. 16 f.
  13. ↑ Rudolf Thurneysen : The Irish hero and king saga up to the seventeenth century. Halle 1921, p. 581.
  14. ↑ Helmut Birkhan: Celts. Attempt at a complete representation of their culture. Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-7001-2609-3 , p. 830.
  15. ↑ Rudolf Thurneysen : The Irish hero and king saga. Verlag Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1980, p. 77. f