Tamfana

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Outline of the Germanicus campaign in AD 14.

Tamfana (or incorrectly Tanfana ) was according to Tacitus ( Annales 1, 51 ) a goddess of the Martians , a Germanic tribe. Through the report of Tacitus, Tamfana is the oldest confirmed evidence of the name of a Germanic deity .

“Caesar auidas legiones, quo latior populatio foret, quattuor in cuneos dispertit; quinquaginta milium spatium ferro flammisque peruastat. non sexus, non aetas miserationem attulit; profana simul et sacra et celebenimum illis gentibus templum, quod Tanfanae uocabant, solo aequantur. "

“Germanicus had a distance of fifty miles devastated with fire and sword. No age, no gender found mercy. Profane and sacred sites, including temples that are famous for those tribes (the Martians), which they call the sanctuary of Tamfana, were razed to the ground "

- Walter Baetke , The religion of the Germanic people in source certificates, 2nd expanded edition 1944, p. 11

Name and position

The name of Tamfana (handwritten tāfanę ) is only passed down in the copy of the original manuscript of the annals (written in the 9th century in Corvey or Hersfeld ) in the Codex Medicaeus I = Codex Laurentianus 68.1 . The reading Ta n fana (e) comes from more recent copies / printed editions (for example the Beroaldo edition ) and conjectures, or adoptions by modern editors. Hermann Reichert cites different reading of the name , referring to Medicaeus I :

“The“ m ”is abbreviated in the handwriting by a line above the“ a ”; in the handwriting this never stands for "n", only for "m". In addition, “ta” is the usual abbreviation for “tam”. The resolution * Tanfanae * is therefore wrong. "

- Hermann Reichert, Lexicon of Old Germanic Names Volume I, p. 648

For the interpretation of the function and essence of the deity, an essential element is the etymology of the name and the information about the context of the tradition of the historical event in which Tacitus mentions the Tamfana and its components, especially the description of the (cult) festival and the Point in time.

The name of the Tamfana contains the Indo-European suffix * -no- , the so-called "ruler suffix" (see Indo-European religion ). This suffix appears in numerous names of gods in Indo-Germania as a frequent abstraction for the respective functional area to which the deity is assigned in cult and mythology ( Silvanus "Lord of the forest", Bellona "Mistress of the War"). For Germania, the suffix is ​​most prominent in the name of Wodan / Odin (* Wōðanaz ) as "Ruler, Lord of Woð" (of the army of the dead). The god names in - no embody and therefore represent the abstract concept personally, dispose of it or confer it.

According to the report of Tacitus ( Ann. 1, 50,3) the Martians celebrated a nocturnal boisterous (sacrifice) party with a banquet and alcohol ("festam eam Germanis noctem ac sollemnibus epulis ludicram"). The date of the festival can be estimated based on the marching times of Germanicus and the historical events of the year 14 with the death of Augustus , the subsequent mutinies of certain legionary units in the provinces of Illyria and Germania inferior as well as astronomical information. Older research ( J. de Vries and others) terminated the full moon at the end of October as a winter festival. However, a date in late September is more likely. The festival could either be related to the date of the autumn equinox (September 24th, 25th in 14) or it could have been a harvest festival. As a basis for comparison, Rudolf Simek cites North Germanic autumn sacrifices, which fell in the same period.

In research, the word root * temp- is used as a starting point for Tamf- with the range of meanings of “tension”, such as the Latin tempus for “time span” and Old Norse (Old Icelandic) þamb for “swelling, fullness”, þǫmb for “ Abundance, tension ”is present. In older research, the old Norse terms were often interpreted in terms of the meaning “abundance” for “harvest blessing”, that is, that the name of Tamfana identifies them as a “goddess of the harvest blessing”. Contrary to these interpretations, Karl Helm had criticized the fact that þamb indicates a tension or fullness that is associated with a disease of the abdomen.

The goddess is functionally classified differently and is associated with the matron cult of the Rhineland or the Disenkults of the Viking Age Scandinavia. Specifically, she is assumed to be in the sphere of the agricultural cult or in connection with the etymon of the name and the dating of the festival at the equinox as a goddess or mistress of time.

temple

A sanctuary, lat. Templum , was evidently consecrated to the goddess . This is generally localized in the space between the rivers of the Ruhr and the upper lip . The Roman general Germanicus destroyed this sanctuary in 14 AD as part of a campaign against the Martians ( Germanicus campaigns ). According to Tacitus, the Roman military surprised a predominantly male cult community gathered there by holding cult rites, in particular the celebration of a festival of sacrifice with an associated feast.

In terms of religious and cultural studies, the question of the special type of the (Germanic) templum is also relevant, especially in the context of an if, structural condition of the Germanic sanctuaries through a possible Roman interpretation and conceptual version of the conditions found. The Martians probably formed with their neighboring tribes, such as the Brukterians and the Tenkerians , an amphictyony (cult community) similar to the ancient comparison . It is therefore assumed that the Martian sanctuary functioned as a central place of worship for these tribes, alongside other smaller places of worship, or as a sacred grove (Latin lucus ). However, the Tamfana “temple” cannot be compared with the architectural construction of Roman-ancient cult buildings. At most, it is a cultivated grove with a possibly light wooden structure for the idol of the goddess, like for comparison: the cult context of the goddess Nerthus .

In the older literature it has been discussed whether the name of the Welveran district Fahnen should be related to the name of Tamfana or to the former place of worship.

literature

swell

  • Cornelius Tacitus: Cornelii Taciti libri qui supersunt. Tomus I: Ab excessu Divi Augusti (Annales). Pars 1 Annales libri I – VI. (= Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana ) Stefan Borzsák, Kenneth Wellesley (eds.). BG Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft Leipzig 1992, ISBN 3-8154-1835-6 .
  • P. Cornelius Tacitus: Annals. Latin-German. Erich Heller (Ed.) With an introduction by Manfred Fuhrmann. 6th edition, Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Mannheim 2010, ISBN 978-3-538-03542-3 .

Research literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ^ Hermann Reichert: Tamfana, Tanfana . In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Vol. 30, Berlin / New York 2005, p. 276.
  2. ↑ Different; Moritz Schönfeld: Dictionary of the old Germanic persons and national names . Winter, Heidelberg 1911. p. 220.
  3. ↑ Hans Krahe: Tamfana. In: PBB 58 (1934), p. 283ff .; Wolfgang Meid: The suffix -no- in god names. In: BNF 8 (1957), pp. 80ff.
  4. ^ Hermann Reichert: Tamfana, Tanfana . In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde vol. 30, Berlin / New York 2005, p. 276 f.
  5. ^ 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. 405.
  6. ↑ Julius Pokorny: Indo-European Etymological Dictionary. Franke, Bern / Munich 1958, pp. 1064f. Jan de Vries: Old Norse Etymological Dictionary. Brill, Leiden / Boston 1977, pp. 605, 631.
  7. ^ Karl Helm: Old Germanic history of religion. Part 1, Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 1913, p. 300. (Older literature there).
  8. ^ Rudolf Simek: Lexicon of Germanic mythology. Kröner, Stuttgart 2006, p. 405.
  9. ↑ Bruno Krüger: Die Germanen - A manual in two volumes , Vol. 1, Berlin 1983, p. 368 f.
  10. ^ Hermann Reichert: Tamfana, Tanfana. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde Vol. 30, Berlin / New York 2005, p. 278.
  11. ^ Rudolf Much, Wolfgang Lange, Herbert Jankuhn: Die Germania des Tacitus , Heidelberg 1964, pp. 55, 57.
  12. ↑ Bruno Krüger: Die Germanen - A manual in two volumes , Vol. 1, Berlin 1983, p. 284.
  13. ↑ Bernhard Maier: The Religion of the Germanic Peoples , Munich 2003, p. 90 f.
  14. ^ 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. 406 ff.
  15. ^ Albert Thümmel: The Germanic temple . In: Contributions to the history of German language and literature 35 (1909) pp. 118 ff.