Abnoba
Abnoba is a Gaulish goddess who was worshipped in the Black Forest and surrounding areas. She has been interpreted to be a forest and river goddess, and is known from about nine epigraphic inscriptions. One altar at the Roman baths at Badenweiler, Germany, and another at Mühlenbach identify her with Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt.[1]
According to Tacitus's Germania, Abnoba also was the name of a mountain, from a grassy slope of which flows the source of the River Danube. Ptolemy's Geography (2.10) also mentions the mountain as the source of the Danube. The surrounding range, in Ptolemy, is the Abnobaia ora (the nominative case, given here, is not in Ptolemy), Latinized to Abnobaei montes.
Pliny the Elder also gives us some statements about Abnoba (Natural History, 4.79). He says that it arises opposite the town of Rauricum in Gaul and flows from there beyond the Alps, implying that the river begins in the Alps, which it does not. If Rauricum is to be identified with the Roman settlement, Augusta Raurica, modern Augst in Basel-Landschaft canton of Switzerland, Pliny must be confusing the Rhine and its tributaries with the Danube.
The Danube begins with two small rivers draining the Black Forest: the Breg and the Brigach, both Celtic names. The longest is the most favorable candidate: the Breg. The Abnobaei montes would therefore be the Baar foothills of the Swabian Alb near Furtwangen im Schwarzwald.
The etymology of the theonym is uncertain. It has been associated[by whom?] with the etymon *abo-s "water, river", found in e.g. Avon (*abonā). The second element has been connected[by whom?] to either a PIE *nogʷo-, either "naked, nude" or "tree",[clarification needed] or[by whom?] with the verbal root *nebh- "burst out, be damp".
[edit] Bibliography
- ^ Nicole Jufer & Thierry Luginbühl (2001). Les dieux gaulois : répertoire des noms de divinités celtiques connus par l'épigraphie, les textes antiques et la toponymie. Paris: Editions Errance. ISBN 2-87772-200-7. p.18.
- Ellis, Peter Berresford, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology(Oxford Paperback Reference), Oxford University Press, (1994): ISBN 0-19-508961-8
- Wood, Juliette, The Celts: Life, Myth, and Art, Thorsons Publishers (2002): ISBN 0-00-764059-5
[edit] External links
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