Hi Torsten,
This was a very intriguing post, as always yours are.
-- In cybalist@..., tgpedersen@... wrote:
> Tacitus: Germania
>
> 9.2
>
> "Pars Sueborum et Isidi sacrificat: unde causa et origo peregrino
> sacro parum comperi nisi quod signum ipsum in modum liburnae
> figuratum docet advectam religionem."
>
> "Some of the Suebi also make sacrifices to Isis. Of where the cause
> and origin of this foreign cult is, I have figured out very little,
> except that her image, shaped in the Liburnan fashion(?)/in the
> fashion of a Liburna(?) points to a religion coming from the
> outside."
>
> What is 'liburnae' here? My dictionary says: 'liburna' "light, fast-
> sailing warship; (Liburian/Dalmatian/Croatian galley/brigantine)"
> (Croatian??). This makes little sense (the goddess placed in a
model
> ship? Bronze age figurines once part of a model ship have been
found
> at Grevensvænge)? Liburnia, on the other hand, was the region made
up
> of Raetia and Vindelica.
>
> Can anybody help me out here?
I dont know much about Raetia and Vindelica, but i found on this
Ptolemy map that Liburnia is Illyria( apparenty the ship-place in
question):
http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Gazetteer/Per
iods/Roman/.Texts/Ptolemy/2/15*.html
However I wasnt really satisfied with this, because as you point out
its hard to see what Isis would have to do with Illyria. At least á
priori.
I searched a littlew further and I found that Magnus Pompeius is
called "Lord of Cilicia and Liburnian lands" in Lucan's book VIII
Death of Pompeius.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Pharsalia/book8.html
I Then started thinking: was Pompey's Lands really Illlyria and
Cillicia and only this? Wasn't it rather so that he was most famous
for conquering Pontus, Syria and Judea and other places in Asia? Is
this story he is apparently about to die. But he's fleeing to the
East. And to Egypt, so I would assume that he wouldn't call himself
lord of Illyria, but lord of Eastern Mediterranean or something like
that. Perhaps then this is the Liburnian Lands in question, where
also Cilicia is situated.
While thinkin about this I got a mad idea. Since liber=papyrus
originally and Byblos means papyrus, why couldn't liburnian lands
also have come from this word originally? Perhaps meaning "Lands of
Papyrus". (or possibly "Land where Byblos is" as a translation of
Byblos.)
In any case we are now at the center of Isis worship and most
importantly the Isis myth.
Because one central part in it is that Isis travels around in a small
boat of *papyrus* looking for her husbands body parts. (She then
finds them all exept his fallos.)
If my reasoning here is correct it would certainly not be strange
that Tacitus says that the Suebian Isis is made in a Liburnian
fashion.
> Normally when a Roman writer mentions that a Barbarian people
> worships a Mediterranian god, one assumes that he is using
> a "interpretatio Romana", and that the Barbarian god actually had
> another name and no relation to the one the writer identifies him
> with. But in this case Tacitus explicitly states that the cult is
> foreign (the "Liburna" thing also points in that direction). I
> suppose this means we can take him on his word, that this is
actually
> an Isis cult?
I think I would agree on this. BTW have you seen the bracteate from
Skåne which has Isis written some four times on it (in roman letters)?
Now I have turned the books back to the library but it is in Die
Goldbrakteaten der Vökerwanderungszeit. I haven't been so sure that
it really means the godess Isis before, but now it seems reasonable.
> And of course I shouldn't hide that I think this is another
> indication that the story of the "Odin" migration is true.
Could be.
Note we
> are talking about the Suebi here, the confederation of tribes which
I
> try to identify with Odin's first attempt at setting up a
> confederation, based on his own people, in Saxland (Germania).
Yeah the Suebi seem to be a confederation, right. I think I will come
back to the subject.
Hope this helps for now, Anders