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. [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.]

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.

Etymology

The two main etymologies of the word segment it as either "Ab-noba" or "Abn-oba".Fact|date=February 2007 Conceivably it may be derived from Proto-Celtic *"Ab [o] -nōb-ā". [Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, University of Wales. " [http://www.wales.ac.uk/documents/external/cawcs/pcl-moe.pdf Proto-Celtic—English lexicon] ." (See also [http://www.wales.ac.uk/newpages/EXTERNAL/E4504.asp this page] for background and disclaimers.)] Proto-Celtic *"-nōb-" is in turn derived from Proto-Indo-European *"nebh-".Fact|date=February 2007 One meaning is 'wetness'. The first segment would be from *"ab-", 'water', as in Old Irish "ab", from *"aba", 'flow'. One interpretation would be 'river-wetness'.

On the other hand, it seems somewhat redundant to call a river wet. Redundancy is common in river names, but usually in names renamed in a different language. The geography of the Breg river suggests another interpretation. The root, *"nebh-", can mean 'wet', but more often it means 'fog', 'cloud', 'mist'. Some photographs of Furtwangen indicate that the valley of the Breg is sometimes so filled with a ground fog that you can only see the tops of the buildings. Abnoba therefore would mean 'misty stream' with the implication of upland stream.Fact|date=February 2007

The other segmentation relies heavily on Celtic Avon type names, such as the Abona, a river of Gaul. This *"ab-" is the same as the one above, but the "-n-" seems to add connotations of a river-daemon.Fact|date=February 2007 If this is the form of Abnoba, then the "-oba" remains unexplained. It is possible that the two different Abnobas do not have the same derivation, and further, that the people who used the names confused them together.

Bibliography

*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

External links

* [http://www.maryjones.us/jce/abnoba.html Abnoba] at [http://www.maryjones.us/jce/jce_index.html Jones' Celtic Encyclopedia]
* [http://www.wales.ac.uk/documents/external/cawcs/pcl-moe.pdf Proto-Celtic — English lexicon]
* [http://www.indoeuropean.nl/cgi-bin/response.cgi?flags=endnnnn&root=leiden&basename=/data/ie/pokorny&first=1&text_lemma=ab-&method_lemma=substring Pokorny's *ab-]
* [http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE337.html Watkin's *nebh-]