Artio (''Dea Artio'' in the Gallo-Roman religion) is a Celtic

bear goddess Bear worship (also known as the bear cult or arctolatry) is the religious practice of the worshipping of bears found in many North Eurasian ethnic religions such as among the Sami, Nivkh, Ainu, Basques, Germanic peoples, Slavs and Finns. The ...

. Evidence of her worship has notably been found at Bern in Switzerland. Her name is derived from the

Gaulish Gaulish was an ancient Celtic language spoken in parts of Continental Europe before and during the period of the Roman Empire. In the narrow sense, Gaulish was the language of the Celts of Gaul (now France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switze ...

word for 'bear', ''artos''.

Name

The Gaulish

theonym A theonym (from Greek ''theos'' (Θεός), " god"'','' attached to ''onoma'' (ὄνομα), "name") is the proper name of a deity. Theonymy, the study of divine proper names, is a branch of onomastics (the study of the etymology, history, and ...

''Artiō'' derives from the Celtic word for the 'bear', ''artos'' (cf.

Old Irish Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...

''art'',

Middle Welsh Middle Welsh ( cy, Cymraeg Canol, wlm, Kymraec) is the label attached to the Welsh language of the 12th to 15th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This form of Welsh developed directly from Old Welsh ( cy, Hen G ...

''arth'', Old Breton ''ard''), itself from

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...

*''h₂ŕ̥tḱos'' ('bear'). A Celtic form reconstructed as *''Arto-rix'' ('Bear-King') could be the source for the name

Arthur Arthur is a common male given name of Brythonic origin. Its popularity derives from it being the name of the legendary hero King Arthur. The etymology is disputed. It may derive from the Celtic ''Artos'' meaning “Bear”. Another theory, more wi ...

, via a Latinized form *''Artori(u)s''. The

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

''hartz'' ('bear') is also presumed to be a Celtic loanword.

Attestations

A bronze sculpture from the Muri statuette group, found near Bern in Switzerland, shows a large bear facing a woman seated in a chair, with a small tree behind the bear. The woman seems to hold fruit in her lap, perhaps feeding the bear. The sculpture has a large rectangular bronze base, which bears the inscription "Deae Artioni / Licinia Sabinilla" ("To the Goddess Artio" or "Artionis", "from Licinia Sabinilla"). If the name is Gaulish but the syntax is Latin, a dative ''Artioni'' would give an i-stem nominative ''*Artionis'' or an n-stem nominative ''*Artio''. That would perhaps correspond to a Gaulish n-stem nominative ''*Artiu''. Other inscriptions to the goddess have been discovered in Daun (CIL 13, 4203),

Weilerbach Weilerbach is a municipality in the district of Kaiserslautern, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is situated approximately 11 km north-west of Kaiserslautern. Weilerbach is the seat of the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' ("collective municipality" ...

(CIL 13, 4113), Heddernheim (CIL 13, 7375 , p 125, and Stockstadt (CIL 13, 11789).

Popular culture

Artio is a playable character in the video game ''

Smite ''Smite'' is a 2014 free-to-play, third-person multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by Hi-Rez Studios for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch, and Amazon Luna.Celtic pantheon and is a melee, magical guardian. She can freely transform between her human representation (druid stance) and her bear form (bear stance), both of which come with their own sets of abilities. Her kit mainly focuses on healing herself and her allies and locking down enemies in her druid stance and then outputting large amounts of damage with her bear stance.

References

;Bibliography * '' Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) vol XIII, Inscriptiones trium Galliarum et Germaniarum'' * * Deyts, Simone (1992) ''Images des Dieux de la Gaule''. Paris: Editions Errance. . * Green, Miranda (1992) ''Animals in Celtic Life and Myth''. London: Routledge. * * Wightman, E. M. (1970) ''Roman Trier and the Treveri'' London: Hart-Davis.

External links

* * {{Celtic mythology (ancient) Gaulish goddesses Celtic goddesses Animal goddesses Treveri Bear deities