Icovellauna was a
Celtic goddess
The gods and goddesses of the pre-Christian Celtic peoples are known from a variety of sources, including ancient places of worship, statues, engravings, cult objects and place or personal names. The ancient Celts appear to have had a pantheon ...
worshiped in
Gaul
Gaul ( la, Gallia) was a region of Western Europe first described by the Romans. It was inhabited by Celtic and Aquitani tribes, encompassing present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy (only during ...
. Her places of worship included an octagonal temple at Le Sablon in
Metz
Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand ...
, originally built over a spring,
[Dyfed Lloyd Evans (2005).]
Icovellauna: a Gaulish Goddess (Divine Pourer of the Waters)
" fro
www.celtnet.org.uk
, accessed 10 September 2006. from which five inscriptions dedicated to her have been recovered, and
Trier
Trier ( , ; lb, Tréier ), formerly known in English as Trèves ( ;) and Triers (see also names in other languages), is a city on the banks of the Moselle in Germany. It lies in a valley between low vine-covered hills of red sandstone in the ...
, where Icovellauna was honored in an inscription in the Altbachtal temple complex. Both of these places lie in the
valley of the river
Moselle of eastern Gaul in what are now
Lorraine
Lorraine , also , , ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; german: Lothringen ; lb, Loutrengen; nl, Lotharingen is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of Gra ...
in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
and
Rhineland-Palatinate
Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...
in
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. One such inscription was, somewhat unusually, inscribed on a copper tablet in Roman cursive letters.
At the temple in Metz, a spiral staircase led down to the water level, allowing worshipers to leave offerings in the spring and/or to take the waters. A statuette of a local Gaulish
Mercury was among the ex-votos deposited at the shrine,
which also included coins and ceramics dating from the 2nd to 4th centuries CE. Jeanne-Marie Demarolle states that Apollo was also associated with Icovellauna.
Demarolle glosses the name Icovellauna as ''bonne fontaine'' or "good fountain".
Miranda Green follows
Joseph Vendryes
Joseph Vendryes or Vendryès (; 13 January 1875, Paris – 30 January 1960) was a French Celtic linguist. After studying with Antoine Meillet, he was chairman of Celtic languages and literature at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He found ...
in interpreting 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 ...
root ''ico-'' as "water" and characterizes Icovellauna as a "water goddess" who "presided over the nymphaeum at Sablon in the
Moselle Basin, a thermal spring-site".
[Miranda Green (1986). ''The Gods of the Celts.'' Alan Sutton, Gloucs. . pp.85, 165.] Xavier Delamarre
Xavier Delamarre (; born 5 June 1954) is a French linguist, lexicographer, and diplomat. He is regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on the Gaulish language.
Since 2019, he has been an associate researcher for the CNRS- PSL AOrOc ...
, however, considers Vendryes' interpretation to be very improbable; on purely etymological grounds, he suggests that ''ico-'' might be the name of a bird, perhaps the woodpecker. The root ''uellauno-'' has been variously interpreted, though the interpretation "chief, commander" has recently found favor; see
Vellaunus.
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{{Celtic mythology (ancient)
Gaulish goddesses
Water goddesses