Gobannus

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Gobannus (or Gobannos, the Gaulish form) was a Gallo-Roman god, whose name, denoting "the smith", is normally taken to identify him as patron of smiths.

A number of statues dedicated to him are preserved, found together with a bronze cauldron dedicated to Deus Cobannos, in the late 1980s and illegally exported to the USA, now in the Getty Museum in the Getty Center, in California.[1] He is mentioned in an inscription found in the 1970s in Fontenay-près-Vézelay, reading AVG(VSTO) SAC(RVM) [DE]O COBANNO, i.e. dedicated to Augustus and Deus Cobannus.

The name is from a Proto-Celtic word for smith, *goban-;[2] the name of the god is also continued in Old Irish Goibniu and Welsh Gofannon. In Modern Irish "smith" is gabha, and in Modern Welsh it is gof. Abergavenny, in what is now south east Wales was the site of a Roman fort and settlement called Gobannium.

Main article: Berne zinc tablet

The best preserved dedication to Gobannus is found on the Berne zinc tablet, where his name is written ΓΟΒΑΝΟ (in the dative and in Greek letters). The tablet was found in the 1980s in Berne. It is inscribed with an apparently Gaulish inscription

ΔΟΒΝΟΡΗΔΟ ΓΟΒΑΝΟ ΒΡΕΝΟΔΩΡ ΝΑΝΤΑΡΩΡ

Brenodor is probably a placename; Nantaror may refer to the Aare valley (containing as first element nanto- "valley"). Dobnoredo seems to be an epitheton of Gobano, maybe composed of dubno- "world" (Old Irish dumh, c.f. Dumnorix, Donald) and rēdo- "travel" (Old Irish riad), or rēdā "chariot" i.e. "world-traveller" or "world-charioteer", so that the inscription may mean approximately "to Gobannus, the world-traveller, dedicated by the people of Brennoduron in the Arura valley".

The tablet is made of an alloy unlike modern zinc, containing lead and iron as well as traces of copper, tin and cadmium (Rehren 1996). It was concluded that the zinc of this tablet was collected from a furnace, where the metal is known to have aggregated, Strabo calling it pseudoarguros "mock silver"[3], but it is believed that it was usually thrown away as worthless. Since the tablet is dedicated to the god of the smiths, it is not unlikely that such zinc remnants scraped from a furnace were collected by smiths and considered particularly smithcraft-related.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ US Epigraphy project, inscription number CA.Malibu.JPGM.L.96.AB.54
  2. ^ Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, University of Wales. "Proto-Celtic—English lexicon." (See also this page for background and disclaimers.)
  3. ^ In 1546, Georg Agricola re-discovered that a white metal could be condensed and scraped off the walls of a furnace when zinc ores were smelted.

[edit] References

  • Rehren, Th. (1996) "A Roman zinc tablet from Bern, Switzerland: Reconstruction of the Manufacture", Archaeometry 94, The Proceedings of the 29th International Symposium on Archaeometry, Eds S. Demirci et al., Ankara, pp 35-45.


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