Icovellauna was a Celtic goddess worshipped in Gaul. Her places of worship included an octagonal temple at Le Sablon in Metz, originally built over a spring,[1] from which five inscriptions dedicated to her have been recovered;[2] and Trier, where Icovellauna was honoured in an inscription in the Altbachtal temple complex.[3][4]A[›] Both of these places lie in the valley of the Moselle river of eastern Gaul, in what are now Lorraine in France and Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany.
At the temple in Metz, a spiral staircase led down to the water level, allowing worshippers 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.[1][5]
Following Joseph Vendryes, Miranda Green interprets the Gaulish 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".[6] Xavier Delamarre, however, considers this interpretation to be very improbable; on purely etymological grounds, he suggests that ico- might be the name of a bird, perhaps the woodpecker.[7] The root uellauno- has been variously interpreted, though the interpretation "chief, commander" has recently found favour;[8] see Vellaunus.
^ A: Although Jufer and Luginbühl also report a number of inscriptions to Icovellauna at Malzéville,[9] it has been suggested that this is an error on their part and that the inscriptions in question belong at Le Sablon in Metz.[10] The Epigraphik-Datenbank Clauss/Slaby has no records of any inscriptions from Malzéville published in CIL or similar publications.[11]
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