Nantosuelta

The theonym is recorded in a small number of Gallo-Roman inscriptions, the best known being a dedication on an altar from Sarrebourg (Roman Pons Saravi) in the territory of the Mediomatrici, where it appears in the form Nantosueltae beside that of Sucellus.^[1][2] The name is not attested in classical literature, and away from the inscriptions the goddess is identified only through her attributes on Gallo-Roman reliefs.^[3]

The name is a Celtic compound. The first element, nanto- (also nantu-), is generally analysed as the Gaulish word for 'valley', which by extension also denoted a 'stream' or 'watercourse'.^[4][5][6] The second element, -suelta, is harder to interpret.^[7]

Xavier Delamarre analyses suelta as a participial form of the root swel- ('sun') and renders the whole name as 'sun-warmed valley'.^[7] Other scholars have generally glossed the name instead as 'winding brook', 'meandering river' or 'winding river', treating it as an epithet of flowing water, although the visual evidence does not obviously bear out an aquatic character.^[8][5] Jan de Vries saw in Nantosuelta a goddess who makes the streams glitter in the sunlight, a reading that anticipates the later connection with the sun.^[4] Pierre-Yves Lambert instead derived the first element from a root meaning 'to swim', which would give a primary sense 'flowing water'.^[6]

The element nanto- is common in Gaulish place-names, among them Nantu-ates ('those of the valley') and Diuo-nanto- ('sacred valley'), and in personal names.^[6]

Nantosuelta belongs to a class of Gaulish divine couples in which both partners bear native names rather than one being given a Roman name by the interpretatio romana, the other such pairs including Borvo and Damona and Ucuetis and Bergusia.^[3][9] In these couples the goddess is always the indigenous partner.^[9] She appears together with Sucellus on some thirteen monuments, according to Jan de Vries, and the pair is frequent in Burgundy and southern Gaul.^[1][10]

The best-known image is the inscribed relief from Sarrebourg, found in 1895 near the local mithraeum.^[2][11] Beneath the dedication the divine pair stands in a niche. Nantosuelta, draped and long-haired, sacrifices onto an altar and holds in her other hand a long pole surmounted by a house-shaped emblem. Sucellus, a mature bearded figure in a short belted tunic and boots, carries a small round-bellied pot in his open right hand and a long-handled mallet in his left. A raven is carved below the two figures.^[12][13][11]

Nantosuelta's attributes vary. She is commonly shown with a cornucopia or a pot, emblems of plenty that she shares with the female companion of Sucellus more generally.^[1][14] Her diagnostic emblem, however, is the house- or shrine-shaped object mounted on a long pole, which Miranda Aldhouse-Green regards as her most distinctive symbol.^[5][3] This emblem, and the raven that accompanies it, are confined to the territory of the Mediomatrici and their neighbours the Treveri and Nemetes.^[15] The pole-top itself has been read in several ways: as a house or hut, as a model of a temple or shrine, as a house-shaped funerary urn, or as a beehive.^[1][16][5] On the Sarrebourg relief the object resembles a hive on which a raven perches, and three shapes heaped on the ground beside the goddess have been taken for honeycombs, which if correct would point to honey and perhaps to the fermentation of mead, in keeping with the barrels shown on some images of the couple.^[5]

The same theme recurs elsewhere in eastern Gaul and the Rhineland. On a lost relief from Speyer (Roman Noviomagus) in the land of the Nemetes the goddess again carries the house-on-pole with a raven, and a radiate head in the gable above her may point to a solar association, an attribute of Sucellus.^[13][5] A carving from Teting in the Moselle, among the Treveri, shows a goddess with a pot and the same house-shaped symbol.^[5] Among the Treveri around Luxembourg, a distinctive type of goddess was worshipped who was seated within a house-shaped shrine and accompanied by a raven.^[17] Although Nantosuelta usually appears with Sucellus, she also occurs alone, which is taken to show that she held an independent status rather than being merely a female counterpart of the god.^[5]

In Roman Britain the name Nantosuelta is not attested. Sucellus's name occurs on a few British objects, among them a silver ring from York.^[1][10] A relief from East Stoke in Nottinghamshire, in the territory of the Corieltauvi, has been tentatively identified as depicting the couple, and would be the only British image of them.^[18] Anne Ross, by contrast, held that direct evidence from Britain was lacking and that the goddess's presence there could be inferred only from indirect traces.^[19]

Nantosuelta is securely named in a single dedication, from Sarrebourg, where her name is paired with that of Sucellus. The theonym otherwise has to be recovered from the attributes of the goddess on uninscribed reliefs.^[2][11]