NEHALENNIA ΨΥXOΠOMΠOΣ?

BY

O. J. SCHRIER

The recovery from the sea, near Colijnsplaat, in ig7o and ig7i, of some 125 altars and statues dedicated to the `Dutch' goddess Ne- halennia ( floy. 200 A. D.), of whom nothing is known from classical

literature, has added much to the archaeological material revealed in the dunes near the coastal village of Domburg by storms in 1647, the year in which we made acquaintance with Nehalennia 1). The recent discoveries 2) were so extensive that we could hope to come nearer to the true nature of this goddess. In an interesting article, 'Nehalennia and the Souls of the Dead', Mnem. IV 24 (1971), 273 ff., Professor H. Wagenvoort has given us a survey of the functions of this goddess. She is the patroness of overseas trade: among the

dedicators are negotiatores salarii, negotiatores cyetayii, negotiatoyes allecayii, and, more generally, negotiatoyes Britanniciani, a negotiator Gallicanus, an actor navis 3) ; motives for the dedication were

ob merces recte conseyvatas (Dam 23 = He 3 = CIL XIII 8793 ; Col

II), ob meyces suas bene conseyvatas (Col 32), pro meycibus conseyvan- dis (Col 33), pro navibus (Col 50), rather obscure: ob melioyes actus

(Dom 9 = He 12 = CIL XIII 8782); furthermore, she was a fer-

tility goddess, perhaps a goddess of hunting, but "the principal function proper to Nehalennia" lay in the fact that she was the

goddess of Domburg, which "was one of the places..... where,

according to popular belief, the journey of the souls of the dead

1) See A. Hondius-Crone, The Temple of Nehalennia at Domburg (Amster- dam 1955) (in the present article these monuments are quoted as Dom 1, 2, 3, etc.) and F. Heichelheim, R. E. XVI, 2177 ff., s.v. Nehalennia, quoted as He.

2) Cf. the catalogue of the exhibition Deae Nehalenniae (Middelburg- Leiden 1971); these discoveries are quoted as Col 1, 2, 3.

3) Cf. J. E. Bogaers in the exhibition catalogue, 35 and 39, Wagenvoort, op. cit., 278.

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across the sea to the West 4) began" (op. cit., 285). It is not my intention to review the views of Prof. Wagenvoort on this journey 5), but I am afraid I cannot follow him when he writes: "Nehalennia... not only protects seamen on their passage to the West, but also

extends this patronage to the souls of the dead on their journey from the West coast of Europe to the sunny land in the far West"

(P. 283 ). Prof. Wagenvoort's most important argument is the curtain

displayed on the back of some of the Domburg altars (Dom 5, 6,

10, 14 = He 13, 14, 19, 16) and in Colijnsplaat on Col I, 2, 6, 8, m,

12, 14, 17, 37. On the meaning of this curtain no agreement exists 6), but Prof. Wagenvoort has no doubt that we "see in the peripetasma a veiling of the future which awaits the souls of the dead on the

Isles of the Blessed, in Elysium or in the sphere of the moon or

wherever the abode of the blessed souls has successively been

localized" (p. 280). Therefore he writes (p. 282): "I imagine that

when a merchant's ship had returned safely from England he

gladly kept his vow to dedicate an altar to Nehalennia. But what

was he to do if the sea-crossing had cost the lives of one or more of

the crew, maybe one of his near relatives ? Could it be that as a

sign of mourning and at the same time of faith in a happy life after

death he dedicated an altar, but then one with a curtain draping the

4) About this conception cf. H. Wagenvoort, The Journey of the Souls of the Dead to the Isles of the Blessed, Mnem. IV 24 (1971), 113 ff., esp. 153.

5) As a matter of fact I am not wholly convinced that Prof. Wagenvoort is right in his general conception of an ancient belief, originated about the end of the second millennium B.C. on the north-west coast of Asia Minor, that the souls of the dead assembled in some holy places, and made a journey via two routes, one of them being the course of the Danube and the Rhine and ending in Domburg, to the Isles of the Blessed in the far West, identical with the dwelling-place of the gods, Helios and Eos included (!). This hypothesis is based on arguments which are of a hypothetical nature them- selves. I am not convinced e.g. by his assumption that Homer localized Eos in the West, (p. 115), for which he quotes Od. 12, 3 ff.

where conflation with motives from the Argonautic saga is far more probable (see K. Meuli, Odyssee und Argonautika, Berlin 1921, 85 and G. S. Kirk, The Songs of Homer, Cambridge 1962, 234 ff.). But as my article deals only with the supposed psychopompic function of Nehalennia, I shall regard the journey of these souls from Greece and Italy to the West as a datum.

6) Wagenvoort, Nehalennia 279-283 and Heichelheim, op. cit.

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back ? Of course this is only a hypothesis, but not too daring a one, as it seems to me", and p. 283: "I ... picture the matter to have

been as follows: when a beloved relation or friend had died-or

possibly was known to be dying-a prayer was addressed to the

goddess to guide the soul of the deceased safely to the land of the

blessed, together with a vow to dedicate an altar for him or her in the temple at Domburg".

As I said before, I cannot agree with this theory. In the first

place Prof. Wagenvoort has written quite openly: "Objectivity demands that I draw attention to an ostensibly weak point in the

above argument, namely, to the fact that most of the altars quoted end with the stereotyped letters..... v (otum) s(olvit) l(ibens)

m(eyito).... Was (the dedicator) able to say so, if he had lost one or more of his sailors at sea ? That seems to me unthinkable.

Therefore, if those letters are found on an altar together with a

curtain, I am inclined to put that down to the routine of the sculp- tor" (p. 287). Now of the four Domburg altars with a curtain two have vslm, the others ex voto suscepto lm resp. pro se et suis vslm 7). On the Colijnsplaat altars with a curtain we read vslm (Col z, ex voto p (osuerunt) 9) lm (Col 6), 1 ( Col 12). So we have to imagine that either one sculptor made many mistakes, or more sculptors made some mistakes. This is possible, although not very probable. But on Col ii figure not only the letters vslm, but also the words

ob merces recte conseyvatas. It seems to me impossible to put the

blame for this on the routine of any sculptor, or to think that the

dedicator, a negotiator cretarius, would have accepted such a blun-

der, or to believe that the dedicator on the front of his votive altar

libens meyito expressed his thanks to the goddess ob merces recte

conseyvatas, and had at the same time the back draped with a cur-

tain to tell: "But I am sorry to say that one of my crew was drown-

7) Dom 5 (= He 13 = CIL XIII 8783) and Dom 10 (= He 19 = CIL XII 8792); Dom 14 (= He 16 = CIL XIII 8791) resp. Dom 6 (= He 14 =CIL XIII 8786).

8) An altar recovered in 1971, not yet published, in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden, inv. no. i 1971/11.66, shows forth the curtain with the same letters vslm. I thank Dr. P. Stuart, conservator of this museum, for his kindness in showing me this altar.

9) There were two, or probably three, dedicators.

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ed". No, we can gather from this inscription, just as from Dom 23

(= He 3 = CIL XIII 8793, from the same dedicator (!), the in-

scriptions are identical), and from Col 7 and 32 (ob merces (suas) bene

conservatas) only one thing: the journey(s) had been a complete success.

From this follows a second argument: is it probable that the

back of an altar was used to express the most important thing a

man has to tell: the loss of a beloved one or a friend, and the hope of a better life ?

In the third place: Prof. Wagenvoort has laid some emphasis on the differences between the Colijnsplaat findings and those of Dom-

burg (pp. 278-9, 285-6); he has made it probable that Colijnsplaat was the more commercial of the two places, whereas Domburg was in his opinion a station where the souls of the dead passed on their

way to the West. If this view is correct, it is rather peculiar to find

only four curtains in Domburg and nine in Colijnsplaat, which had little to do with the journey of the souls.

In the fourth place: Procopius, as cited by Prof. Wagenvoort (pp. 273-4), tells us that in some villages on the North Sea coast the souls of the dead embark at night for their journey, and that their destination was England. One of these places, Prof. Wagen- voort thinks, was Domburg, and so Nehalennia became, in his

opinion, the protectress of these souls on their great journey. Now, Procopius is speaking of 7T<xp<x rou 'Qxeocvo5 vijaov and of Bptzzi« as the destination of the

journey of the souls (Bell. Goth. IV (VIII) 20,49 ff.). Unfortunately, we do not know where on the map this BpLrr'Loc is to be placed. It is distinguished by Procopius from (see index to the

Tusculum-edition of Procopius). He gives a very confused des-

cription of the geographical position of BpL't''t'[tX (Bell. Goth. IV

(VIII) 20, 1) and modern interpretations, as cited by Rubin, RE s.v. Procopius, col. 515, vary from Jutland, Rugen and Helgoland to

England and Brittany. O. Veh, in the index of his Tusculum-

edition, explains: "Irland, scheint von Prokop mehrfach mit Britannien verwechselt". We are obviously on very slippery ground. Furthermore, in the same chapter on BpcTTia Procopius tells us, with some caution, about a king who understood the

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language of birds (14) and about a wall 8ix« 't'ÉtLvov (i.e.

noXX$jv on the East-side of it everything is nor-

mal, but passing it means for men and beasts certain death be-

cause of To ÀOLtLÑ3e:c; (46). The story of the journey is

called by Procopius ou he relates it only because he heard it from innumerable people (48). These must have been German soldiers in the armies of Justinian the Great of Byzantium. Is it not likely for them to believe that the souls of the dead travelled to some island in the West, which only by some people was called

What did they understand by The answers to

these questions should be known before connecting this story with

Nehalennia of Domburg. Procopius was an intelligent man, but he was living in the Byzantine Empire during a period in which,

owing to political conditions, no certain information could be ob-

tained of N. W. Europe, and this fact accounts for the half-his-

torical, half-fabulous character of his story. Besides, even if the Central European Germans of about 550 A.D. looked at the British

archipelago as "the sunny land in the far West" (Wagenvoort, 283), the negotiatoyes Byitanniciani of about 2oo A.D. cannot have held the same view. They knew better. For these reasons I do not think

that Procopius can be cited as evidence for the existence of a

popular belief that Nehalennia was the protectress of the souls on their way home.

It will be clear that I cannot believe in the proposed symbolic

meaning of the curtain on the Nehalennia-altars. On altars with a

curtain the same inscriptions are found as on those without one; the

omnipresent vslm, the identical wordings of Col m (with a curtain) and of Dom 23 (without one) 1°), the formula ?yo se et suis on

Dom 6 (with a curtain) and on 9, 22, 29, 42, 46 (without one) suffice to prove this. A similar observation can be made about the curtain on some statues of an enthroned Jupiter. An example in

Trier has a curtain on the two sides and on the back il), in Nimegue one throne shows a curtain on the back 12), another only on the

10) See above, p. 155. 11) E. Espérandieu, Recueil général des bas-reliefs de la Gaule romaine

(Paris 1907-1955), VI, 4922. 12) Id., IX, 6620.

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sides 13), in Maastricht I saw two examples with a curtain on

both sides and on the back, and one where a curtain was visible

on the back only 14), but there exist completely comparable thrones

without one 15). So in my view these vela are purely decorative.

Of course it is quite possible that in Palmyra and in Italy the

velum had a religious meaning as Prof. Wagenvoort argues; in that

case we might suppose that some sculptor brought that motive to

the Northern provinces without knowing its deeper meaning 16). It seems that Mrs. Hondius-Crone is right when she suggests

(ofi. cit., 108): "Probably those altars with curtains were the more

elaborate ones intended for a place where they could be seen from

all sides". As a matter of fact it was possible to get an altar in

any price-bracket. There exist simple ones, bearing only an inscrip- tion, e.g. Dom 25 (= He 29 = CIL XIII 8787) and Col. 22 and

27. Others have a decoration on the sides (cornucopia, palmtree

etc.), e.g. Dom 26 (= He 8 = CIL XIII 8789) and Col 20, 21 and

23. Most altars show a picture of Nehalennia, and in that case the

sides are always decorated, sometimes rather simply (cornucopia, acanthus leaves etc.), e.g. Dom 14 (= He 16 = CIL XIII 8791), Col 7, sometimes more elaborately, showing the figures of Neptune and Hercules, e.g. Dom 3 (= He 25 = CIL XIII 8801) and Col

14, or other persons (Col. 5, 6, IT). The altars with a curtain on the

back were, then, the most expensive. If I have been successful in proving that the curtains on the altars

of Nehalennia do not refer to the death of one of the relatives of the

dedicator, there is not much reason either to suppose that Neptune and Hercules were represented as death-gods in connection with

13) Id., I X, 6621. These three references I owe to P. Stuart, exh. catal., 82, n. 43.

14) Bonnefantenmuseum, resp. inv. no. 748, 2540 A and 747 A. I thank Dr. J. Sprenger for his kind help.

15) Id., IX, 6599 (from Birten) and IX, 6618 (from Nimegue). 16) The curtain is found on an altar of Jupiter at Cologne (Espérandieu,

XIV, 8555), according to H. Schoppa, Römische Götterdenkmäler in Köln (Köln 1959), II, originating from a workshop from which some Bonnian altars of Matres originate; on an altar of Matres at Bonn (H. Lehner, Rö- mische Steindenkmäler von der Bonner Münsterkirche, Bonner Jahrbücher 135, 1930, 12 no. 20, Tafel X; the other altars do not have the curtain) ; on a funeral monument at Arlon (Espérandieu, V, 4098).

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Nehalennia (Wagenvoort, 285-286). One looks in vain for Mercury, whose appearance was to be expected if from Domburg the souls of the dead had to be guided to their home. The meaning of Neptune for the negotiatores and nautae of our inscriptions is obvious 17). Hercules is one of the most important 'Weggotter' 18). The other

pictures, particularly the representation of the Garden of the Hes-

perides (Dom 4 = He 9 = CIL XIII 8790), and the fact that at

Domburg two statues of Victory were found, make it probable that Nehalennia's worshippers believed in a happy life after death 19), but I do not see that this proves Nehalennia to have been §vxo-

7COP.-170? 1 20).

NiEUw VENNEP, Dorsersstraat 71

17) Dr. Stuart reminds me of the fact that Neptune sometimes has his foot on the prow of a ship, Dom 6 (= He 14 = CIL XIII 8786), Dom 12 (?) (= He 4 = CIL 8799) and Dom 31, an altar to Jupiter and Neptune, found in Domburg, without an inscription.

18) Gruppe, RE, Suppl. 3, col. 1002. 19) A. Hondius-Crone, op. cit., III, Wagenvoort, op. cit., 286-287. 20) S. J. de Laet, Nehalennia, diesse geymanique ou celtique, Helinium II

(1971), 154-162, shares the opinion of many others that the dog which accompanies Nehalennia on nearly all her representations proves her to have been a goddess of death, but he adds (p. 158): "ce n'est certainement pas en tant que d6esse fun6raire que Nehalennia était v6ner6e en Z61ande... le caractere fun6raire de la d6esse 6tait mis h l'ombre au profit de son role de protectrice de la navigation", thus distinguishing the original character of Nehalennia, according to this hypothesis, from her clear historical func- tion. This seems to me the right way to tackle these problems. De Laet, op. cit., 158 n. 12, observes that "F. Benoit, L'hgyoisation équestre (1954) ii7, n'hesite pas a voir en Nehalennia un doublet d'Epona, dont on connait le caractere fun6raire et psychopompe". I have not been able to get hold of this book, but it may be said that to identify Nehalennia with Epona is not enough to prove the psychopompic character of Nehalennia.

I am indebted to Mrs. M. Kuyper-Tillema for the correction of the English text of this article.

RESPONSUM PRAEMATURUM

Aliquantum iam praeteriit temporis, ex quo Nehalenniam maerens valere iubere coactus sum, nec lecta disputatione praecedente, digna procul dubio quae graviter feratur, fieri potest ut ad ea, quae coniecturis meis opponun- tur-nam fuisse eas coniecturas plane equidem confessus sum neque criticus meus e conspectu amisit-ut ad ea, inquam, statim respondeam et recollecta omni adnotationum materia in mare illud turbulentum praeceps desiliam

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luctaturus et favente Nehalennia emersurus. Sin vivo adhuc mihi licebit, alibi has quaestiones fusius tractare mihi proposui. Nihilo secius duas saltem res iam nunc in medium proferre velim. Primo quidem loco facere non possum quin confitear mirari me supra legentem (p. 153): "This hypothesis"- scilicet opinio mea, tenens i.e. Graecorum maioribus persuasum fuisse mortuorum animas antequam longum iter in Occidentem facerent, certas quasdam in regiones convenire solere, unde una proficiscentes diversis duabus viis in litore continentis Europae Occidentalis terrae emporium ali- quod portu praeditum attacturi essent, cuius incolae animas ad itineris finem navibus transvehere solerent-ergo "This hypothesis is based on arguments which are of a hypothetical nature themselves". Vereri debeo ne Scririum fefellerit adnotatio mea postmodo demum addita (Mnemos. IV vol. XXIV, 1971, p. 395), qua inscriptionem attuli, quae non mihi tantum sed nonnullis quoque iudicibus idoneis documento esse videtur me in his rebus non errasse.

Secundo autem loco argumentum addere velim, quod, nisi omnia me fal- lunt, iniuria adhuc ipse neglexi. Fac iure nos conatos esse demonstrare prisca vetustate incolas Domburgii pro animarum portitoribus esse habitos, vix quemquam praeterierit, eos, si ita res se habeat, eodem functos esse officio quo secundum famam antiquam neque hodie unicuique credibilem Phaeaces (cfr. S. Eitrem, RE. XIX, 1526, 41 sqq.). Sin recte video, non fortunae temeritati assignandum est quod, sicut in articulo meo animadverti, in ipsa ea regione Italiae Meridionalis, quo animas collegisse se veri est simile, flumen invenitur cui nomen Hellesporus (cfr. Mnemos. IV vol. XXIV, 1971, p. 153), oppositum utique ipsi Phaeacum domicilio priori, ubicumque id quaerendum est, ita ut quasi constet ubi animae viam meridianam sequentes mare Ionium transvehi existimarentur. En nova coniectura ? Non nego equidem, mea vero sententia omnes hae coniecturae concordiores esse viden- tur quam ut ex matrimonio Fatui alicuius et Fortunae natae esse putandae sint.

H. WAGENVOORT