How many Gods can there be?

[nellie]

Here is a small snippet of a book I've been reading:



3:Celtic Fire and Roman Rule
Bruce Robinson and Tony Gregory
Poppyland Publishing, Norfolk Origins
1987
Pg. 78

"The site of a Romano Celtic temple at Thetford yeilded a spectacular collection of Roman gold and silber, perhaps the possessions of a temple, buried in the ground in order to protect them from some sort of danger in about AD 390.
This hoard, known as the Thetford Tresure and discoverred in 1979, contained silver spoons - probably used in some sort of sacred meal - many bearing insriptions such as 'Die Fauni Blotugi' (the property of the god Faunus/Blotugus). In all almost a dozen names associated with this hoard are equated with that of Faunus.
It is further evidence for the survival of the worship of Celtic gods.
With the spoons was a staggeringly rich collection of gold jewellery including necklaces, belt buckles, pendants and finger rings, all new and apparently unworn. They appear at first sight to be the stock-in-trade of a jeweller, but one of the rings has a central setting for a gem supposrted by two tiny bird figures, apparently woodpeckers.
The Latic for woodpecker is picus. Faunus, originally an Italian nature spirit was the son of a god named Picus. This is surely too much of a coincidence, and it may be that all of the jewellery was bought of made to dedicate in the temple which was only about 100 metres from the great Icenian site of Gallows hill, itself probably religious."

It says that Blotogus (Bringer of Flour/Flowers, Bringer of the Year according to celtnet) is also mentioned independantly of Faunus suggesting that He was an independant celtic god rather than Blotogus merely being a title. The name Blotogus is apparantly only found at this site so I'm assuming it would be reasonalbe to think He was a local god.

Even if the name was entirely local would a celt from say northern england be able to recognise the god Blotugus as the same as one of his clans gods? If say Blotugus does mean 'bringer of the year' surely my made-up man would recognise Blotugus as a diety he was famililar with even with a different name? If dieties appeared to have functions would the iron age traveller have believed for example that all gods of blacksmithing were the same god?
The question still seems pertinant today - how many gods of blacksmithing can there be?! (I'm not pretending I'm sure one way or the other!!)

[megli]

Sorry to ignore the main thrust of your question, Nellie, but the name is interesting. I suppose if one thinks BLOTOGVS = *Blātākos it could indeed mean 'flowery one', or 'the Flourisher', or 'floury one' (it's one of those odd coincidences that the Celtic and English words for 'flower' and 'flour' are similar pairs, but it's not etymological)...the 'year' thing is impossible and there's no 'bringing' root in there. He would probably be 'Blodog' in Welsh.

Something about it looks funny/wrong to me: really, they should have written BLATACVS. The main problem being that the change from a long 'a' to 'o' is too early and the G should be a C at this stage...fishy. But I can't think of anything better, and o for British ā is not entirely *unknown*, and who knows how these people were pronouncing late Latin? Inscriptions are a pain linguistically anyway because people can and do make mistakes and spell things idiosyncratically. Thoughts, Deiniol?

[Feel free to ignore this, everyone!!]

[deiniol]

I'm rather stumped. It's a bit like finding a fossilized calculator.

I'm not sure that the G/C thing is overly suspect. The Gaulish evidence suggests that Roman ears frequently perceived Celtic intervocalic voiceless stops as voiced, and OT suggests that this "misperception" would be most likely with velars.

The vowels are the key, though. I agree that *blātākos is the most likely interpretation, but Jackson dates *ā > *ǭ to the late fifth century, a good century after the latest possible date for this inscription. The C4 form BLOT- suggests an earlier *blaut-, *blot- or *blout-, but none of those are reconstructed for PC or Brythonic (according to my sources, at least). Time travelling druids strike again.

Also, <insert ritual denunciation of celtnet here>

[nellie]

If Blotogus was a tribal god i guess He's pretty important to the area where I live, so I'm more than interested in anything you have to say
I've jotted down that somewhere I've read a possible meaning to be 'fosterer of corn' but didn't have the brains to add where I'd found the info (duh!)

Time travelling Druids... hmmm maybe you're onto something there