| Živa | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Siwa fromL'Antiquité expliquee... byBernard de Montfaucon, 1722 | |
| Venerated in | Polabian religion |
| Major cult center | Ratzeburg(?) |
| Texts | Chronica Slavorum |
| Region | Polabia |
| Ethnic group | Obotrites |
Živa,Zhiva (Latin:Siwa) is amother goddess of one of the tribes belonging to theObodritic confederation of thePolabian Slavs. The goddess so appears only in theChronicle ofHelmold of Bozov. He described the strengthening of the pagan cult during the reign ofNiklot:
In those days, the multifarious worship of idols and the error of superstition were fortified throughout Slavia. For apart from the sacred forests and the household deities, which abounded in the country and the cities, the most important and preeminent gods wereProne, god of Oldenburg country,Siwa, goddess of the Polabians, andRedigast, god of Obotrite country.[1]
As the tribe's maingord wasRatzeburg, Živa, in one copy of theChronicle, is called "Goddess of Ratzeburg" (Latin:Raceburgensium Dea).[2]
In copies of theChronicle, the name is noted as:Siwa (Copenhagen copy),Siwe (Lübeck),Silue (Vienna),Synna (Szczecin). The Copenhagen, Lübeck and Szczecin manuscripts indicate that the name contained thegrapheme ⟨w⟩ ([v]); the Szczecin notation was created as a result of frequent ⟨u⟩ → ⟨n⟩ alternation and reflected the form*Syuua, while the double ⟨u⟩ = ⟨w⟩, which indicates the original form*Sywa (*Syva). The Viennese transcript is the most distorted in relation to the original.[2]
Scholars agree on the etymology of thistheonym. It is read as the Slavic*Živa, from Slavic feminine adjective*živa "alive, live, living".Živa is also a personal name attested in several Slavic languages, e.g. the Old Polabian personal name*Živa (Latin:Zive, 1336), theOld Polish surnameŻywa (Latin:Siwa,Sywa,Szywa,Szyva), theSerbo-Croatian given nameŽiva, theBulgarianZhiva, and others. Originally, therefore, this theonym was a given name, which then became an epithet of an unknown goddess, whose characteristics would have to be related to the meaning of the name; this theonym can be understood as a wishing name, e.g., "may she be alive and live long", or a characterizing name, e.g., "she who is alive".[3]Vyacheslav Ivanov iVladimir Toporov considered Živa to be an epithet of the goddessMokosh[4] (which was preserved in the names of the Polabians after Christianization[5]).
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