Icovellauna was aCeltic goddess worshiped inGaul. Her places of worship included an octagonal temple at Le Sablon inMetz, originally built over a spring,[1] from which five inscriptions dedicated to her have been recovered,[2] andTrier, where Icovellauna was honored in an inscription in the Altbachtal temple complex.[3][4][A] Both of these places lie in thevalley of the riverMoselle of eastern Gaul in what are nowLorraine inFrance andRhineland-Palatinate inGermany. One such inscription was, somewhat unusually, inscribed on a copper tablet in Roman cursive letters.[5]
At the temple in Metz, a spiral staircase led down to the water level, allowing worshipers to leave offerings in the spring and/or to take the waters. A statuette of a local GaulishMercury was among the ex-votos deposited at the shrine,[1][6] which also included coins and ceramics dating from the 2nd to 4th centuries CE.[7] Jeanne-Marie Demarolle states that Apollo was also associated with Icovellauna.[8]
Demarolle glosses the name Icovellauna asbonne fontaine or "good fountain".[9]Miranda Green followsJoseph Vendryes in interpreting theGaulish rootico- as "water" and characterizes Icovellauna as a "water goddess" who "presided over the nymphaeum at Sablon in theMoselle Basin, a thermal spring-site".[10]Xavier Delamarre, however, considers Vendryes' interpretation to be very improbable; on purely etymological grounds, he suggests thatico- might be the name of a bird, perhaps the woodpecker.[11] The rootuellauno- has been variously interpreted, though the interpretation "chief, commander" has recently found favor;[12] seeVellaunus.
^ A: Although Jufer and Luginbühl also report a number of inscriptions to Icovellauna atMalzéville,[13] it has been suggested that this is an error on their part and that the inscriptions in question belong at Le Sablon in Metz.[14] The Epigraphik-Datenbank Clauss/Slaby has no records of any inscriptions from Malzéville published inCIL or similar publications.[15]
