InGermanic paganism,Tamfana is a goddess. The destruction of a temple dedicated to the goddess is recorded by Roman senatorTacitus to have occurred during a massacre of the GermanicMarsi by forces led by Roman generalGermanicus. Scholars have analyzed the name of the goddess (without reaching consensus) and have advanced theories regarding her role in Germanic paganism.
In book 1, chapters 50 and 51 of hisAnnals, Tacitus says that forces led by Germanicus massacred the men, women, and children of the Marsi during the night of a festival near the location of a temple dedicated to Tanfana:
Original Latin (first century CE):
| Church and Brodribb translation (1876): They were helped by a night of bright starlight, reached the villages of the Marsi, and threw their pickets round the enemy, who even then were stretched on beds or at their tables, without the least fear, or any sentries before their camp, so complete was their careless and disorder; and of war indeed there was no apprehension. Peace it certainly was not—merely the languid and heedless ease of half-intoxicated people. 51. Cæsar, to spread devastation more widely, divided his eager legions into four columns, and ravaged a space of fifty miles with fire and sword. Neither sex nor age moved his compassion. Everything, sacred or profane, the temple too of Tamfana, as they called it, the special resort of all those tribes, was levelled to the ground. There was not a wound among our soldiers, who cut down a half asleep, an unarmed, or a straggling foe. The Bructeri, Tubantes, and Usipetes, were roused by this slaughter, and beset the forest passes through which the army had to return.[2] |
There is no undisputed testimony of this goddess besides the passage in Tacitus. An inscriptionTamfanae sacrum was found inTerni, but is considered afalsification byPyrrhus Ligorius.[3] She is also mentioned, asZamfana, in the supposedOld High German lullaby, which was accepted byJacob Grimm,[4] but is considered now by most experts a probable forgery.[5]
Sincefana is Latin for "temple", it has been suggested that the name Tamfana was derived from a temple dedicated to a godTan. The 16th-century scholarJustus Lipsius thought it concerned a Celtic wordtan, meaning "fire". Other scholars thought the word was derived from GermanTanne "pine tree", or that it might mean "collective."[6][7] The 19th-century antiquarian Thomas Smith believed it was aWotanfana, a temple dedicated toWodan. Amateur etymologies were rejected by Grimm, among others;[8] he called the name "certainly German," the-ana ending being also found inHludana,Bertana,Rapana, andMadana.[3][9]
The passage is one of few to contradict Tacitus' own statement inGermania that the Germanic tribes did not havetemples.[10][11] The historian Wilhelm Engelbert Giefers proposed 1883 thatTanfana derived fromtanfo, cognate with Latintruncus, and referred to a grove on the site of theEresburg, related to theIrminsul.[12]
Many suggestions have been made since then about the goddess' name and nature. Grimm was unable to interpret it, but suggested variously that it was connected toStempe, a name ofBerchte,[9][13] that she was named for an association with a sieve,[14] and, based on the now discredited lullaby, that her name meant "bountiful, merciful."[15] Based on folklore andtoponymy, Friedrich Woeste proposed that the name was cognate with Germanzimmern and meant "builder" or "nourisher";[16] based on the season at which the festival and the Roman attack took place,Karl Müllenhoff proposed she was a goddess of harvest plenty, properly *Tabana, cognate with Greek words for "expenditure" and (hypothetically) "unthrifty"; others added Icelandic and Norwegian words for "fullness, swelling," "to stuff," and "large meal."[17] These ideas are considered outdated by modern folklore scholarship.
In the Dutch city ofOldenzaal the 19th-century antiquarian and school principal Jan Weeling developed the idea that the temple was located in the district ofTwente, where theTubanti as allies of the Marsi had been situated. Based on contemporary legends he located the Tamfana-temple on the slope of the 85 m Tankenberg, a moraine hill east of Enschede, where he took the initiative to place a memorial stone in the 1840s. He also claimed that a heavy boulder with ceremonial functions in the centre of town ("de Groote Steen") originally stemmed from the supposed temple, but was moved into the city around 1710. A local spring might also date from prehistoric times. These ideas were endorsed in 1929 by the archivist A.G. de Bruyn, who studiedOldenzaal folklore. De Bruyn returned to the original idea of splitting the name intoTan andfana. on toponymic grounds. He found extra proof in theseal of the neighbouring baily ofOmmen from 1336, depicting thepatron saintBrigid of Kildare holding apalm branch, and accompanied by a lion, an eagle, and an eight-pointed star, apparently representing the sun. According to De Bruyn, the woman depicted on the seal was holding afir tree, and he speculated that she depicted a moon or a mother deity, possibly related to theCarthaginian goddessTanit.[18][19]
De Bruyn's speculations were not endorsed by professional historians. They gained renewed popularity by a recent book by Rudi Klijnstra, who connected local folklore withNew age-ideas aboutMother goddesses.[18][20]
Rudolf Simek notes that an autumnal festival aligns with Old Norse attestations of thedísablót, a celebration of thedísir, female beings with parallels to the West Germanic cult of theMatres and Matronae. Simek says that Tamfana is perhaps best considered in the context of the widespread veneration of the Germanic Matres and Matronae.[21]
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