Iron Age Ireland (Archaeology) Research Papers (original) (raw)

The Bigames Cycle, the Enūma Eliš, and the Táin bó Cuailnge, likely originated in the springtime reenactment of the rejuvenation of earth. In contrast, the Ugaritic Ba’al Cycle and the Irish tale of Oenach Carmain celebrate in the fall, a hero/god who saves the grain from draught or blight. Gaulish deity names and the portrayals on the Gundestrup and Chiemsee cauldrons allow us to generalize these Irish connections to the myths of earlier Celts. Like the Gundestrup cauldron, the Chiemsee cauldron, was made by Venetian craftsmen between 70 and 60 BC. Proving its genuine early Celtic origin, connections between the Chiemsee cauldron and Armorica can be established from: the art style, the portrayed weaponry, the narrative portrayal, the deities portrayed, the trace elements in the metal, and the use of Celtic units of weights and measures in its construction.
The Irish Cath Maige Tuired bears such a close relationship to the Yammu episodes of the Ugaritic Ba’al Cycle that it must have been borrowed into Hispano-Celtic repertoire from Phoenicians settling in southwest Iberia. Although Ireland is far-removed from the Near East, it is closer to Iberia, where Phoenicians began to plant colonies from the ninth-through-the-fourth centuries BC.
De Bello Gallico (VI, 14) records a belief in a cycle of rebirth among the Gauls. In Roman Gaul the god who was associated with this belief was the rejuvenating spirit to be found in hot springs. This Gaulish Apollo was known by various bynames including Vroicos “the Heather”. But, the solar god Maponos also was associated with Apollo. More particularly, Vroicis can be identified with Irish Fraech as well as Apóllōn’s son Asklēpios, the god of healing, whereas Maponos can be identified with Irish Mac-ind-Óc and both with Apóllōn’s musical son Orpheús and Hēlios-Apóllōn’s son Phaethon.
The mythology associated with the rejuvenation of the springtime waters survived in the Táin in the episode where Cú Chulainn drowns his only son Fraech. Fraech descends to the Underworld from which, brought to life again, he reemerges shortly thereafter. Mac-ind-Óc, on the other hand, resided with his Persephónē-like sister on an otherworld-island paradise where the Sun sets and were magical birds sing enchanting music.
Sylla in (Plutarchus: Moralia) outlines two religious concepts derived from Gaulish sources: (1) a belief in an ever-lasting paradise for those who die bravely in battle and for those who control desire in material things, and (2) a belief in a cycle of being reincarnated into new life forms, after being purged in fire and recycled on the moon, for those not yet worthy of paradise. These concepts probably spread from Iberia northward into Europe along with bronze-smelting technology. Iberian-Beaker people spread their ideology of an archer god associated with the symbol of the golden sun-disk and burial in grave cists opening to the setting sun. The beakers perhaps indicate a Eucharist of beer made from sun-ripened grain. Since these Beaker people spread with the development of bronze technology, the process of creating metallic copper from its clay-like ore led to the concept that tarnished souls, like tarnished scrap metal, could be recycled in fire to be born again into new forms. The religion and burial customs of the Iberian Beaker-people then would have been adopted by the Corded-Ware cultures of central Europe with little movement of people. Proto-Indic speakers in the interior bordering on the Atlantic Celtic-speaking zone could have adopted this Beaker mythology before they crossed over into Anatolia and Proto-Celtic speakers have adopted it before crossed over to the British Isles.