Thursday, January 18, 2024

THE PRECISE ORIGIN POINT OF THE DARK AGE NAME 'ARTHUR': THE CARVORAN ROMAN FORT OF THE COHORS II DELMATARUM



If I am right and Uther Pendragon, the Terrible Chief-dragon, belongs at Birdoswald/Banna of the Roman period draco-venerating Dacians, where did Arthur's mother come from?  And where did the name Arthur originate (geographically, not etymologically)?

In the past, I wrote the following post on the possibility that the 2nd century L. Artorius Castus not only died in Dalmatia, but may have been born there.  Regardless of whether he was born there or not, we have ample evidence for the Artorii in the province.  For those who would like to read my argument for Castus' presence in Dalmatia, please see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/10/lucius-artorius-castus-birth-and-death.html.

Now, the Carvoran/Magnis Roman fort just to the east of Birdoswald was garrisoned in the late period by the Cohors II Delmatarum, a unit originally raised in Dalmatia.  Remarkably, we have a tombstone from this site of a third century woman from Salona, a city known for its Artorii attestations.



When we combine the presence of  'Dalmatian' Carvoran near Birdoswald with the latter's *Artenses or Bear People ( = the Welsh eponym Arthwys, supposedly a great chieftain of the North) in the valley of the Irthing River  (the 'Little Bear'; see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2020/12/breezes-article-on-etymology-of-irthing.html), and link those, in turn, with the propensity for the British to link Arthur's name with their word for bear, arth, it is logical to propose that Arthur's mother hailed from Carvoran and that the name Artorius was chosen for her and Uther's son precisely because a) it was traditionally Dalmatian, with a known famous representative of the Artorii gens having served in North Britain during the Roman period and b) it would naturally have been associated with the tribe and river names.

We don't really know the name of Arthur's mother.  Although in the past I have explored many possible derivations for both Geoffrey of Monmouth's Igerna and the Welsh version Eigr, the most sensible approach is to default to the old idea: as the story of Arthur's birth exactly parallels that of the Irish hero Mongan son of Fiachna (a hero later killed by Arthur son of Bicoir/Petuir/Petr of Dyfed), and Mongan's mother's name was Caintigerna, "fine/good/fair/beautiful lady", we may go with a borrowing from the Irish, wrongly truncated as [Caint]igerna. 








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