DID THE DACIANS OF BANNA/BIRDOSWALD WORSHIP A BEAR GOD?

A tomb painting at the Aleksandrovska Grobnitsa (Bulgaria), which possibly depicts Zalmoxis. (Photo Courtesy Wikipedia)

While there is great controversy surrounding the figure of the Dacian god Zalmoxis, some ancient authorities - and modern scholars - have seen in him a bear divinity.  A good example of the latter is represented by "The Cult of the Sleeping Bear", to be found in the following book by Rhys Carpenter:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.74372

I am here providing the relevant selection from that work:

In classical times, in the northern part of the present kingdom(or whatever it may be) of Bulgaria, there dwelt a Thracianpeople called Getai, whom Herodotos found noteworthy because of their practice of a peculiar ritual connected with their belief in immortality:

They consider [he writes] that they themselves do not die, but that whoever perishes goes to the spirit Salmoxis, the same whom some o£ them name Beleizis. Every four years they choose one of their numberby lot and, after instructing him in their various wishes and needs, send him away as a messenger to Salmoxis. And this is how they send him. While some of them group themselves, holding three javelins, others seize the feet and hands of him who is to be despatched to Salmoxis and swinging him up into the air let him fall on the spearpoints. If he is transfixed and dies, they deem the god is auspicious; but i£ he does not die, they put the blame on the messenger, declaring that he is a sinful man, and after they have thus found him at fault, they send off another as messenger. It is before he dies that they communicate to him their wishes. In this Getan practice the tribesman has taken the place of the tribal animal as emissary: a man, not a bear, is sent. That is because the bear has here become the divinity, the great spirit to whom the message is sent and with whom the dying Getai may expect to live forever. It is no new theory among students of religion that Salmoxis was a bear. We have only to listen to the rest of Herodotos’ ac- count to perceive that this identification must be correct. After remarking that these same Thracians who send away the messenger to Salmoxis “shoot arrows at the thunder and lightning, defying the god [to wit, of course, the Greek god, Zeus of the thunderbolt], since they believe in no other god than their own,”Herodotos proceeds to relate the following remarkable anecdote: As I learn on inquiry from the Greeks on the Hellespont and the Black Sea, this Salmoxis was a man who had been a slave at Samos for noneother than Pythagoras. After gaining his freedom he amassed considerable wealth and returned with it to his native land . . . and there he built a banqueting hall in which he entertained the leading citizens and in the course of the feasting set forth his doctrine that neither himself nor his guests nor yet their children’s children should die, butshould come to that very place and there should live forever in enjoyment of every happiness. But aU the while that he 'was saying this he was engaged in making for himself an underground chamber; and when it was completed, he disappeared from among the Thracians by descending into the underground chamber, and there he abode for a space of three years. The rest lamented and mourned for him as dead. However, in the fourth year he reappeared among them; and thus they were confirmed in what Salmoxis had told them. This is the story. For my own part, as to this underground chamber and the rest, I donot precisely doubt, nor yet do I altogether believe. Still, I am of the opinion that Salmoxis must have lived long before Pythagoras. Butwhether Salmoxis was indeed a human being or some sort of native divinity among the Getai, let us now bid him farewell. Whoever is familiar with the Greek propensity to rationalize the supernatural and to humanize every myth will recognize that the slave of Pythagoras (whence, of course, the poor barbarian derived his knowledge of immortality!) and the leading Thracian citizen who entertained his townsmen in a communityeating hall are typical Hellenic interpretative contributions to the story. With these removed, we are left with an immortality cult centering on a mysterious exponent who feasts, then retires to an underground dwelling, pretends to be dead, is considered dead by others, but at length reemerges to prove that death is not the end. Fortunately there are a few further ancient references to Salmoxis besides this famous Herodotean accotmt. From these we learn that he fasted and starved himself in his self-imposed prison; that his underground chamber was a “cavelike place”; and that he took his name from the Thracian word for hide, zdmo, because he was dressed in a bearskin—an etymology which, by leaving the bear out of the hide, admits more than it pretends to explain! Surely it is not very difficult to read such a riddle. The dedmonwho wears a bear’s hide, who feasts heartily, then retires to fast in a secret cavelike dwelling in the ground, vanishing from mortal ken to be given up for dead, yet after a time returns to life and his old haunts, can be none other than the hibernating bear, whose mysterious, foodless, midwinter sleep has everywhere made of him a supernatural spirit to the wondering mind of primitive man.

A more comprehensive and less slanted evaluation of the god may be found in this study (which still, however, allows for the god having a bear aspect):

https://www.persee.fr/doc/hiper_2284-5666_2016_num_3_2_914

Of course, even if we accept that Zalmoxis was a bear god, and that he was worshiped by the Dacians, we cannot be sure if the Dacians serving as Roman troops at Birdoswald/Banna in the Irthing Valley (Valley of the Bear River, in the region of the *Artenses or 'Bear-people') honored this deity.  To begin, they would have adopted the religion and cultic practices of the Roman state fairly early on.  And, in truth, there are a great many dedications to Jupiter Optimus Maximus at Birdoswald.  Any worship of a native deity would either have been done in private or according to the usual process of interpretatio romana, in which one's native deity was identified with a Roman one that shared this or that characteristic or function.  If Zalmoxis was a sky god, as has been contended, the many dedications to J.O.M. at Birdoswald may be significant in this regard.

But it is interesting to contemplate the possibility that a people whose greatest god was ursine formed the garrison of a fort where Arthur may have been present.