Acionna was a Gallo-Roman water goddess, attested in the
Orléanais
The Duchy of Orléanais () is a former province of France, which was created during the Renaissance by merging four former counties and towns. However after the French Revolution, the province was dissolved in 1791 and succeeded by five ''départm ...
region.
In 1822,
Jean-Baptiste Jollois
Jean-Baptiste Prosper Jollois (4 January 1776 – 24 June 1842) was a French engineer who together with Édouard de Villiers du Terrage journeyed with Napoleon to Egypt, and prepared the ''Description de l'Égypte
The ''Description d ...
, one of the founding fathers of archaeology in the region, carried out excavations on the so-called "fontaine de l'Étuvée", an ancient water-source which he artificially drained to rediscover if it could still supply the town's public water fountains. In a former cesspit, he found a roughly square (0.6m by 0.55m) stone tablet with a well-preserved votive inscription, datable by its style to the 2nd century. It reads:
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:"To August Acionna, Capillus son of Illiomarus
fferedthis portico with these ornaments, in willing and right fulfillment of his vow"
[The original stela was deposited in the new Musée historique d'Orléans on its discovery and, though the original has since disappeared, it is still known from drawings and lithographs Jollois made of it and from a plaster-cast of it now in the Orléans museum.]
Acionna is not attested in any other sources, but the ending ''-onna'' indisputably indicates a Latinized Gallic name. The stela's findspot in an ancient source suggests that she is a water goddess. Her name may be linked to that of the river
Essonne - ''Axiona, Exona,'' in medieval texts - whose source is in the slopes to the north of the
forêt d'Orléans
The Chablis region of Burgundy is classified according to four tiers of ''Appellation d'origine contrôlée'' (AOC) designation. The top two are the crus of Chablis and include the 7 Grand cru vineyards followed by the lower Premier crus. Wines m ...
(this river's upper course is today called the
Å’uf
Oeuf or Å’uf may refer to:
* the French word for "egg", in English used in culinary contexts
* Å’uf (river), the upper course of the Essonne River in the ÃŽle-de-France region of France
* Å’uf-en-Ternois
Å’uf-en-Ternois is a commune in the Pas- ...
and only takes up the name Essonne at its junction with the Rimarde). Another river of the forêt d'Orléans, the "Esse" or "Ruisseau des Esses", flowing south into the sea in the Bionne (a Celtic name), might also have borne this name.
Acionna probably had her sanctuary at the Fontaine de l'Etuvée in the commune of
Orléans and remains of a Gallo-Roman temple and a section of an aqueduct were excavated in 2007.
Notes
Bibliography
* Jollois, J.-B.- ''Notice sur les nouvelles fouilles entreprises dans l'emplacement de la fontaine de l'Étuvée et sur les antiquités qu'on y a découvertes'', in : Annales de la Société royale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts d'Orléans, tome 7, 1824, pp. 143–167 - (publication princeps de l'inscription et reproduction lithographiée) ;
* CIL, XIII, 3063 ;
* Debal, J.- ''Cenabum, Aurelianis, Orléans''.- Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1996 - (coll. ''Galliæ civitates'')
{{Gaulish-Brythonic mythology
Gaulish goddesses
Carnutes
History of Orléans
Water goddesses
Gallo-Roman religion