Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 30/1. (2010)

Articles

DOMINA AND DOMINUS FROM CRISTE§TI

(MURE§ COUNTY)

SZILAMÉR PÉTER PÁNCZÉL

Mure§ County Museum, Tärgu Mures / Babe^-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

Keywords: religion, Roman, Dacia, Criste§ti, mould, terracotta

With this paper1 we would like to draw the attention to a terracotta mould from the collections of the Mure§ County Museum which can possibly be related to the cult of a divine couple known as Dominus and Domina.2 The artefact was discovered during excavations in 19283 at Criste^ti/Maroskeresztúr (Mure^/Maros County).4

Fig. 1. Roman Dacia under the reign of Hadrian (after I. Piso modified by Zs. Visy).

1 I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my fellow colleagues Mariana Egri, Manuel Fiedler, Constanze Höpken, Nikcola Lyons, Dávid Petrut and Ádám Szabó for the discussions and the suggested corrections.

2 Their name appears in many cases in the form of Domnus and Domna as a result of a Latin syncope, this variant is frequent in the 3rd and the 4th centuries, but sometimes it is also present in the 2ndcentury. See: Fehér 2007, 373.

3 Floca 1937, 4-5.

4 The most recent and complex synthesis about the site is: Man 2002.

MARISIA XXX, p. 77-84