Vegoia and Egeria

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Vegoia,Vegoe, or Vecu, Vecui, Vecuvia or else Begoe or even Bigois as sometimes appears and Egeria are two female figures in the mythology of respectively the Etruscans and the Romans that are vested by tradition with comparable roles as inspirers to legendary founding leaders of their respective cultures, one Arruns Veltymnus in Etruria, and legendary King Numa Pompilius in Rome; this parallelism has been pointed at by Jean-René Jannot, a French specialist of the Etruscan civilization, religion and arts“the prophetess Vegoia calls to mind the nymph Egeria, who similarly counseled King Numa at Rome”.
Sacred books
In a most peculiar way among older civilizations of the Mediterranean world, the Etruscan religion is based on a large corpus of sacred books, which contained prescriptions pertaining to daily behavior in a variety of occasions; tradition allocated the writing, or prophesying to mundane intermediates of a core part of these books, known as Libri Vegoici, to Vegoia (the other part being attributed to a monstrous child-like figure gifted with the knowledge and prescience of some ancient sage, Tages), known as the Libri Fulgurales, of which the topic was divination from lightning strikes, and as the Libri Rituales, most especially the part known as Libri Fatales, expressing the religiously correct methods of founding cities and shrines, draining fields, formulating laws and ordinances, measuring space and dividing time;
The Roman religion of older days holds very little actual written tradition, and even official inscriptions were dealt with for a long period with somewhat little consideration ; however tradition traces to Numa the alleged authorship of several legendary "sacred books" in which he would have written down the teachings and recommendations of the deities, mostly Egeria and the other Muses, he interacted with,. These books hidden away by Numa himself for over 400 years and miraculously retrieved were destroyed at orders of the Roman Senate
Rituals pertaining to public (city, state) and private property boundaries
The setting of rules, practices and rituals pertaining to surveying and delimiting property, setting boundaries, and creating cities is one of the two main achievements attributed to Vegoia and the core of her revelations to Arruns Veltymnus; she also lords over their observation under threat of some dire woe or malediction “ a prophesy vows utter woes unto whomsoever would displace landmarking stones. In this last function she is associated to a male counterpart, Selvans, who in addition, under his form Selvans Sanchuneta, also presides to the observance of oaths.
Perhaps the strangest creation inspired by Egeria to Numa was the cult of Terminus, a god for boundaries; through this rite, which involved sacrifices at private properties boundaries and landmarks, Numa reportedly sought to instill in Romans the respect of lawful property and non-violent relationships with neighbours; the cult of Terminus, preached Numa, involved absence of violence and murder, and that god was testimony to justice and keeper of peace; setting official boundaries to the territory of Rome, which Romulus had never wanted, was also, presumably with the same concern of preserving external peace, decided by Numa, just as the official delimitation of “pagi” dividing the immediate territory of Rome which he is attributed with was probably related to establishing internal peace over land property rights disputes and strife.
Rituals pertaining to divination and interpretation of ominous signs
Vegoia's other main credentials is to be designated as the source of the Libri Fulgurales, of which the topic was divination from lightning strikes ; this divination was a fundamental dimension of the Etruscans rites and involved a very complex conception of the organization of the universe, that established correspondences between precisely metered zones of the skies, the deities, and homologies in the immediately surrounding world (for instance the structure of sacrificed animal livers was seen as echoing and giving keys to events in the heavens); as presiding to the organization and landmarking of the ground, Vegoia was also presiding to the organization and border marking of the heavens, and thus to the possibility of divination; “this cartography of the sky , which as a sort of property division, was attributed to Vegoia, was the prerequisite for each observation”
Egeria interpreted for Numa the abstruse omens of gods (episode of the omen from Faunus); more generally in later centuries , then often identified as a water nymph, and associated with springs in sacred groves she gave wisdom and prophecy in return for libations of water or milk at her sacred groves. Not only does she deliver wisdom and prophesies herself, but she also supports in obtaining predictions from other minor gods , or even helps in obtaining a prescription from the highest god , Jupiter himself, as protection against lightning strikes.
A link to sacred or tamed water and to the measuring and religious organization of time
Egeria became more generally in later centuries identified as a water nymph, and associated with springs in sacred groves or lakes (such as the famous lake of Nemi, in association with an old Latin form of Diana); at Rome, the spring associated to her near Porta Capena was reserved to the sole use of the Vestales for the cleansing of the temple of Vesta. Her protégé Numa is credited with the institution of the calendar for all celebrations in the Roman public cult.
Vegoia was associated to the Libri Fatales, expressing the religiously correct methods of draining fields and measuring time.
Etymology
to be expanded
Divine female inspirers to male earthly leaders in organizing the society’s core rituals
These two female figures associated by Jean-René Jannot differ in essence from Hellenic or oriental sybils that only utter the word of the gods, always formulated in an abstruse way, and delivered under a trance condition; there seems to be little if at all corresponding figure in the Hellenic environment, for if many goddesses do marry or entertain durable intercourse of some sort with mortals, they take care of their spouse’s or offspring’s fortune but take no heed of rites, rituals, or public cult; they both hold a prominent role in the establishment of essential parts of the rituals of these Etruscan and Roman cultures in close vicinity; and they both do so while serving as inspiring sources to male legendary figures of their early rulers, all in all displaying an interesting parallelism between those two neighboring people struggling with one another in middle Italia during the first half of the Ist millennium BC, while the one (the Etruscans) was having an early strong political domination over the other (the Romans).
Notes and references
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