Gurzil
Gurzil or Agurzil was a war deity of the ancient Berbers.
In ancient Berber religion, Gurzil was a bull-shaped war god who became identified with the son of Amun (Ammon). He was taken by the Berbers to their battles against the Romans.
In the sixth century, Corippus mentioned that Ierna -- chief of the Berber tribe known as the Laguatans (or Luwata, as they were later known to the Arabs) -- took his god Gurzil into battle against the Byzantines. Ierna was a Berber ruler and a high priest of Gurzil. After the Berbers were defeated, he fled with the "sacred image" of Gurzil, but was caught and killed and the image destroyed.[1] Gurzil was later taken by the Berber queen Dihya ("the Kahina") into her battles during Muslim conquest of the Maghreb.
A temple among the ruins of Gerisa in Libya may have been dedicated to Gurzil, and the name of the town itself may even be related to his name.[2]
References
- ↑ John Morris, Arnold Hugh Martin Jones, John Robert: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire p. 612
- ↑ René Basset (1910). "Recherches Sur La Religion Des Berberes" [Research on Berber Religion]. Revue de L’Histoire des Religions. Retrieved October 3, 2011. (in French)
Bibliography
- Modéran, Yves. (2005). Article 'Kahena (Al-Kâhina)', Encyclopédie Berbère; vol. 27, p. 4102-4111. (Points out that according to the 6th-century historian Procopius, a Berber king carried an idol of the god Gurzil.)
See also
- Ifri, war goddess of the ancient Berbers and origin of the name “Africa”