10 Facts About Lugus

Lugus's name is rarely directly attested in inscriptions, but his importance can be inferred from place names and ethnonyms, and his nature and attributes are deduced from the distinctive iconography of Gallo-Roman inscriptions to Mercury, who is widely believed to have been identified with Lugus, and from the quasi-mythological narratives involving his later cognates, Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes and Irish Lugh Lamhfhada.

God Lugus is mentioned in a Celtiberian inscription from Penalba de Villastar in Spain, which reads:.

The majority of the known inscriptions dedicated to Lugus come from the Iberian Peninsula, perhaps indicating this deity's particular importance and popularity among the Iberian Celts.

Lugus's name was commemorated in numerous place-names, such as Lugdunum, capital of the Roman province of Gallia Lugdunensis.

Lugus said that "Mercury" was the god most revered in Gaul, describing him as patron of trade and commerce, protector of travellers, and the inventor of all the arts.

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Lugus is frequently accompanied by his consort Rosmerta, who bears the ritual drink with which kingship was conferred.

Ludwig Rubekeil suggests that Lugus was a triune god, comprising Esus, Toutatis and Taranis, the three chief deities mentioned by Lucan, and that pre-Proto-Germanic tribes in contact with the Celts moulded aspects of Lugus into the Germanic god Wodanaz i e that Gaulish Mercury gave rise to Germanic Mercury.

Lugus was the godly paradigm of priestly kingship, and another of his appellations, lamhfhada “of the long arm”, carries on an ancient Proto-Indo-European image of a noble sovereign expanding his power far and wide.

Lugus's name survives in the village of Louth and the County Louth in which it stands.

Lugus has been suggested as the origin not only of Lugh and Lleu Llaw Gyffes, but the Arthurian characters Lancelot and Lot, though more recent Arthurian scholarship has downplayed any such link between Lugus and Lancelot.