Bacax
Berber · deity · antiquity · deity
Bacax is a native Berber deity of caves and vegetation whose cult is unusually well documented by epigraphy. His sanctuary was the Ghar el Djemaa, a large cavern in Djebel Taya above the Roman town of Thibilis (Announa, Algeria). Each spring the two annually elected magistri of Thibilis made a pilgrimage to the grotto and engraved a dated dedication to 'Bacax Augustus'; the surviving series runs from roughly 210 to 284 CE, with celebrations falling around 31 March or 1 May, tied to the growth season of cereals and pasture. Although the Latinized name resembles Bacchus, scholars regard the god as thoroughly indigenous, a local numen of the sacred mountain and its life-renewing spring.
Domains
- sacred caves
- spring vegetation
Powers
- to preside over the sacred grotto and the return of spring growth
Epithets
- Bacax Augustus
Sources
- Gabriel Camps, s.v. 'Bacax,' Encyclopedie berbere, vol. 9 (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1991).
- Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, vol. VIII, nos. 5504-5519 and 18828-18857 (dedications from the grotto of Djebel Taya, Thibilis).