Sinifere

Sinifere is a Berber war-god known only from the Iohannis of Corippus, where he appears among the gods invoked by the eastern Libyan tribes during their sixth-century revolts against Byzantium. He is grouped with the bull-god Gurzil and the death-god Mastiman as one of the martial deities of the Laguatan and Austur confederations. Because he is attested by this single source, some scholars suspect he may have been a local or tribal god rather than a widely shared divinity, but he is nonetheless a distinct named being in the eastern Berber pantheon of late antiquity.

Domains

• war

Powers

• to grant victory in battle

Relations

• companion: MastimanCorippus lists Sinifere and Mastiman together among the deities of the eastern Libyan confederations.Andy Merrills, War, Rebellion and Epic in Byzantine North Africa: A Historical Study of Corippus' Iohannis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). (secondary)

Sources

• Sinifere is a Berber war-god named by Corippus among the deities of the eastern Libyan tribes, probably a tutelary or tribal god of the Laguatan confederation.: Yves Moderan, Les Maures et l'Afrique romaine (IVe-VIIe siecle) (Rome: Ecole francaise de Rome, 2003). (secondary); Corippus, Iohannis seu De bellis Libycis, ed. James Diggle and F. R. D. Goodyear (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). (primary)