Airon of the Deep Wells

Celtiberian · deity · Late Iron Age to Roman period · deity

Airon is one of the few Celtiberian deities whose cult place can be identified with precision. A Roman-period votive altar dedicated 'Deo Aironi' was found at the Fuente Redonda, a circular walled spring-well near Uclés (Cuenca) in the hinterland of the Celtiberian-Roman city of Segobriga, marking the site as a sanctuary of an indigenous god of subterranean waters. The god's name enjoyed a remarkable afterlife: across central Spain dozens of deep pools, sinkholes and wells are still called 'pozo Airón' and are the object of folk legends about bottomless, life-taking waters, which scholars such as Alberto Lorrio have traced back to the pre-Roman divinity. His character is therefore reconstructed as chthonic and aquatic, tied to wells, springs and the dangerous depths of the earth.

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