Editing Cimbri (section)

==Culture==
===Religion===
{{main|Cimbrian priestesses}}
[[File:Gundestrup E.jpg|thumb|Three [[carnyx]] players are depicted at right on plate E of the [[Gundestrup cauldron]].]]

The Cimbri are depicted as ferocious warriors who did not fear death. The host was followed by women and children on carts. Aged women, [[priest]]esses, dressed in white sacrificed the prisoners of war and sprinkled their blood, the nature of which allowed them to see what was to come.

Strabo gives this vivid description of the Cimbric folklore:

{{blockquote|Their wives, who would accompany them on their expeditions, were attended by priestesses who were seers; these were grey-haired, clad in white, with flaxen cloaks fastened on with clasps, girt with girdles of bronze, and bare-footed; now sword in hand these priestesses would meet with the prisoners of war throughout the camp, and having first crowned them with wreaths would lead them to a brazen vessel of about twenty amphorae; and they had a raised platform which the priestess would mount, and then, bending over the kettle, would cut the throat of each prisoner after he had been lifted up; and from the blood that poured forth into the vessel some of the priestesses would draw a prophecy, while still others would split open the body and from an inspection of the entrails would utter a prophecy of victory for their own people; and during the battles they would beat on the hides that were stretched over the wicker-bodies of the wagons and in this way produce an unearthly noise.|Strabo, ''Geographica'' 7.2.3, trans. H. L. Jones}}

If the Cimbri did in fact come from Jutland, evidence that they practiced ritualistic sacrifice may be found in the [[Haraldskær Woman]] discovered in Jutland in the year 1835.  Noosemarks and skin piercing were evident and she had been thrown into a bog rather than buried or cremated. Furthermore, the [[Gundestrup cauldron]], found in Himmerland, may be a sacrificial vessel like the one described in Strabo's text. In style, the work looks like Thracian silver work, while many of the engravings are Celtic objects.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-early-iron-age/the-gundestrup-cauldron/the-dating-and-origin-of-the-silver-cauldron/|title=The dating and origin of the silver cauldron|website=National Museum of Denmark|access-date=29 April 2019}}</ref>

===Language===
A major problem in determining whether the Cimbri were speaking a [[Celtic languages|Celtic language]] or a [[Germanic languages|Germanic language]] is that, at that time, the Greeks and Romans tended to refer to all groups to the north of their sphere of influence as Gauls, Celts, or Germani rather indiscriminately, and not based upon languages. Caesar seems to be one of the first authors to distinguish the ''Celtae'' and ''Germani'', and he had a political motive for doing so, because it was an argument in favour of his push to set the Rhine as a new Roman border.<ref>A.A. Lund, ''Die ersten Germanen: Ethnizität und Ethnogenese'', Heidelberg 1998.</ref> Yet, one cannot always trust Caesar and Tacitus when they ascribe individuals and tribes to one or the other category, although Caesar made clear distinctions between the two cultures. Some ancient sources categorize the Cimbri as a Germanic tribe,<ref>[[Julius Caesar]], ''[[Gallic Wars]]'' 1.33.3-4; [[Strabo]], ''Geographica'' 4.4.3, 7.1.3; [[Pliny the Elder|Pliny]], ''Natural History'' 4.100; [[Tacitus]], ''Germania'' 37, ''History'' 4.73.</ref> but some ancient authors include the Cimbri among the Celts.<ref>[[Appian of Alexandria|Appian]], ''Civil Wars'' 1.4.29, ''Illyrica'' 8.3.</ref>

There are few direct testimonies to the language of the Cimbri: referring to the Northern Ocean (the [[Baltic Sea|Baltic]] or the [[North Sea]]), [[Pliny the Elder]] states:<ref>''Naturalis Historia'', 4.95: ''Philemon Morimarusam a Cimbris vocari, hoc est mortuum mare, inde usque ad promunturium Rusbeas, ultra deinde Cronium''.</ref> "Philemon says that it is called Morimarusa, i.e. the Dead Sea, by the Cimbri, until the promontory of Rubea, and after that Cronium." The contemporary Gaulish terms for "sea" and "dead" appear to have been ''mori'' and ''*maruo-''; compare their well-attested modern [[Insular Celtic languages|Insular Celtic]] cognates ''muir'' and ''marbh'' ([[Irish language|Irish]]), ''môr'' and ''marw'' ([[Welsh language|Welsh]]), and ''mor'' and ''marv'' ([[Breton language|Breton]]).<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Ahl | first1 = F. M. | year = 1982 | title = Amber, Avallon, and Apollo's Singing Swan | journal = American Journal of Philology | volume = 103 | page = 399 }}</ref> The same word for "sea" is also known from Germanic, but with an ''a'' (*''mari-''), whereas a cognate of ''marbh'' is unknown in all dialects of Germanic.<ref>Germanic has *''murþ(r)a'' "murder" (with the verb *''murþ(r)jan''), but uses *''daujan'' and *''dauða-'' for "die" and "dead".</ref> Yet, given that Pliny had not heard the word directly from a Cimbric speaker, it cannot be ruled out that the word he heard had been translated into Gaulish.<ref>Accordingly, Pokorny, ''Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch'', 1959, p. 735, describes the word as "Gaulish?".</ref>

The known Cimbri chiefs have Celtic names, including [[Boiorix]] (which may mean "King of the Boii" or, more literally, "King of Strikers"), Gaesorix (which means "Spear King"), and Lugius (which may be named after the Celtic god [[Lugus]]).<ref name=RIVES>Rives, J.B. (Trans.) (1999). ''Germania: Germania''. [[Oxford University Press]] {{ISBN|0-19-815050-4}}</ref> Other evidence to the language of the Cimbri is circumstantial: thus, we are told that the Romans enlisted Gaulish Celts to act as spies in the Cimbri camp before the final showdown with the Roman army in 101 BC.<ref>Rawlinson, in ''Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland'' ''6'' (1877) 156.</ref>

Jean Markale<ref>Markale, ''Celtic Civilization'' 1976:40.</ref> wrote that the Cimbri were associated with the [[Helvetii]], and more especially with the indisputably Celtic [[Tigurini]]. These associations may link to a common ancestry, recalled from two hundred years previous, but that is not certain. [[Henri Hubert]]<ref>Hubert, ''The Greatness and Decline of the Celts''. 1934. Ch. IV, I.</ref> states <!--a direct quote?-->"All these names are Celtic, and they cannot be anything else". Some authors take a different perspective.<ref name=celtshistory>{{Cite book |last=Ó hÓgáin |first=Dáithí |title=The Celts: A History |publisher=Boydell Press |year=2003 |page=131 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-yd1huHoXJwC |isbn=0-85115-923-0}}</ref>

Countering the argument of a Celtic origin is the literary evidence that the Cimbri originally came from northern [[Jutland]],<ref name="celtshistory" /> an area with no Celtic placenames, instead only Germanic ones.<ref>{{cite book |editor-first=Andrew |editor-last=Bell-Fialkoll |title=The Role of Migration in the History of the Eurasian Steppe: Sedentary Civilization v. "Barbarian" and Nomad |year=2000 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=0-312-21207-0 |page=117}}</ref><ref name=EB>{{cite encyclopedia |year=1993 |title=Languages of the World: Germanic languages |encyclopedia=The New Encyclopædia Britannica |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc |location=Chicago, Illinois, United States |isbn=0-85229-571-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/newencyclopaedia07ency }} This long-standing, well-known article on the languages can be found in almost any edition of ''Britannica''.</ref> This does not rule out Cimbric Gallicization during the period when they lived in Gaul.<ref name="celtshistory"/> Boiorix, who may have had a Celtic if not a Celticized Germanic name, was king of the Cimbri after they moved away from their ancestral home of northern Jutland. Boiorix and his tribe lived around Celtic peoples during his era as [[J. B. Rives]] points out in his introduction to Tacitus' ''[[Germania (book)|Germania]]''; furthermore, the name "Boiorix" can be seen as having either Proto-Germanic or Celtic roots.<ref name=RIVES/>