Ganna (seeress)

She is only mentioned by name in the works of Cassius Dio, but she also appears to have provided posterity with select information about the religious practices and the mythology of the early Germanic tribes, through the contemporary Roman historian Tacitus who wrote them down in Germania.

Her name may be a reference to her priestly insignia, the wand, or to her spiritual abilities, and she probably taught her craft to Waluburg who would serve as a seeress in Roman Egypt at the First Cataract of the Nile.

The only mention of her name appears in a line in the works of the Roman historiographer Cassius Dio in the early 3rd c.: ὅτι Μάσυος 1 ὁ Σεμνόνων βασιλεὺς καὶ Γάννα παρθένος ἣν μετὰ τὴν Οὐελήδαν 2 ἐν τῇ Κελτικῇ θειάζουσα ἦλθον πρὸς τὸν Δομιτιανόν, καὶ τιμῆς παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ τυχόντες ἀνεκομίσθησαν[1]Masyos, king of the Semnones, and the virgin Ganna, who had appeared as a seeress in Celtica after Veleda, came to Domitian, were treated honourably and were returned.

[2] Ganna belonged to a tribe called the Semnones who were settled east of the river Elbe, and she appears to have been active in the second half of the 1st c., after Veleda's time.

[13] During their stay in Rome, Ganna and Masyos appear also to have met with the Roman historian Tacitus who reports that he discussed the Semnoni religious practices with informants from that tribe, who considered themselves the noblest of the Suebi.

[15] Rudolf Simek notes that Tacitus also learnt that the Semnoni performed their rites at a holy grove that was their tribe's cradle and it could only be entered when they were fettered.