Gripswalder Matronensteine

The Gripswalder Matronensteine are a set of Gallo-Roman-Germanic votive stones found in 1863 near Haus Gripswald on land now part of Meerbusch. They were uncovered during tree-felling work along a high plateau’s edge, where the remains of a small stone structure stood half a metre deep. The site included six inscribed altars dedicated to the Matronae Octocannae, a mother-goddess cult known only from this spot. Experts date the stones to the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD, when Roman military roads passed nearby and the fort at Gelduba lay a few kilometres away. The altars were commissioned by several donors, including Gaius Salvius Quietus, and show carvings of fruit baskets, sacrificial animals and symbols like snakes and cranes. Some stones may have been moved here later to protect them from Christian destruction. The original stones are kept in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, while a replica stands in Ossum village close to the findspot. The site itself is quiet farmland today, but the carvings reveal a once-vibrant ritual landscape where Romanised Germanic people honoured their mother deities.