Wczesnośredniowieczna rzeźba z Dzierzgonia, tzw. "potrimpos", w kontekście interpretacji oraz staropruskich wierzeń

peculiar monument of Old Prussian spiritual culture was found in the vicinity of Dzierzgoń (former Christburg) in the 18th c., during gathering of raw materials for the construction of a Franciscan friary. An anthropomorphic statue, carved from one lump of granite, had enjoyed interest of local inhabitants perhaps even before it was discovered and embedded into the external face of the friary’s masonry wall. The learned tradition gave it a name of Potrimpos – the name of the Prussian god of flowing waters, fertility, health and a protector of oath takers. The earliest drawing of the statue comes from 1826 or 1827 and was made by Lieutenant Johann Michael Guise. Later students of the monument considered it as a fish- or siren-shaped god, with crawfish pincers instead of hands. It was perhaps such an interpretation that allowed for an association of the statue with the water deity. Although later scholars demonstrated that the illusion of a fish-tail was nothing else but the natural shape of the stone, and the hands did not have the appearance of crawfish pincers at all, the traditional name of the deity was not forced out. The monument provoked interest of numerous scholarly circles, it was widely discussed in the local press and true campaigns were waged for its acquisition between museums and the town’s authorities. Eventually, the monument found its way to the Westpreussisches Provinzial-Museum in Gdańsk in 1896. Regrettably, any trace of the statue was lost after 1945. It is known that as early as the late 19th c. a plaster cast of the sculpture was kept at the Volksmuseum in Berlin. The present paper discusses popular and scholarly interpretations related to the monument, mainly in the context of its original function (the author favours the interpretation as a cult statue), and to debates on the chronology of the find (from the Neolithic to the proper period of the Early Middle Ages). Additionally, attention was paid to the mythological context of the religion of the Old Prussians and the place of god Potrimpos – Trimps in it. The paper is based on the analysis of archival sources of individual museums, written sources for the Prussian mythology and a broad basis of literature – including memoirs of Count Stanisław Tarnowski. Count Tarnowski is the author of no doubt the most beautiful description of the monument in question.