Crossword-Solution: BELISAMA 8 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 12

BRIGANTES (Celtic for "mountaineers" or "free, privileged"), a people of northern Britain, who inhabited the country from the mouth of the Abus (Humber) on the east and the Belisama (Mersey; according to others, Ribble) on the west as far northwards as the Wall of Antoninus.

His only reason for this conjecture appears to have been based on the fact that one of the chief rivers was named Belisama, which, he says, "in the Phœnician language, signifies the Moon or the Goddess of Heaven," and that Ribel, now the name of the same river, in the Armenian tongue signifies Heaven.

Thornber says "Belisama means Queen of Heaven, and that the Romans paid divine honours to the Ribble under the title of Minerva Belisama." This conjecture apparently rests on the statement of Leigh, and the fact that the Roman temple at Ribchester was dedicated to Minerva.

From these and other reasons, yet to be advanced, I am inclined to regard the introduction of the British god Bel or Beil as appertaining to a much earlier epoch in our history than the advent of the Phœnician merchants, who, most probably, did visit the Belisama, Portus Setantiorum, and other harbours on the Lancashire and Cheshire coast, for trading purposes, but at a relatively much more recent period.

Hence it may easily be inferred the Belisama of Ptolemy is a Latinised form of the British words which indicated that the Ribble water was the "liquor of the gods" furnished by Bel and Sama for the fertilisation of the earth.