Deity · Celtic · c. 100 BCE
Nuada
Also called Nuadu Airgetlám, Nuada of the Silver Arm
The Irish king who loses his hand in battle and with it his kingship, because the Tuatha Dé Danann will not be ruled by a blemished man — and gets both back when a silver arm is made for him.
Narrow source base
The rule he falls foul of is the interesting part: a king must be whole, and an injury is a disqualification regardless of merit. He abdicates, the kingship goes to a half-Fomorian who rules badly, and Nuada is restored only after the physicians make him an arm. The corpus keeps him because the doctrine survives the religion — the demand that a sacred office require an unblemished body runs from Leviticus to medieval canon law, and here it is being applied to a god.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Tara, whose kingship the story is about
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- Named there as
- Nuadu Airgetlám
- Rank
- King of the Tuatha Dé Danann
- Pantheon
- Celtic
- Order
- Celtic pantheon
- Base of operations
- Tara, whose kingship the story is about
- Era
- c. 100 BCE
- Traditions
- Celtic
Traits
- Domain
- Kingship, the qualification to rule, healing
- Traditional form
- A king with an arm of silver
Stats
Known connections
Opposed by
1 site
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
now Teamhair na Rí, County Meath
The seat of kingship in the Irish literature rather than a temple: the hall Lugh talks his way into by being master of every art at once, and the kingship Nuada loses with his hand and gets back with a silver one.
The kingship he resigns over the loss of his hand and resumes when the physicians make him a silver one.
53.578, -6.612 · Wikidata Q543155
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Nuada, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial2
- transformation1
- material1
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Nuada, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts, all given the same approximate date
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Nuadu Airgetlám, Nuada
- Rank: given as King of the Tuatha Dé Danann; King
Named as king in the settlement narrative, with the loss of his hand and the silver replacement recorded as the reason for the interruption in his reign.
Resigns the kingship over the loss of his hand, is restored when it is replaced, and yields command to Lug before the battle in which he is killed.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Nuada?
What rank is Nuada?
How else is Nuada spelled?
What is Nuada said to do?
How old is Nuada?
Nearest in the corpus
If Nuada is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
The Morrígan
Phantom Queen · Celtic
War-goddess who appears as a crow over battlefields and foretells the deaths below. Sovereignty and slaughter, held in one figure.
Balor
King of the Fomorians · Celtic
Fomorian king of Irish myth whose single eye destroys whatever it looks at. He was killed by his own grandson, exactly as the prophecy he tried to prevent had said.
Brigid
Goddess of Poets and Smiths · Celtic
The Irish goddess of poetry, smithing and healing who invents keening over her son's body at Mag Tuired — and whose name, feast and attributes are carried straight over to a Christian saint.
Lugh
The Many-Skilled · Celtic
The Irish god who gets into Tara by being master of every art at once, and who kills his own grandfather Balor with a sling — the Tuatha Dé Danann's answer to the Fomoire.
The Dagda
The Good God · Celtic
'The good god' — good at everything rather than morally good — with a club that kills at one end and restores at the other.
The Fomoire
The Adversary Host · Celtic
The enemies of every group that settles Ireland in the Lebor Gabála, and the clearest case in this corpus of a monastic redactor turning a defeated people into demons.
The books behind Nuada
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
Cath Maige Tuired (The Second Battle of Moytura)
Anonymous; Irish monastic compilation · c. 11th c., from older material · Middle Irish
Read Cath Maige Tuired (The Second Battle of Moytura) in full ↗Lebor Gabála Érenn & the Mythological Cycle
Anonymous Irish monastics · 11th c., from older oral material · Middle Irish
Read Lebor Gabála Érenn & the Mythological Cycle in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Áed Ua Crimthainn et al (12th century) · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.