The mother goddess of Anatolia, Cybele, may have had an early Neolithic ancestor in Çatalhöyük. She was likely the national divinity of Phrygia and is the only goddess known to exist there. There is no extant tale or literature that describes the original nature or characteristics of the Phrygian cult of Cybele. She might have developed from a kind of statuary from Anatolia called Çatalhöyük, which dates to the sixth millennium BC and is thought by some to be a mother goddess. It depicts a corpulent, fertile female figure surrounded by big cats. The cult features of the Phrygian mother-goddess, seen in 8th-century BC Phrygian art, include attendant lions, a prey-bird and a little vase for her offerings or libations. Around the sixth century BC, Greek colonists in Asia Minor took up and modified her Phrygian cult, which they then brought to mainland Greece and the farther-flung western Greek colonies. Cybele had a mixed response when she arrived in Greece. She began to adopt characteristics of the harvest-mother goddess Demeter, the Earth-goddess Gaia, and her potential Minoan counterpart Rhea. Her most famous Greek ceremonies and processions portray her as an inherently alien, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and an agitated, ecstatic following. However, some city-states, most notably Athens, invoked her as a protector. She held a eunuch mendicant priesthood, which was unique in Greek religion. Rituals to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was most likely a Greek fabrication, were part of many of her Greek religions. In Greece, Cybele came to be connected to mountains, city walls, lush surroundings, and untamed animals, particularly lions. Cybele earned the title Magna Mater or Great Mother, in Rome. Once the Sibylline oracle in 205 BC urged her conscription as a crucial religious ally in the second war of Rome against Carthage between 218 and 201 BC, the Roman state adopted and developed a specific form of her cult. Roman mythographers reinterpreted her as a Trojan goddess, and thus an ancestral goddess of the Roman people through the Trojan prince Aeneas. Romanized versions of the cults of Cybele spread throughout empire as Rome eventually consolidated dominance over the Mediterranean region. Greek and Roman writers argued and argued over the morality and significance of her cults and priesthoods, topics that are still contentious in contemporary scholarship
[Information and Image Credit : Cybele, Wikipedia]
[Wikipedia-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybele ]
[Image : Cybele in a chariot driven by Nike and drawn by lions toward a votive sacrifice (right); above are heavenly symbols including a solar deity, Plaque from Ai Khanoum, Bactria (Afghanistan), 2nd century BC; Gilded silver; Wikipedia-Image-Author : World Imaging assumed (based on copyright claims)]
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