Save that it reveals that the Greeks considered "Cybele" to be Greek, the traditional derivation of her name, as "she of the hair" can be ignored, now that the inscription of one of her Phrygian rock-cut monuments has been read matar kubileya C.H.E. Haspels, The Highlands of Phrygia, 1971, I 293 no 13, noted in Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, 1982, III.3.4, notes 17 and 18.. The inscription matar occurs frequently in her Phrygian sites (Burkert). Her name was not original to the Phrygian language, however, but has been traced to Luwian origin, derived from Kubaba, the name by which she was known in Carchemish, as Mark Munn has shown in detail (Munn 2004). "The monuments to the Phrygian Mother all belong after the rise of the Mermnad Lydians, when Kubaba was a sovereign deity at Sardis, known to Greeks as Kybebe," Munn points out, instancing (Herodotus 5.102.1 and other Greek sources.

The goddess was known among the Greeks simply as Meter or Meter oreie ("Mountain-Mother"), or, with a particular Anatolian sacred mountain in mind, Idaea, inasmuch as she was supposed to have been born on Mount Ida in Asia Minor, or equally Dindymene or Sipylene, with her sacred mountains Mount Dindymus (in Mysia) or Mount Sipylus in mind.

Cybele's most ecstatic followers were males who ritually castrated themselves, after which they were given women's clothing and assumed female identities, who were referred to by the third century commentator Callimachus in the feminine Gallai, and who other contemporary commentators in ancient Greece and Rome referred to as Gallos or Galli. Her priestesses led the people in orgiastic ceremonies with wild music, drumming, dancing and drink. She was associated with the mystery religion concerning her son, Attis, who was castrated and resurrected. The dactyls were part of her retinue. Other followers of Cybele, Phrygian kurbantes or Corybantes, expressed her ecstatic and orgiastic cult in music, especially drumming, clashing of shields and spears, dancing, singing and shouts, all at night.

Atalanta and Hippomenes were turned into lions by Cybele after having sex in one of her temples.

Cult history

Overview: Anatolia, Greece and Rome

At Pessinos in Phrygia, an archaic version of Cybele had been venerated as Agdistis, time out of mind. In 203 BC, the aniconic cult object that embodied the Great Mother at Pessinos was ceremoniously and reverently removed to Rome, marking the official beginning of her cult there.

Her cult had already been adopted in 5th century BC Greece, where she is often referred to euphemistically as Meter Theon Idaia ("Mother of the Gods, from Mount Ida") rather than by name. Mentions of Cybele's worship are found in Pindar and Euripides, among others. Classical Greek writers, however, either did not know of or did not mention the transgendered galli; although they did know of the castration of Attis.

Cybele's cult in Greece was closely associated with, and apparently resembled, the cult of Dionysus, whom Cybele is said to have initiated. They also identified Cybele with the Mother of the Gods Rhea.

Anatolian Cybele

Cybele's Anatolian origins probably predate the Bronze Age.

A figurine found at Çatalhöyük, (Archaeological Museum, Ankara), dating about 6000, depicts the corpulent and fertile Mother Goddess, in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two handrests in the form of lion's heads. At her shrine at Çatalhöyük she was depicted with the mural crown that promised she could be a protector of cities.

In the 2nd millennium BC Cybele was known to the Hittites and Hurrians as Kubaba, the city goddess of Carchemish on the upper Euphrates in the Bronze Age: "on the basis of inscriptional and iconographical evidence it is possible to trace the diffusion of her cult in the early Iron Age; the cult reached the Phrygians in inner Anatolia, where it took on special significance" (Burkert, III.3.4, p. 177).

In Phrygia Rhea/Cybele was venerated as Agdistis, with a temple at the great trading city Pessinos, mentioned by the geographer Strabo. It was at Pessinos that her son and lover Attis was about to wed the daughter of the king, when Agdistis/Cybele appeared in her awesome glory, and he castrated himself.

In Archaic Phrygian images of Cybele of the sixth century, already betraying the influence of Greek style (Burkert), her typical representation is in the figuration of a building’s façade, standing in the doorway. The façade itself can be related to the rock-cut monuments of the highlands of Phrygia. She is wearing a belted long dress, a polos (high cylindrical hat), and a veil covering the whole body. In Phrygia, her usual attributes are the bird of prey and a small vase. Lions are sometimes related to her, in an aggressive but tamed manner.

Later, under Hellenic influence along the coastlands of Asia Minor, the sculptor Agoracritos, a pupil of Pheidias, produced a version of Cybele that became the standard one. It showed her still seated on a throne but now more decorous and matronly, her hand resting on the neck of a perfectly still lion and the other holding the circular frame drum, similar to a tambourine, (tymbalon or tympanon), which evokes the full moon in its shape and is covered with the hide of the sacred lunar bull.

Cybele and Attis

The goddess appears alone, 8th–6th centuries BC. Later she is joined by her son and consort Attis, who incurred her jealousy. He, in an ecstasy, castrated himself, and subsequently died. Grieving, Cybele resurrected him. The evergreen pine and ivy were sacred to Attis.

Some ecstatic followers of Cybele, known in Rome as galli, willingly castrated themselves in imitation of Attis. For Roman devotees of Cybele Mater Magna who were not prepared to go so far, the testicles of a bull, one of the Great Mother's sacred animals, were an acceptable substitute, as many inscriptions show. An inscription of AD 160 records that a certain Carpus had transported bull's testes from Rome to Cybele's shrine at Lyon, France.

Aegean Cybele

The worship of Cybele spread from inland areas of Anatolia and Syria to the Aegean coast, to Crete and other Aegean islands, and to mainland Greece. She was particularly welcomed at Athens. The geographer Strabo (book x, 3:18) made some useful observations:

"Just as in all other respects the Athenians continue to be hospitable to things foreign, so also in their worship of the gods; for they welcomed so many of the foreign rites ... the Phrygian of Rhea-Cybele are mentioned by Demosthenes, when he casts the reproach upon Aeskhines' mother and Aeskhines himself, that he was with her when she conducted initiations, that he joined her in leading the Dionysiac march, and that many a time he cried out evoe saboe, and hyes attes, attes hyes; for these words are in the ritual of Sabazios and the Mother ^*."

In Alexandria, Cybele was worshipped by the Greek population as "The Mother of the Gods, the Savior who Hears our Prayers" and as "The Mother of the Gods, the Accessible One." Ephesus, one of the major trading centers of the area, was devoted to Cybele as early the 10th century BC, and the city's ecstatic celebration, the Ephesia, honored her.

The goddess was not welcome among the patriarchal Scythians north of Thrace. From Herodotus (4.76-7) we learn that the Scythian Anacharsis (6th century BC), after traveling among the Greeks and acquiring vast knowledge, was put to death by his fellow Scythians for attempting to introduce the foreign cult of Magna Mater.

Roman Cybele

In Rome, when the worship of Cybele, as Magna Mater, was formally initiated in 203 BC, Rome was embroiled in the Second Punic War. The previous year, an inspection had been made of the Sibylline Books, and some oracular verses had been discovered that announced that if a foreign foe should carry war into Italy, he could be driven out and conquered if the Mater Magna were brought from Pessinos to Rome. Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica was ordered to go to the port of Ostia, accompanied by all the matrons, to meet the goddess. He was to receive her as she left the vessel, and when brought to land he was to place her in the hands of the matrons who were to bear her to her destination, the Temple of Victory on the Palatine Hill. The day on which this event took place, 12 April, was observed afterwards as a festival, the Megalesian. (Livy, History of Rome, circa AD 10)

In Rome, her Phrygian origins were recalled by Catullus, whose famous poem on the theme of Attis includes a vivid description of Cybele's worship: "Together come and follow to the Phrygian home of Cybele, to the Phrygian forests of the goddess, where the clash of cymbals ring, where tambourines resound, where the Phrygian flute-player blows deeply on his curved reed, where ivy-crowned maenads toss their heads wildly."

Roman devotion to Cybele ran deep. Not coincidentally, when a Christian basilica was built over the site of a temple to Cybele, to occupy the site, it was dedicated as the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.

The worship of Cybele penetrated as far as Mauretania, where, just outside Setif, the ceremonial "tree-bearers" and the faithful (religiosi) restored the temple of Cybele and Attis after a disastrous fire in AD 288. Lavish new fittings paid for by the private group included the silver statue of Cybele and the chariot that carried her in procession received a new canopy, with tassels in the form of fir cones. (Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p 581.)

Today, a monumental statue of Cybele can be found in one of the principal traffic circles of Madrid, the Plaza de Cibeles (illustration, upper right).

In Roman mythology, Magna Mater deorum Idaea ("great Idaean mother of the gods") was the name for the originally Phrygian goddess Cybele, as well as Rhea.

Her cult moved from Phrygia to Greece from the 6th century to the 4th. In 205 BC, Rome adopted her cult.

Notes