Cybele - Cult history

In Greek mythology, a mother-goddess, especially of wild nature, whose cult originated in Phrygia, and was taken over by the Greeks. She was depicted with a turreted mural crown, and was attended by lions.

Originally a Phrygian goddess, insofar as the Hellenes were concerned, Cybele (Greek Κυβέλη) was a deification of the Earth Mother who was worshiped in Anatolia from Neolithic times. Like Gaia (the "Earth") or her Minoan equivalent Rhea, Cybele embodies the fertile earth, a goddess of caverns and mountains, walls and fortresses, nature, wild animals (especially lions and bees).

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 .

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.

Greek deities series
Primordial deities
Titans and Olympians
Aquatic deities
Chthonic deities
Personified concepts
Other deities
Anatolian deities
Attis Artemis of Ephesus Cybele

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. 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

Greek mythographers recalled that Broteas, the son of Tantalus, was the first to carve the Great Mother's image into a rock-face.

At Pessinos in Phrygia, an archaic version of Cybele had been venerated as Agdistis, time out of mind.

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.

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.

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;

In Phrygia Rhea/Cybele was venerated as Agdistis, with a temple at the great trading city Pessinos, mentioned by the geographer Strabo.

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.

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.

Cybele and Attis

The goddess appears alone, 8th–6th centuries BC.

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.

In Alexandria, Cybele was worshiped 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.

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. (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.

Cybele in The Aeneid

In his Aeneid Virgil called her Berecyntian Cybele. After Cybele had given her sacred trees to the Trojans so that they could build their ships, she went to Zeus begging him to make the ships unable to be destroyed.

Cybele the Eunuch

Roman citizens were later forbidden to become priestesses of Cybele, who were eunuchs like their Asiatic Goddess. In the Legends of Cybele we find she was a bisexual monster who terrorized the land before he was castrated and became a eunuch. The Fig was sacred to Cybele, and curiously is rich in estrogens which was a necessary part of the diet of the priestesses. They also drank pregnant-mare horse urine, but the fig is favoured in the legend and is used to get a surrogate woman pregnant to give birth to Cybele's child, who she called Attis. Cybele proceeded to dress Attis as a girl. When he ran off with a woman later in life Cybele gave pursuit but a place of fortification was barred to her (traditionally walled hills connected to worship of Diana). Finding the gate barred at this place of sanctuary, Cybele proceeded to charge the door with her head and in legend lifted the three concentric walls of the fortress up from their foundations upon her head which gave rise to the triple-crown of walled-battlements worn by Cybele (like the walled sanctuary crown of Diana). Attis was involved in a mystical death and resurrection, and Cybele nursed him until (s)he was reborn. Cybele is often shown seated on a throne being pulled on a chariot by two lions and was considered a sun-goddess after the line of Belit of the Mesopotamian cult of Bel.