Cybele
Sign in to saveCybele ( ; 'Kubeleya Mother', perhaps 'Mountain Mother'; ; Kybélē, Kybēbē, Kybelis) is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest Neolithic at Çatalhöyük. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the sixth century BC.
AI overview
Cybele is an ancient mother goddess who originated in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and was worshipped from at least the Phrygian period onward. Greek colonists adopted her cult around the sixth century BC and spread her worship throughout Greece and the western Mediterranean, making her one of the earliest foreign deities to gain widespread acceptance in the Greek world.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Key facts
- Deity.type
- Greek
- Deity.name
- Cybele
- Deity.image
- Unknown - Statue of a Seated Cybele with the Portrait Head of her Priestess - 57.AA.19.jpg
- Deity.caption
- Cybele enthroned, with lion, cornucopia, and mural crown. Roman marble, c. 50 AD. Getty Museum
- Deity.god_of
- Mother Goddess
- Deity.consort
- Attis
- Deity.animals
- Lions
- Deity.festivals
- Megalesia, Hilaria
- Deity.symbols
- Mountains, conifer cones, tympanon
- Deity.other_names
- Magna Mater
- Deity.cult_center
- Athens, Rome, Ostia
- Deity.temples
- Metroons
Article
22 sectionsContents
- Anatolia
- Greek Cybele
- Cybele and Attis
- Roman Cybele
- Republican era
- Imperial era
- Festivals and cults
- Megalesia in April
- 'Holy week' in March
- Minor cults
- Taurobolium and Criobolium
- Priesthoods
- Temples
- Greece
- Rome and its provinces
- Myths, theology, and cosmology
- In popular culture
- See also
- Footnotes
- References
- Further reading
- External links
Cybele ( ; 'Kubeleya Mother', perhaps 'Mountain Mother'; ; Kybélē, Kybēbē, Kybelis) is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest Neolithic at Çatalhöyük. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the sixth century BC.
In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She became partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, of her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and of the harvest–mother goddess Demeter. Some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following. Uniquely in Greek religion, she had a eunuch mendicant priesthood, the Galli. Many of her Greek cults included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was probably a Greek invention. In Greece, Cybele became associated with mountains, town and city walls, fertile nature, and wild animals, especially lions.