Kybele

She is the main Phrygian deity simply called Matar or Mother, sometimes with the epithet ‘Kubileya' or ‘Kubeleya', which presumably means ‘of the Mountain'. In Greek literature, the goddess was occasionally called Kybele, a name taken from the Phrygian epitheton. Other epithets of Kybele's such as Meter Dindymene and Agdistis, after Mount Dindymon and Mount Agdos in Phrygia, and Mater Idaea after Mount Ida in Troas, also refer to holy mountains.

She was worshipped as the giver of all life, the ruler over savage animals and wild nature, enthroned on inaccessible mountain tops (Meter Oreia). For the Greeks she is the Mother Goddess (Meter Thea), the Great Mother (Meter Megale) and the Mother of the Gods (Meter Theoon). For the Romans she was the Great Mother (Mater Magna) or the Great Idaean Mother of the Gods (Mater Deum Magna Idaea). In Pessinous her original name was Agdistis.

At the latest in the 3rd century BC Pessinous was the centre of her cult. The texts describe a splendid temple in which a black meteorite was kept that symbolized the goddess. "The image of the Mother in Pessinous was said to be so ancient that it was not made by human hands, but had fallen from the sky. This later gave rise to a suggested etymology for the site, that the name Pessinous derived from the circumstance of the image's falling, pesein meaning ‘to fall'."

The mythical king Midas himself is supposed to have founded Pessinous and erected the first Kybele sanctuary in the 8th century BC. Several written sources provide evidence that in the shadow of Mount Dindymon and near the holy Gallos river, which flows into the Sangarios (Sakarya), a fairly powerful temple state developed under the high priest, Attis.

This high priest kept good contacts with the Pergamene royal dynasty. Through the mediation of Attalos I, the Roman Senate succeeded in transfering the statue of Kybele - conceivably a black meteorite - to Rome in 205/204 BC. The Sibylline oracle had predicted that Rome could only be saved from Hannibal if the statue of Kybele was brought to Rome. In honour of Kybele the Romans erected a magnificent temple on the Palatine that was inaugurated in 191 BC. This transfer spread the cult of Kybele, the Mater Magna, throughout the Roman empire. Presumably in order to compensate for the loss of the statue of Kybele, Attalos I enlarged and embellished the sanctuary in Pessinous.

The so-called "theatre-temple" complex at Pessinous that was excavated by the Belgian team between 1967 and 1973 and that consists of a hexastyle peripteros temple, a monumental theatre-shaped stairway and a colonnaded square, is not the focal Kybele sanctuary of Phrygian, Hellenistic and Roman times. Although the site has yielded some late Phrygian and Hellenistic contexts and artefacts, all structural elements connected with the temple are definitely imperial. After some hesitation the complex has now convincingly been dated to Tiberian times (25-35 AD) and its function is thought to have been a Sebasteion for the imperial cult.

In Phrygia the goddess appears alone. Later she is joined by her consort Attis. The classical world regarded Attis as a Phrygian from Pessinous, where, according to Pausanias, he was buried. His name lived on for a long time in the title of the high priest of Pessinous.

Kybele and Attis were the focus of a cult that was partly a mystery cult. According to the myth of Kybele and Attis, it was at Pessinous that the latter was about to wed the king's daughter and, when Agdistis/Kybele appeared in her awesome glory, he emasculated himself and subsequently died.

Some of the ecstatic followers of Kybele, the Galloi, named after a king Gallos and/or the river Gallos, willingly castrated themselves in imitation of Attis during an ultimate initiation rite and fell in trance through wild music and dance.