Cybele was a deification of the Earth Mother who was worshipped in Anatolia from Neolithic times. Like Gaia (the "Earth")
Cybele was a deification of the Earth Mother who was worshipped 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). Her title potnia theron, which is also associated with the Minoan Great Mother, alludes to her ancient Neolithic roots as "Mistress of the Animals". She becomes a life-death-rebirth deity in connection with her consort, her son Attis. Her Roman equivalent was Magna Mater or "Great Mother". Walter Burkert, who treats Meter among "foreign gods" in Greek Religion (1985, section ,4) puts it succinctly: "The cult of the Great Mother, Meter, presents a complex picture insofar as indigenous, Minoan-Mycenean tradition is here intertwined with a cult taken over directly from the Phrygian kingdom of Asia Minor" (p 177). 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.[1] The inscription matar occurs frequently in her Phrygian sites (Burkert). Kubileya is usually read as a Phrygian adjective "of the mountain", so that the inscription may be read Mother of the Mountain, and this is supported by Classical sources (Roller 1999, pp. 67–68). Another theory is that her name can be traced to the Luwian Kubaba, the deified queen of the Third Dynasty of Kish worshiped at Carchemish and Hellenized to Kybebe (Munn 2004, Motz 1997, pp. 105-106). With or without the etymological connection, Kubaba and Matar certainly merged in at least some aspects, as the genital mutilation later connected with Cybele's cult is associated with Kybebe in earlier texts, but in general she seems to have been more a collection of similar tutelary goddesses associated with specific Anatolian mountains
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