The History
Kybele is the Goddess of nature, fertility and motherhood, flora and fauna.
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'."
Courtesy of http://www.archaeology.ugent.be/pessinus/kybele
Images of Kybele throughout the World
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