Note 108.3 — Chapter VI · The Deities as Nature-Powers.

As regards the original ideas underlying the cults of those other Anatolian peoples who were nearer in geographical position and perhaps in race to the Aegean peoples, we have no explicit ancient records that help us to decide for the second millennium. For some of these various communities the goddess was, as we have seen, the supreme power. The great Phrygian goddess Kybele is the cult-figure of most importance for our purpose, and it is possible to divine her original character with fair certainty.108.3 In her attributes, functions, and form, we can discern nothing celestial, solar or lunar; she was, and remained to the end, a mother-goddess of the earth, a personal source of and life of fruits, beasts, and man: her favourite haunt was the mountains, and her earliest image that we know, that which the Greeks called Niobe on Mount Sipylos, seems like a human shape emerging from the mountain-side: she loved also the mountain caverns, which were called after her κύβελα; and according to one legend she emerged from the rock Agdos, and hence took the name Agdestis. The myth of her beloved Attis is clear ritual-legend associated with vegetation; and Greek poetry and Greek cult definitely linked her with the Greek Gaia. We gather also from the legend of Attis and other facts that her power descended to the underworld, and the spirits of the dead were gathered to her;109.1 hence the snake appears as her symbol, carved as an akroterion above her sepulchral shrine, where she is sculptured with her two lions at Arslan Kaya—“the Lion Rock in Phrygia”;109.2 and her counterpart, the Lydian Mother Hipta, is addressed as χθονίη.109.3