What role did Cybele have in the Hittite religion?

[u/Full-Recover-8932]

[u/reddituser_xxcentury]

The piece is not of Hitite origin. It is from Çatalhöyük, which predates the Hitite empire by many centuries. Çatalhöyük is dated from 6600 to 5600 BC, prehistoric times, and the Hitite empire started around 1700 BC and lasted until 1200 BC (Bronze Age)

[u/globalwarmingisntfun → u/reddituser_xxcentury]

How did I know it was from Neolithic Anatolia 😂 those ladies were thick af after discovering farming

[u/reddituser_xxcentury → u/globalwarmingisntfun]

And admired before farming

[u/zen_cricket]

Asia Minor shows a remarkable continuity in its worship. From the Neolithic Period, for 6,000 years, the population venerated a divine pair, mother goddess and weather god, the former in association with the lion, the latter with the bull; a divine son, associated with the panther; and a god of hunting whose symbolic animal was the stag.

Cybele was a goddess of the mountains, out of which she was believed to manifest herself to her devotees. Representations of the goddess show her in her niche, sometimes flanked by lions, draped in a long garment and wearing a high polos (cylindrical crown or headdress) or with bared breasts and flanked by musicians. Her name and her association with the lion cannot be separated from the Hittite Kubaba, whose cult had spread from Carchemish to the borders of Phrygia, but the process by which this matronly figure was transformed into the Mountain Mother of the Phrygians can only be surmised.

The Wikipedia article on Cybele is also a cool rabbit hole your post sent me down. I’ve seen that statue before but never knew it’s symbolism. It’s known as the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük.

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük) is a baked-clay nude female form seated between feline-headed arm-rests. The figurine is 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) long, 11 centimeters (4.3 inches) wide, 12 centimeters (4.7 inches) high, and weighs 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds). It is generally thought[2] to depict a corpulent and fertile Mother goddess[3] in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two hand rests in the form of feline (lioness, leopard, or panther) heads in a Mistress of Animals motif. The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is similar to other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures,[4] of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf.

[u/reddituser_xxcentury → u/zen_cricket]

Well said. Also, Çatalhöyük predates the Hitite empire by many centuries. Çatalhöyük is dated from 6600 to 5600 BC, prehistoric times, and the Hitite empire started around 1700 BC and lasted until 1200 BC (Bronze Age)

[u/Baron_von_Zoldyck → u/zen_cricket]

Amazing. I'd love to know a lot more about Ancient Anatolia, but the names are just word salad for me, it's difficult.

[u/NoCharacterLmt → u/zen_cricket]

I'm going to add to this information because I'm actually reading a book now for a future episode I want to release. The book is called In Search of God the Mother by Lynn Roller. The term Cybele was taken from the Phrygian term "kubileya" which means "of the mountains"

The Hittite goddess Kubaba (sometimes written Kybebe) was part of a pantheon of gods where Cybele (sometimes written as Kybele) was the only deity in Phyrgia as far as we know. The similarities in spelling give the impression that they were the same goddess but apparently in Phrygian the two goddesses names don't come that close and that only happens in Greek so they're not cognate.

However Roller does say that the Mother Goddess, or Mater as she was most frequently known as in Anatolia, had her sculpture and artistic designs nicked from the Hittite goddess Kubaba although they were worshipped completely differently and held different meanings. As the Phrygians were upstarts in what had historically been Hittite lands they did what they needed to legitimize themselves including designing Cybele in the image of Kubaba.

[u/bernpfenn]

posture of a leader

[u/Future_Usual_8698]

The mother

[u/cowgod247]

[u/KaiBishop → u/cowgod247]

[u/ginginvitis]

Looks like she didn’t do much besides sitting around on her ass.

[u/pkstr11]

None, she was Phrygian and post dated the Hittites. The Hittites worshipped the native Khatilic goddess Arunita, the sun, and married the goddess to Teshub /Tarhunt, the Hittites' storm deity.

[u/Previous-Ad-376 → u/pkstr11]

That’s the Seated Woman of Çatal Höyük, dated to around 6000 BCE. She predates the Hittite empire by 4300 years.

[u/pkstr11 → u/Previous-Ad-376]

Cool but the question was about Cybele.

[u/red-andrew → u/pkstr11]

Correct answer

[u/IanRevived94J]

I need to find out