THE MOTHER OF THE MOUNTAIN - MATAR KUBILEYA

Relief from Ankara, 7th century B.C
Museum of Anatolian Civilisations

Simin Uysal

I like taking walks around my neighbourhood and sometimes watching the highway which lies towards the west, sitting under a tree on the hilltop.  Last week I saw something different than before. Silently watching the sunset, I suddenly started noticing more and more birds flying towards west. Sitting there and watching them, I recalled that the Phrygians were the first to discover the art of augury while reading about the famous ancient seer Polles who wrote eight volumes on bird-augury. I started thinking about what I should be showing attention which is on the west and also related to Phyrigia.

I live in Ankara which has been a Phrygian territory in history on its west lies Gordion, their capital (also known as the place where Alexander the Great chopped the knot centuries later) and also Pessinus which was the principal cult centre of the cult of Cybele. So, I decided to read about the Anatolian origins of Cybele to discover more about what she originally meant for the Phrygians rather than ancient Greeks and Romans to which the Mother’s transition came during the later seventh and sixth centuries B.C and visit the archeological museum in Eskişehir to see more finds about her discovered in her Anatolian homeland.

The Mother Goddess known as Cybele, Kybele, and the Great Mother (Magna Mater) is one of the most powerful figures of the ancient Mediterranean world. The Mother Goddess can be found in the poems, hymns and religious monuments of ancient Greece and Rome but her original home was Anatolia.

Matar Kubileya was the Mother Goddess worshipped in ancient Phrygia, in west-central Anatolia. The location of Phrygia was in modern-day Turkey around the Sakarya (Sangarios) River. The word Matar means ‘mother’ in the ancient Phrygian language. Kubileya is a descriptive term which means ‘of the mountain.’  She was most often referred to as simply Matar. She is the ONLY divinity who is depicted iconographically! 

As is well known, in Greek and Roman cult, the Goddess is frequently accompanied by a young male god called Attis and the worship (involving the castration of his priests!) was one of the scariest features of the Mother's cult in later Greek and Roman society. I learned with great pleasure that the Graeco-Roman god Attis  had no counterpart in Phyrigia and in her Phyrigian images she is normally represented alone, thus the related scary practices appeared much later. 

I was amazed to learn that no monument was found attached to a building in the middle of an urban center but on rock façades on mountains or near the springs in the wild, non-urban environments like in the below photos of Yazılıkaya and Aslantaş. When I look at those monuments and reliefs and see the Mother's appearance through the doorway she appears (like in the relief from Ankara), it feels like the whole nature is her place and every place in nature is her doorway connecting the visible and the invisible, the known and the unknown. 

Yazılıkaya

It was interesting to find out that she is called as the "Mother" but she was almost never portrayed with any overtly maternal characteristics (never shown giving birth for example), rarely holds or nurtures a child and her images do never emphasize reproductive functions, eroticism  or suggest fertility. Instead, her iconography holds images of power. She holds or is accompanied by various animals and birds of prey. Each of those animals are predators. In central Phrygia (in Gordion and Ankara), her most frequent animal is a hawk or a falcon as seen in the relief found in Ankara. The lions are less frequent than hawks and the photo from Aslantaş below shows one of those.  

Aslantaş

Walking inside the museum studying the finds from various sites, I spotted a text in one of the displays with the following words: The Phyrigians considered everywhere under the sky as the temple of the Mother. I thought "yes, I am a Phyrigian!" because I do feel exactly the same way. 

How are we taking care of her temple, the Earth? What we have done as the human race until now looks problematic. We have been part of the problem but we can also be part of the solution at a basic level and do simple things like recycling at home, keeping the heater at lower temperatures, not wasting food, taking care of the stray dogs and cats, not dumping used kitchen oils down our sinks...These are some of the things I do and they are not difficult at all. 

I left the museum thinking about these and walking around the neighbourhood, I saw an old woman with a walking stick trying to carry a bag. I rushed to see if I could help. She was around her 80s, had more wrinkles on her face than teeth but such a happy expression. "Can I help you mother?" I asked smiling (It is normal to call elderly women as mother in Anatolia). She smiled and replied "yes, daughter, carry this bag for me" and handed me the bag filled with pears. Her small house was not far and I was invited to have some tea in her small garden.

While sipping our glasses of tea, she asked my name, where I was from and what I was doing there. I explained. She said "I only went to school for a year or two, my family was poor and I worked in wheat fields all my life. Education is important, she continued, but education is not only going to school and the Earth has been my teacher. Then she started talking about the life she had, her children and her grand children who are living in other cities. We talked about many things but one of sentences where she said "daughter, you see, the soil, the earth gives back what you put inside it and nothing else" will remain with me. 

I left her to catch my return train. She was still smiling through the doorway as I was leaving. I was late so I found a taxi. The taxi driver was talkative and told me he was a poet. While driving me to the train station he read a few poems of his and told me about the poetry society he was a member of and the prizes he has won. He even signed and gave me his book as a present and said he decided to write it after being advised by an elder that "not writing and sharing what you know and feel is like a religious person not sharing anything with others."  

Riding back home, I realized I forgot to ask the name of the uneducated old mother who knew more about life and Earth than most of us who are educated. 

I kept watching the sunset over the mountains and the landscape and reflecting on what had happened during the day and the week. Matar Kubileya, the Mother speaks to us all the time, I thought, through the doorways of dreams, the land, the people we meet and all the events we experience or witness. I recalled the advise of the elder to the poet taxi driver about writing and finally wrote this.

The world I wish to live in is a place where we can finally perceive the Earth as a beautiful temple and walk on it with respect to all we share it with, as we have been doing in the temples we have built as the human race throughout history. This is my dream.