Demeter and Cybele
Student Podcast for Credit in HIST 2210, LC
By: A. Jansen
(C) The British Museum
Hello old bunnies, as you might have realized by now I am not buddy, sadly he is in quarantine at the moment, best to be safe. Instead, I will be doing a special take over of In Our History this week. Ah how silly of me, Ive forgotten to introduce myself, I am Honey Miod, though you might have seen me guest on other episodes.
This week we will be focusing on a votive relief of Cybele, votive reliefs being religious carved plaques. This is listed as figure 1 on the blog post and it may help if you take a look at it. This relief is interesting because it was found underneath Demeter’s temple at Eleusis. We will be using this relief as a starting point to examine the connection between Cybele and Demeter today. Cybele main’s identifier in art is that she is almost always shown with lions (Bøgh, 307). The relief shows a lion resting on the figure’s lap, though it can be hard to tell due to the erosion over time. Past the lion there is not much to identify the figure. The top part of the votive relief has broken off, bringing with it the majority of her head. It is possible that this is not of Cybele, but the lion figure leads me towards agreeing with the assessment of the votive relief. Regardless, this relief offers a good beginning to examining Demeter and Cybele’s connection as well as their cults, though for the Greek time period that I am focusing in on, it is much harder to find mentions of Cybele than Demeter. So this podcast may end up leaning more on the side of Demeter, especially because the Relief was found at Eleusis, which is a town that is tied to Demeter and her worship.
Demeter
She was one of the most important goddesses in ancient Greece. She represented fertility both in agriculture and in humans. The Thesmorphia was a yearly held festival done in her honour and it lasted for three days (Johnston, 370, 377). Our main sources on the Thesmorphia come from Athens, but this festival was held in other Greek city states as well (Johnston, 375). It was restricted to married women. The Thesmorphia was focused on increasing fertility both for the women and for the land (Johnston, 376-377). They would throw piglets into pits and then later their rotten bodies would be mixed with seeds on an alter to guarantee the harvest. While this does not directly connect to our relief, it seems an interesting practice to increase fertility and the weird facts seem to be the ones that stick the most. Back to the Thesmorphia, it was heavily tied to the myth of Demeter and Persephone – do a brief overview of the myth. They drew on Demeter’s grief and the famine that occurred from Demeter retreating into her grief and when she returned, the increase of fertility and crops.
Her cult, the Eleusinian mysteries, was one of the most popular in the Hellenic world during the fifth and fourth centuries BCE and its following continued to grow in the following centuries (Evans, 230). Like the Thesmorphia, it was tied to the myth of Demeter and Persephone. It is called the Eleusinian mysteries because Demeter is said to have instructed the people of the town of Eleusis to begin performing these rights once Persephone had returned to her (Vanucci, 103). I should also say they are known as mysteries because the majority of their practices were kept secret and only initiates knew them. Thus, we have very little information on the mysteries’ actual practices, especially those done by higher level initiates (Vanucci, 88).
The importance of the myth between her and Persephone speaks to how Demeter promoted motherhood and her character in the Greek world was so deeply tied to her loving Persephone. Demeter is a well-known mother goddess figure and her most prominent myth, festival, and cult truly represent her as a goddess of fertility and as a mother.
How did Demeter actually come to Greece though? where did the deity actually originate from? This question is much more difficult to answer, but Demeter has, since Ancient Greece, been said to have come from the East. While this gives us a starting point, the east is a very general term and spans a great deal of land and different cultures. It has been said she came to Greece with Dionysius (Vanucci, 88). Dionysius also has no exact place of origin like Demeter, but he is said to have also come from the east.
Eleusis
It was a harbour city in the state of Attica (Evans, 230). In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Demeter, while in the phase of mourning the loss of her daughter, wanders the human world. She ends up at Eleusis and there she became the nursemaid to the infant prince of Eleusis (Johnston, 376).
Demeter’s temple
In the Homeric hymn to Demeter, she tells the people of Eleusis:
“But come! Let a great temple, with a great altar at its base, be built by the entire demos. Make it at the foot of the acropolis and its steep walls. Make it loom over the well of Kallikhoron,[33] on a prominent hill. And I will myself instruct you in the sacred rites so that, in the future, you may perform the rituals in the proper way and thus be pleasing to my noos.” (270-270)
The temple seems to have been built on the same spot that a previous religious site existed (Cosmopoulos. 423). It may be a case of appropriating a sacred space, meaning that site was specifically chosen in order to show that a new religion was replacing the old. It may also be a continuation of what was previously there (Cosmopoulos. 423).
However, the temple of Demeter that is usually spoken about, and the one the relief was buried under was erected in this spot during the 6th century and was rebuilt in the 5th century on an even larger scale. Objects relating to Demeter’s worship in the temple’s spot trace back to the 8th century (Evans, 235). It was placed in a prominent spot in Eleusis and was clearly deeply important to the religious practices of the Greeks.
Cybele
Cybele was a mother goddess also heavily connected to nature and fertility like Demeter. She was a Phrygian goddess. Phrygia being located in Asia Minor. Her cult moved from Phrygia, to ancient Greece, to the Roman empire (Bøgh, 305). Her cult appears to have moved into Greece during the 6th century BCE. Once Cybele arrived in Greece, she was connected to mother goddess figures such as Demeter, as well as others like Rhea, but we won’t get into that today (Bøgh, 305).
Her worship appears to have been connected to Dionysus at times, both being eastern deities that had cults leaning on the side of ecstasy which made it easier to connect the two (Bøgh, 307). Dionysus might be the main traceable point of contact between Demeter and Cybele. He was connected to both goddesses, all three were Chthonic deities, meaning they were connected to the earth as opposed to the main Greek deities, the majority of who were connected to the sky. All three were also viewed as originating in the east, which definitely made the Greeks connect Cybele and Demeter to Dionysus, but it may have also made the Greeks connect the two goddesses together. Considering Dionysus and Cybele were viewed as having known each other in the East, possibly Phrygia, and Dionysus brought Demeter from the East to Greece, Demeter may have originated from Cybele or they may have both originated from the same or a similar location. The other possibility is that Demeter actually originates from somewhere in Greece, likely from the Mycenaeans or a civilization predating them (Tobin, 88). Demeter may have just been attributed to having come from the East by the Greeks because of her basis as an earth goddess. This is the issue with studying Ancient History, we will never be able to tell exactly how the goddesses synchronized, especially because myths and deities are created slowly over time through humans interacting with each other. There is no single moment where one can say this deity was created, especially because there are so many iterations of deities. The roman cult of Cybele is different from the Phrygian cult of Cybele because overtime these deities are influenced by the cultures they are brought to. Past coming from the east, Dionysus is also connected to the rituals of both Cybele and Demeter. Dionysus was a part of the lower aspects of the Eleusinian mysteries (Vanucci, 98). While Cybele was sometimes connected to Dionysus’ rites (Bøgh, 307). Since the relief was found underneath the temple of Demeter at Eleusis, it may be possible Cybele, as Cybele, was connected to one of the practices of the cult alongside Dionysus. It is quite clear that Demeter and Cybele were in some way connected. The relief is simply evidence of their connection. Their similarities as mother goddesses and their connections to nature make it easy to understand how they were syncretized together, but it leaves us with the question of why.
I will leave you with some questions on this topic as sadly this podcast is not long enough to get into them. What made mother goddesses so transferable and popular? Why did they move about and connect with each other? As in if say you already had Demeter, why would you want Cybele another mother goddess?
Bibliography
Bøgh, B. (2007). The Phrygian Background of Kybele. Numen, 54(3), 304-339. Retrieved November 21, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27643268
Cosmopoulos, Michael B.. (2014). Cult, Continuity, and Social Memory: Mycenaean Eleusis and the Transition to the Early Iron Age. American Journal of Archaeology, 118(3), 401-427. Retrieved November 25, 2020, from doi:10.3764/aja.118.3.0401
Evans, Nancy A. (2002). Sanctuaries, Sacrifices, and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Numen, 49(3), 227-254. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3270542
Homeric Hymn to Demeter (2019). (T. Gregory Nagy.). Diotíma. Retrieved November 25, 2020, from https://diotima-doctafemina.org/translations/greek/homeric-hymn-to-demeter/ (Original work published ca. 700 B.C.E)
Johnston, Sarah Iles. (2013). Demeter, Myths, and the Polyvalence of Festivals. History of Religions, 52(4), 370-401. Retrieved November 25, 2020, from doi:10.1086/669646
Tobin, Vincent Arieh. (1991). Isis and Demeter: Symbols of Divine Motherhood. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 28, 187-200. Retrieved November 25, 2020, from doi:10.2307/40000579
Vannucci, M. (1998). The Origin of the Cult of Demeter: The Story of Hexaploid Wheat. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 79(1/4), 83-114. Retrieved November 25, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41694530
