Cybele and the Mountain Mother Traditions

This workshop focuses on Kybele as Mountain Mother and Mother of the Gods, tracing how her image and authority persist across time, regions, and political systems. We will work closely with statues and artifacts from Anatolia, Greece, and Rome, comparing form, posture, attributes, and setting to identify what remains consistent and what shifts as her cult moves into the Greek and Roman pantheons.

Through visual analysis, we will examine how Kybele retains her status alongside Olympian gods rather than being absorbed or diminished, and how her iconography expresses sovereignty, protection, and continuity. The session is grounded in material culture and is designed for participants who want to look carefully, think historically, and understand how a powerful goddess holds her place across centuries.