Priestess of Ceres performing a rite in honor of Cybele 400 CE

"Cybele (/ˈsɪbəliː/ SIB-ə-lee; Phrygian: Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya "Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother", perhaps "Mountain Mother"; Lydian Kuvava; Greek: Κυβέλη Kybele, Κυβήβη Kybebe, Κύβελις Kybelis) is an Anatolian mother Goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük, where statues of plump women, sometimes sitting, have been found in excavations. Phrygia's only known Goddess, she was probably its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the 6th century BC.

In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She became partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-Goddess Gaia, of her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and of the harvest–mother Goddess Demeter. Some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-Goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following."

-taken from wikipedia

Leaflet of a diptych of Nicomacheans and Symmachus  : Priestess of Ceres performing a rite in honor of Cybele. Ivory, Italian work (from Rome?), Around 400 AD Provenance: wells of the Montier-en-Der abbey, diocese of Langres (Haute-Marne). The other sheet is kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Both priestesses side by side.

A priestess standing at the altar and beneath an oak tree; diptych leaf of the Symmachi. Made in Rome, Italy.

Modern engraving of the Nicomachorum-Symmachorum diptych prior to its partial destruction by fire. E. Martène et U. Durand, Voyage littéraire de deux religieux bénédictins de la Congrégation de Saint Maur, Paris, 1717.

Source:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Symmachorum-Nicomachorum_diptych

 

Quote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybele