A Kybele Dining Club at Hellenistic Gordion (15 min)

Presenters

Martin Wells, Austin College

Abstract

In 1950 and 1951, Rodney Young and his team from the University of Pennsylvania were excavating third and second century B.C.E. houses at Gordion, in central Anatolia. This settlement was home to a diverse population of Phrygians, Persians, Greeks, and Celts. Their houses and the artifacts found inside reflect the cosmopolitan nature of a community that had grown on the citadel mound in the 150 years following Alexander’s arrival at the site in 333 B.C.E. In 189 B.C.E., these villagers suddenly abandoned their homes, fleeing to the nearby hills to escape the attack of the Roman consul Manlius Verso and his legions campaigning against the Galatians. None returned from their flight, but what they left behind in their homes has stories to tell about their rich and varied lives.

Two of the houses excavated that year contained assemblages that attest to the popularity and nature of Cybele worship among some members of the population. Finding Cybele in Anatolia is not that surprising, but this Cybele was not fully Anatolian. She had been hellenized, in her iconography and, apparently, in the way she was worshipped. Furthermore, the evidence from these houses shows that this particular Cybele was Pergamene, as other scholars have demonstrated, or at least worshipped by Pergamene residents at Gordion in ways that reflect her journey to mainland Greece and back. This paper presents a unique look at the religious traditions of a thriving cosmopolitan village, and the movement of ideas that tied the inhabitants of this seemingly out of the way site to the people and places of the larger Greek world.