In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele

Lynn E. Roller is a classical archaeologist, and this academic book, published by University of California Press, traces the cult of Cybele, the Anatolian mother goddess, from her Phrygian origins through her adoption into Greek and Roman religion, combining archaeological, art historical and textual evidence. Its strength is that Roller works across the full geographic and chronological range of the cult's spread, using material evidence directly rather than relying only on later, often hostile, literary accounts of Cybele's more controversial rites. Its limit is that, given how fragmentary the earliest Phrygian evidence is, some of the cult's original Anatolian meaning remains genuinely uncertain, and the book is explicit about distinguishing secure archaeological findings from more interpretive reconstruction.