Goddess Cybele making history in Anatolia
Posted On: Nov 25th, 2016 at 21:17
Turkey
A 2,100-year-old statue of the Anatolian goddess Cybele is the first marble statue ever found in situ in Turkey.
The statue was found in the 2,300-year-old Kurul Kalesi (Council Fortress) site on the Black Sea coast and weighs 200 kg (31.5 stone).
The priceless statue of Cybele, sitting on her throne, is of such antiquity that it is very unlikely such a rare find will ever occur again. It is extremely unusual that this is the first marble statue found in situ in the whole of Turkey because of the country’s ancient origins – the oldest in the world. Anatolia, however, was the seat of warfare and the power struggles of East versus West for millennia, and for that reason many cities were destroyed and rebuilt, often many times over. Adding earthquakes into the mix, one can see how rare this find actually is.
