This book is the first comprehensive assembly and discussion of the entire extant evidence concerning the worship of this goddess, called Matar Kubileya in Phrygia, Kybele in ancient Greece, and Magna Mater (the Great Mother) in Rome. Lynn E. Roller presents and analyzes literary, historiographic, and archaeological data ranging from the prehistoric record to the early centuries of the Roman Empire.

This book will interest classicists, archaeologists, ancient historians, historians of religion and religious ecology, and everyone who has ever been piqued by curiosity about the Great Mother goddess in the ancient Mediterranean world.