Attis

Anatolia, and the region of Phrygia in particular, abounds with monumental carvings on natural rocks. Perhaps the most impressive is the Monument of Midas at Yazılıkaya (modern-day Turkey), dated around 700 BC (Fig. 1). It represents a square building façade with a labyrinth-like decoration evoking a building-stone pattern. It also features a prominent ‘doorway’ right in the middle of the structure and a classical-style pediment. It is thought that the ‘doorway’, now empty, was once the niche of a statue of Cybele (Rein 1996). Three Archaic Greek-like Old Phrygian[1] inscriptions are seen at the fringe of the central carving. One of them, starting with the sequence ATES, was deciphered and interpreted as ‘Ates (presumed to be the name of a priest of Cybele) has dedicated [this monument] to Midas’ (Roller 1999; Woodard 2008). Roller is sure that Ates refers to the minor eunuch deity known as Attis, Attēs, Attys, Atis, or Attin[2].

Figure 1. Phrygian ‘Midas Monument’ (6th century BC), at Yazılıkaya, near Eskisehir, Turkey. Artwork by China_Crisis. Creative Commons license.

Figure 2. Seated Cybele within a naiskos (4th century BC, Ancient Agora Museum, Athens). Artwork by Marsyas (based on copyright claims). Creative Commons license.

Cybele is almost inseparable from her consort Attis in Greco-Roman mythology. Although she frequently appears sitting or standing alone in minor votive artifacts called naiskoi (singular naiskos; little temple). These are stone sculptures representing façades of ‘temples’ or stylized doorways with pediments (Fig. 2). Maybe, the pediment of naiskoi and Attis are iconic, pictural, or linguistic representations of the same thing. Attis is somehow related to an inclined roof and its necessary feature, the pediment. Attis is probably a cognate of the English attic and Attica, the region of Athens full of stylistic pediments. In the word Attis, A plays the role of the triangular area under the roof, and the double-T represents the multitude of columns under the pediment (see section T), the wooden structure that supports the roof, or the two inclined plains of the Attic roof. In Archaic languages, the idea of doubling a letter for expressing multitude or intensity may have not yet been fixed. The archaic E in the Old Phrygian ATES may have played a similar role (rotated 90° clockwise).

The word ‘elē and its synonym alea also mean shelter, warmth, heat (of fire), generally source of warmth, hot spot. Kyb-elē (Cybele) may, therefore, mean a warm, confined, cubic shelter (house) or a cubic source of warmth, a fireplace. The width of the niche of the Midas’ Monument is more extensive than its height (Berndt Ersöz 2006; Harmanşah 2015). Doors are usually higher than they are wide. That niche may well represent a fireplace rather than a door. The decorative rosette at the top of the carving evokes smoke escaping from the roof of a building. The pediment is divided by central vertical lines evoking a chimney. If Kyb-elē meant fireplace, we see why Cybele was associated with black stones. She was either a stone that turned black because of soot deposits or a piece of coal (black stone; black mountain matter).

Cybele’s companion, Attis, gives us a different key to understanding the goddess’ name. The stem att is the root of the Ancient Greek verb ἄττομαι (attomai), glossed as διάζομαι (diazomai), to set the warp in the loom, or διασχίζω (diaschizō; Hesychius), to cleave asunder, sever, be separated, parted, have a cleft, all referring to the wedge shape and its functional affordance. Thus, attomai (diaschizō) means to cleave asunder, sever, be separated, parted, have a cleft. Attis, the ‘priest’ or ‘consort’ of Cybele, was probably a tool for splitting materials such as stone or wood, a chisel, wedge, chock, quoin, or any angular (frequently triangular or conical) object that splits, separates, supports, or secures other objects. We can secure a stone at the proper position using wood wedges. If Cybele was the stone (see section Cybele), the wedge Attis was her support or splitting consort and companion.

Another wooden triangular support/split object is a pediment (attic) supporting a split roof. Compare also the English verbs to attack, attempt, attach, attain, attend (in the sense of assisting or accompany, but also pay attention), attire, attract (e.g., by beauty), attrition, attune (bring into harmony), or attorney (as a supporter), The self-castration of Attis is understood as the collapse of the wooden wedge under the weight of the stone or damage of the chisel’s cutting edge in action. In Ovid’s version of the myth[3], Attis is turned into a fir-tree, with its characteristic conical shape like a wedge.

Taken together, these sememes make up the notions of building and architecture. The fireplace, the house, and the city, all made of stone (the great material, great mater or matter of the mountain) and wood, provide warmth and shelter. They attract people around them. Since Cybele was ‘worshiped’ in ‘Samothrace’, the Cabeiri, being her priests according to some authors, could correspond to the discipline of architecture, one of Varro’s nine disciplines of general education (sam-othr-akē; see section Samothrace).

Claims

Attis = chisel, wedge, pediment, triangular support of the roof, attic.

Cognates

Attis: Attica, attic, attack, attempt, attach, attain, attend, attire, attract, attrition, attune, attorney.

References

Berndt Ersöz, Susanne. 2006. Phrygian Rock-Cut Shrines: Structure, Function, and Cult Practice. Vol. 25. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers.

Harmanşah, Ömür. 2015. “Stone Worlds: Technologies of Rock Carving and Place-Making in Anatolian Landscapes.” In The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, edited by Bernard A Knapp and Peter van Dommelen, 379–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rein, Mary Jane. 1996. “Phrygian Matar: Emergence of an Iconographic Type.” In Cybele, Attis and Related Cults: Essays in Memory of M. Fon Vermaseren., edited by Eugene N Lane, 223–38. Leiden: Brill.

Roller, Lynn E. 1999. In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Woodard, Roger D. 2008. The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

[1] Language close to Greek using an Archaic Greek/Phoenician-like alphabet. Its corpus consists of some 400 inscriptions found in Phrygia, hence the name, and dated to 800-350 BC. New Phrygian is known for some 120 fragmentary inscriptions written in the Greek alphabet and dating from the 4th century BC to the 3rd century AD. Our knowledge of Phrygian remains very poor and debated.

[2] Attis in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology; accessed 21 April 2021.

[3] Ov. Fast. 4.221.