Varo's nine disciplines of general education and specialized instruction included architecture (see section The Mysteries and the Nike of Samothrace). The Greco-Roman Cybele apparently referred to the architecture using stone (see section Cybele) with wood support and decorative features (see section Attis). If true, Cybele's priests could be the architects and related artisans or some accessories of buildings such as pipes (Cabeiri; see section The Cabeiri), reservoirs, framework, woodwork, sculptures, etc. We can, therefore, understand why the Cabeiri (pipes) and Cybele (the stone-centered architecture) herself formed an essential part of the Samothracian Mysteries (instruction).
But the Phrygian goddess Cybele, mater
Kubeleya, seems to have been used in a somewhat different context. The
epithet Phrygian and the 'toponym' Phrygia are about cooking fire.
The stem phryg appears in φρυγιος (phrygios), meaning dry, and in φρυγιον (phrygion) firewood, φρύγανον
(phryganon), a dry stick of firewood, undershrub, φρυγανίζομαι
(phryganizomai), to gather sticks for fuel, φρύγετρον (phrygetron),
a vessel for roasting barley or stick to stir barley while roasting
(Hesychius), φρυγεύς (phrygeys), one who roasts, and φρυγμός (phrygmos),
drying, roasting. The verb φρύγω (phrygō) means to roast, parch, or cook while the common noun φρυγία (phrygia)
means roaster. The root is supposed to be PIE (*bher-, to cook, bake)
since it resembles Sanskrit bhrjjati, roasts, or bharjanah,
roasting, and Persian birishtan, to roast. It was
transliterated in Latin as frig- (frigere, to roast
or fry) and reached English as fry or friz- (frizz,
frizzle). Literally, therefore, the Phrygian Cybele (Kyb-elē) was still a fireplace seen not as an architectural feature of the house,
symbol of warmth, shelter, or gathering, but as a stone stove fueled with
firewood for baking and cooking.
If the stem -eley-, from Kubeleya,
is related to ἑλεῦ ('eley) from αἱρέω, as Autenrieth suggests[1],
it could mean taken with the hand, taken away, removable. Besides, ἐλεύθω (eleythō) means to bring, ἐλευθερία (eleytheria) is
freedom, liberty. Freedom essentially is the possibility to move, change place,
change in general. Free is someone or something not bound, not constrained. In
physical terms, freedom is used more broadly to describe the limits to which
physical movement or other physical processes are possible. Kubeleya
sounds and looks like a free, portable stove. In Modern Greek, the verb κουβαλάω
(koubalaō; /kuvalao/) means to carry,
transport, usually a heavy or bulky object, to move household goods from one
house to another, to carry either an unbearable burden, an element of rich
experience or a great responsibility. Cybele is frequently depicted accompanied
or transported by lions (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Bronze fountain statuette of Cybele on a cart drawn by lions 2nd century CE. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Artwork by anonymous. Marked as public domain.
The verb ἐλαύνω (elaynō)
and its poetic synonym ἐλάω (elaō) mean to go in a chariot, drive away, carry off,
expel, strike, strike one thing against another, drive through, go through,
beat out metal, forge, to draw a line of vines, i.e., plant them in line,
generally, plant, produce. These notions point to an object that must be
forcefully broken and carried away, such as stones, other minerals extracted
from rocks, or tree trunks. If the Phrygian mater Kubeleya was fuel
for a portable cooking stove, then the mater (matter) could well be coal
or charcoal since Cybele was once venerated as a black stone. Significantly,
the place ('city') of origin of the Cybele' cult' is called Pissinous or
Pessinous (Pessinus), i.e., plural accusative of πίσσινος (pissinos;
Attic πίττινος, pittinos; compare English pitch
or tar pit) meaning of or from the pitch, pitched, like pitch, at
pitch-makers. It is supposed to be the ancient site found near Ankara, Turkey.
Pitch and tar (less viscous form) are pyrolysis products of organic materials such as coal, wood, or peat. Naturally occurring pitch is known as asphalt. These materials are commercially produced by
burning coal or as byproducts of charcoal making. The word tar refers primarily
to a substance derived from the wood and roots of pine trees. The Ancient Greek
word for pine is πίτυς (pitys). Pines with crooked trunks,
like the pitch pine, are not significant timber trees but have been the primary
source of pitch and timber for shipbuilding because the wood's high resin
content preserves it from decay and renders it waterproof. Production and trade
in pine-derived tar was a significant part of the economy in Northern Europe. Producing
tar from wood was known in the Iron Age from ancient Greece to Scandinavia.
Products made from pine wood seem to
inherit the pit stem from pitys (pine) and occasionally
double its coda (final T) if they consist of several parts or come in large
quantity or intensity. Thus, πιττάκιον (pittakion) was a pliable
tablet for writing on, originally made of softwood (pine; see section Worship) and πίττα (pitta)
was the Attic word for πίσσα (pissa; pitch, tar, resin).
The TT/SS variation is widespread among Ancient Greek dialects. These digraphs
are prone to phonetic corruption. They are likely to become /s/, /t/, /ts/, /tch/,
or /ps/. For example, the Ancient Greek πίττα (pitta) is
thought to have given the Modern Greek πίτα (pita),
meaning pie, a savory dish or pastry with any ingredients baked in the oven, or
a kind of flat, but pliable, round bread used in souvlaki industry[2].
The same concept of a flat, round bread topped with various ingredients is also
that of the Italian pizza, a pita, pitta, or pissa
traditionally baked in a wood oven, where TT/SS and /ts/ are transliterated as
ZZ. Another example of such corruption is the Homeric verb πέσσω (pessō),
Attic πέττω (pettō), later becoming πέπτω (peptō) and
πέψω (pepsō), all originally meaning to soften, ripen, or change
employing heat, cook, dress, especially bake; and, later, to digest.
A pizza is manufactured, as far as I can ascertain, by garnishing a
slab of reinforced asphalt paving with mucilage, whale-blubber and the
skeletons of small fishes, baking same to the consistency of a rubber heel, and
serving piping-hot with a dressing of molten lava.[3]
Therefore, Pissinous
or Pessinous (Pessinus) may well have meant from or at the ovens, the
kilns where tar and charcoal were produced out of pine wood for sealing or cooking,
respectively. Those kilns could have originated from Anatolia or from anywhere
else. The land of Phrygia was simply the domain of the cuisine, especially baking,
the kitchen. But Kyb-elē (Cybele) and its variants as cubic
objects had a much larger field of semantic applications.