Pagan Goddess of the Sibyl and Cybele Oracle

[icymist]

The priestesses of The Great Pagan Goddess Cybele (Kybele - cave dweller) would, through a transformation by the Greeks, be confused with and eventually known as the Sibyls. The Great Goddess of Asia Minor is the oldest true Goddess known, predating the Goddesses of the Sumerian and Egyptians by at least 5,000 years. While there have been Goddess figurines found which date to 30,000 years ago, they come to us without knowledge of their origin or character of the Goddess they represent. A figurine found at Çatal Hüyük, dating to 8,000 year ago, depicts the Mother Goddess squatting in the process of giving birth while flanked by two leopards. In later centuries, the leopards would be changed to lions--the metamorphosed Atalanta and Hippomenes, though leopards were considered to be female lions by the ancients. Her worship was originally combined with that of the Bull of Heaven, which is also prominently displayed at Çatal Hüyük.

A transformation of sounds, which may well have been Sybele that early in history, appears two thousand years later in Sumer as Siburi, the Divine Barmaid who held the keys to descent into the underworld. She was in fact the earthly Priestess of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, holding the keys "Me" of the Holy Tavern and Cult Harlotry--though a Harlot was actually a priestess of the Egyptian Goddess Hathor. Inanna arose at the time of the death of Gugalanna, The Bull of Heaven, and husband to Ereshkigal, Goddess of the Sumerian underworld. This Bull of Heaven was not Taurus, as the some imagine, but rather the Bull of the Northern Pole, (replaced by the Bear) and Gugalanna was moved out of his place, and died, about 6,000 years ago which is when the constellation now know as Taurus was created.
Before the Akkadian conquest of Sumer by Sargon the Great, (c. 4200 years ago) Siburi had already been relegated to the near underworld, whose gates were at Eridu, , but her Priestesses continued as Siburu and spread their Holy Tavern Harlotry to the north and west in the Akkadian Empire. When Hammurabi conquered Sumer-Akkad, (c. 3700 years ago) the name of Inanna was changed to Ishtar. The cuneiform characters, for Inanna and Ishtar are the same but are pronounced differently. In the new language Siburu became known as Si-bel-u (bel being lord) in the new language, while Her heavenly aspect became Subulutu, the "celestial virgin", which is a priestess who never married but was sexually promiscuous.
The Hittites, who had first arrived in northwest Asia-Minor (modern Turkey) about 3900 years ago, began their rise to power about the time of Hammurabi, but were held in check for the next one hundred and fifty years, when Babylonia become a weakened nation. Six generations later, the Egyptians under Tuthmosis III, conquered much of the former Babylonian territory. It was during this period that the Holy Taverns and the Sibelu spread north to the place of its origin in Asia Minor and as far as the Caucasus Mountains. By the time Assyria rose to power, <300 years after Hammurabi--c. 1400 BCE> the Sibelu had spread throughout Asia Minor, beyond the Black Sea and into Europe. In Thrace their Holy Taverns were established as temples of Sibyl, as the Sumerian "u" was dropped from the name.
Read the essay