Similarly, we must recognize that from the earliest stage the germs of image-worship and anthropomorphism were not wanting.
(2) Votive images and representations of the Deity. —The need for some outward and material repre- sentation of religious conceptions seems to have been felt especially in approaching the Divine nature with prayers and vows, and in making acknowledgment of and expiation for neglect or dis- obedience. The worshippers came to the holy place, cave or grove or mountain or spring or stone, and they desired to leave there either some token of their reverence or some reminder of their own person and their own needs, or perhaps both. In proof of their reverence they dedicated offerings, either the sacred emblems and symbols of the Divine power, é.g. axes to the god with the axe in the Dictzean cave of Crete, or representations of the home and nature of the Deity. The most characteristic of those representations were the shrines (vaof), on which see below, (3). Further, in evidence of their gratitude when they paid their vow, or of their penitence when they atoned for some neglect of the Divine will and power, they often left representations of themselves as they had been aided by the god, or of the part of the body in which they had suffered punishment, just as the modern peasant ties a rag from his clothing on a sacred tree beside the old sacred fountain.
(3) Shrines (naoi).— Most typical among the votive offerings of Anatolian religion are the shrines or naot, which filled so large a place in the practical elaboration of Artemis-worship in Ephesus. The naot of Artemis are described at some length in vol. i. p. 606. Here we have only to allude to the origin of this representation. We seem to find the oldest known form of the naos in the colossal figure of the so-called Niobe in Mt. Sipylus, which is indubitably an image of the goddess (whether Cybele or Artemis, two names of the one ultimate Divine nature), and which is prob- ably the ancient statue of the Mother - Goddess described by Pausanias as the work of Broteas. This image we take to be rather a votive repre- sentation than intended as a cultus-statue. Its conspicuous situation in a perpendicular rock at the top of a very steep slope seems to prove its votive character: it isa token of the piety of the dedicator, not an image set up to be the object of worship for others, though doubtless some cultus would be established here by the dedicator as part of his pious act.
Other very archaic examples of the same char- acter are probably the Cybele between her lions at Arslan-Kaya,* and the little figure of the goddess on the outside of the wall of the Midas city.t
The thought which the dedicator desired to express was that of the Mother - Goddess in her sacred cave ; he imagined her as of vaguely-human form, for she to whom man owes his birth can- not be wholly unlike the human form : he tried to give her the accompaniments and emblems. suited to express her power or her chosen ritual, lions or tympanon. This primitive idea, worked on the
* Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1884, p. 245. t Ib. 1882, p. 42.
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rocks, was developed in numberless small votive works in terra-cotta or marble or silver ; and many examples of those in the cheaper materials are found at most of the seats of Anatolian worship. See also vol. i. p. 606.
VI. THE DivINE IN HuMAN ForM AND CHAR- ACTER.—If various animals seemed suitable ex- pressions or embodiments of the might of the Divine nature, the human analogy most of all affected the mind, and commended itself as proper to convey some idea of the Godhead, That the anthropomorphic tendency existed from the begin- ning alongside of other forms of expression which have been described, seems indubitable (just as the aniconic idea has been traced as surviving even in the most developed iconic period); and it has given rise to far the largest mass of myth.
(1) The Great Mother.—The characteristic which specially distinguishes the Anatolian religion is its conception of the Divine Being as the mother, not the father, of mankind. This feature runs through the social system and the history of the land. Strong traces of Mutterrecht have been observed and collected by several writers. Even in the Greco-Roman period, when those traces had al- most disappeared from the cities owing to the spread of Greek manners, women magistrates are very frequently alluded to.
The lite of man was conceived in that old religion as coming from the Great Mother: the heroes of the land were described as the sons of the goddess, and at death they returned to the mother who bore them. The god, the male element in the Divine nature, was conceived as a secondary figure to the Great Mother; he was recognized as only an incidental and subsidiary actor in the drama of nature and of life, while the permanent feature of the Divine nature is its motherhood, as the kindly protecting and teaching power. In later develop- ment, under the influence of external conditions and foreign immigration, more importance (especi- ally in the exoteric cult) was attached to the god: see § VIII (7).