PLATE LXII
Magna Mater
The image of Kybele, or, as known to the Romans, Magna Mater, is seated on a throne placed in a car drawn by lions. On her head is the so-called mural crown, on the back of which an end of her himation has been so caught up as to hang behind her like a veil. In her lap she holds a tympanon on edge. This group is commemorative of an annual Roman ritual in which the image of the Great Mother was conveyed in her car from her shrine in the city to a neighbouring stream, where both were ceremonially bathed. From a bronze of the second century a.d., found in Rome and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (photograph). See pp. 273 ff., 303-04.
