English: Museum of Anatolian Civilization: The relief of the Goddess Kybele (Cybele)

The early inhabitants of Anatolia worshiped a Mother Goddess as their protecting deity. She was taken to represent fertility and abundance, having authority over both the earth and the heavens. She was known to the Hittites as "Hepat" and the "Sun Goddess of Arinna", to the later Hittites as Kubaba and to the Lydians as Kybele.

The Phrygians came from the Balkans and established a powerful kingdom in Central and Western Anatolia. They called her the Mother Goddess and worshiped her as their main deity, carving rock monuments and alters and stellae in her honor. To the Phrygians, Kybele was the Mother of the Mountains and Mistress of the Land, a sort of Mother Nature. It was from the Phrygians that the Greeks and Romans took the idea of Kybele as the Mother of the Gods. Throughout antiquity, the center of the cult was at Pessinus (Ballihisar).