‘the name of the Mother-goddess, with her title “Queen of the Rock,” all of which signs recur in an inscription from Emir-Ghazi.’[390] [Illustration: PLATE LIII MT. SIPYLUS: GIANT IMAGE OF THE MOTHER-GODDESS] It would seem that classical writers, following generally in the footsteps of Homer, confounded this image with another object, a natural rock on the same mountain, which tradition associated with Niobe, and would seem indeed to have conveyed a suggestion of her weeping form. Thus Homer[391] sings that ‘Niobe, turned to stone, upon arid Sipylus broods o’er her sorrows’; and so again Ovid:[392] ‘Fastened to the rock she weeps, and the marble sheds tears.’ Fortunately Pausanias, himself probably a native of this country, ascertained the facts and showed how the confusion had arisen. ‘This Niobe,’ he says,[393] ‘I myself saw when I ascended Mount Sipylus; close at hand it is merely a rock and a cliff, with no resemblance to a woman, mourning or otherwise; but if you stand farther off, you will think you see a weeping woman bowed with grief.’ This is clearly the Niobe of Homer, Ovid, and Sophocles, and clearly also the smoothed appearance of the rock above the image of the Mother-goddess (which is not, it seems, due at all to the action of the water), was one of the reasons accounting for the confusion. As to the identity of the image, Pausanias leaves us in no doubt where he says,[394] ‘Here (at Aeriae) there is a temple of the Mother of the Gods, with a stone image of her: both are worth seeing. The people of Aeriae say that it is the most ancient sanctuary of this goddess in the Peloponnese. The oldest of all her images,[395] however, is on the rock of Coddinus at Magnesia, to the north of Sipylus: the Magnesians say it was made by Broteas, son of Tantalus.’ Finally the same writer makes his distinction apparent by showing that he was aware of the passage in Homer referring to the story of Niobe.[396] As in other cases, we do not dwell upon the religious symbolism of the monument. That the Mother-goddess (Ma) was the prototype of Kybele remains undisputed, and all that is of interest in the cult of the great Phrygian goddess has been pointed out by Sir William Ramsay[397] and others. But the attributes of the goddess in the minds of the Hittites remain indefinite, and are to be inferred from the rites represented with her at Boghaz-Keui, Eyuk, and Fraktin, from the ritual described by Strabo and Herodotus, as surviving at Comana, Tyana, Pessinus, and elsewhere, and from the inherited attributes of Kybele herself.[398]