A Marble Figure of Kybele, Roman Imperial , circa 1st Century A.D.

ultimately derived from the Pheidian cult-statue of the 5th Century B.C., the Mother of the Gods majestically enthroned with her feet resting on a trapezoidal plinth and flanked by two lions seated on the armrests, one now missing, and wearing a long-sleeved chiton with overfold and himation draped over the legs, back, and left shoulder, her head turned slightly to her right, her face with parted bow-shaped lips and straight nose, the centrally parted wavy hair bound in a diadem, falling in two long tresses onto the shoulders in front, and surmounted by a mural crown with towers, gates, and masonry indicated, the throne with high back and straight rectangular legs each decorated with double palmettes.

French private collection, Jouy-en-Josas, acquired from a gallery on the Rue Bonaparte in Paris between 1975-1980

The lions are placed higher than on most statues of Kybele, where they are usually shown seated on the ground on either side of the throne (see, for instance, Sotheby's, New York, June 12th, 2003, no. 25). For a Roman marble relief and a terracotta figure of enthroned Kybele each with a single lion on one armrest, both from Greece, see M.J. Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae Attidisque, vol. II. Graecia atque insulae, Leiden, 1982, nos. 356 and 465; for a similar marble statuette see Sotheby's, London, July 8th, 1991, no. 261.

According to Lynn E. Roller (In search of the God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele, Berkeley, 1999, p. 148), "the lion of the Greek Meter votives symbolizes the goddess's strength and power, but also forms a more general allusion to the goddess's oriental background, a steady remainder of her foreign origins."