XXXIV. The Myth and Ritual of Attis
ANOTHER of those gods whose supposed death and resurrection struck
such deep roots into the faith and ritual of Western Asia is Attis.
He was to Phrygia what Adonis was to Syria. Like Adonis, he appears
to have been a god of vegetation, and his death and resurrection
were annually mourned and rejoiced over at a festival in spring. The
legends and rites of the two gods were so much alike that the
ancients themselves sometimes identified them. Attis was said to
have been a fair young shepherd or herdsman beloved by Cybele, the
Mother of the Gods, a great Asiatic goddess of fertility, who had
her chief home in Phrygia. Some held that Attis was her son. His
birth, like that of many other heroes, is said to have been
miraculous. His mother, Nana, was a virgin, who conceived by putting
a ripe almond or a pomegranate in her bosom. Indeed in the Phrygian
cosmogony an almond figured as the father of all things, perhaps
because its delicate lilac blossom is one of the first heralds of
the spring, appearing on the bare boughs before the leaves have
opened.
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