Trip 2015-16. Day 103. Turkey, Kaş. Турция: Каш

Before the ancient Greeks and Romans, christians and muslims in Anatolia there were the Lycians. They loved freedom, carved tombs into the rocks like the Nabateans and worshiped a mother goddess.

That’s how Herodotus (I, 173) describes their matriarchy: “Their customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian. But they have one which is their own and shared by no other men: they take their names not from their fathers but from their mothers, and when one is asked by his neighbor who he is, he will say that he is the son of such a mother, and rehearse the mothers of his mother. Indeed, if a female citizen marries a slave, her children are considered pure-blooded; but if a male citizen, even the most prominent of them, takes an alien wife or concubine, the children are dishonored.”

Plutarch gives a mythical explanation of this tradition in his book “Bravery of Women” in the chapter dedicated to the Lycian women: “Bellerophon killed a wild boar which was making havoc of the stock and crops in the land of the Xanthians, but obtained no fitting reward; whereupon he addressed to Poseidon imprecations against the Xanthians, and the whole plain suddenly became glittering with a salt deposit and was completely ruined, since the soil had become saline. This lasted until Bellerophon, out of respect for the women who besought him, prayed to Poseidon to give up his anger. For this reason it was the custom for the Xanthians to bear names derived not from their fathers but from their mothers.”

I don't know how Lycian's mother goddess looked like but we imagined her like this :)