The marble piece is flat on top but cut in front to indicate a very shallowly pitched roof with a round central and two palmette-shaped corner acroteria. Details may have been indicated by painting. The sides, acting as pilasters, have no carved details. The back is very roughly trimmed with a chisel. On top, a clamp which was broken off was at the upper l. corner, and the trace of a dowel extends forward from the back. On the r. side are three cuttings for clamping; the upper and middle ones are vertical and the lower one horizontal. The relief, then, was fastened from the top and sides to a stone frame or wall.

Cybele, whose head reaches over the frame, has no polos. She wears a chiton and a cloak draped over her lower body and legs, of which a fold falls over the throne on her r. side. In her l. hand she holds a big tympanum and in her r. hand a small round bowl. She is seated on a square throne. A small lion lies in her lap, the head to her r. A lion sejant in profile sits at her feet on her r.

The work is interesting in that it combines the earlier type of a seated Cybele holding a lion in her lap, which begins in late archaic times, with a type of the Mother of Gods in Phidian style, created by Agorakritos (?) and distinguished by Cybele’s holding the tympanum and having two (rather than one) lions sitting at her sides. An enormous number of Cybele reliefs are known. The Sardian must be later than the image by Agorakritos. Picard (Manuel II.2, 542f.) and Langlotz (Phidiasprobleme, 65ff., pl. 17) followed by Stevens (Painted Lioness, 181f., pls. 47-48, reconstruction) argue that Phidias made the image for the Metroon around 450 B.C.

In any event, the Sardis relief is later than 400 B.C. because of the naiskos with shallow roof and the very precise clamp cutting which may belong to the 4th C. B.C. The provincial or “popular” sketchy execution permits no closer dating.

Very white marble with large crystals. Strong red accretion.

Upper l. and lower r. corner broken off. Top chipped. Heavily incrusted.