help with identifying statue I saw and photographed in Rome

Can you post a link to the photo somewhere like photobucket or flickr?

Hello Christi, Thanks for the email. Go to this email to see a photo of the sculpture and let me know what you think. http://www.flickr.com/photos/90802100@N06/

I think it's the Headless statue of Magna Mater, Statua acefala della Magna Mater, which is located inside the Palatine Museum.

This site has a tiny bit of info http://ancientrome.ru/art/artworken/img.htm?id=835 and says it is indeed in the Palatine Museum.

The Magna Mater was the Great Mother Cybele, the goddess was worshiped at Pessinus, northern Asia Minor, in the guise of a black stone, probably a meteorite. The Romans brought it to Rome and they built a temple between 204 BC and 191 BC. The temple was located between the Casa Romuli and the Domus Tiberiana, near the House of Augustus, the headless statue found near the temple is now kept in the Palatine Museum.
At that time the Romans had just finished fighting the Second Punic War, they thought that the introduction of this new cult from Asia Minor would have given them the favor of the gods.

If you google "Cybele" you can read all about the goddess and her bizarre cult. I stopped when I got to the part about self-castration. :) :(

Claudio is right about the statue; check out the article below for more information (can't insert link for some reason, probably operator error): Meteor Beliefs Project: Meteorite worship in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds I teach a course in Women and Religion and another in Christian Art. Another interesting story is the Goddess of Morgantina, a sculpture which was recently returned to her home in Sicily after a long captivity in the Getty museum.

We have been of help to you, Diane?

Hello Christi, Claudio, Stacy, Tom and Zoe, You have all been very helpful! I am delighted to find such a great source for unusual questions on the arts and travel! After spending a lot of time doing online searching this response is wonderful. Christi, I had to learn how to use flicker... that was a learning curve to fly on now. thanks. Claudio, Yes, of course you are right! and thanks for the information. Tom, I did google Cybele and got the same response. Stacy, thanks for that link! A clear and detailed view of the sculpture. Zoe, I hope this link to the article you mentioned will appear in my post. Pretty fascinating, at least to me. From the Journal of the IMO, 2005 Meteor Beliefs Project: Meteorite worship in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=2005JIMO...33..135M&db_key=AST&page_ind=0&data_type=GIF&type=SCREEN_VIEW&classic=YES I am posting some other questions about this subject separately.

Good morning to you all again! It is snowing here in North Idaho. Today my husband and I are off to San Diego. We will be in the desert to look for meteorites as well as visit friends. He was quite impressed with the last replies. He is a geologist and curious about this statue of Magna Mater. Jack remembers reading about a study done on her neck area looking for meteorite fragments, tiny sub gram pieces. I am looking for that because that is a possibility for identifying the meteor fall from ancient times. Or perhaps he could obtain permission to do that. Of course the history of Magna Mater is filled with rich, deep metaphors of the Mother Goddess. She may even be related to the site in Turkey called Çatalhöyük, which dates to 6000 BCE. If we know about meteorite falls, then perhaps we can link this statue to a particular fall. Nowadays falls are tracked regularly by radar. Recently, this last spring, we searched the area of Sutter's Mill in California to find a piece of that meteorite which fell in April, 2012. It is called a carbonaceous chondrite because it contains carbon. This is a valuable type for research because it is thought that this may be the seeding of life on earth. I found two tiny pieces and was thrilled!