Kotys

Kotys, also called Kotytto, was a Thracian goddess whose orgiastic festival, the Cotyttia, resembled the rites of the Phrygian goddess Cybele and was celebrated at night on hills with music, drinking and licentious behavior. Worshippers, known as baptes or bathers, underwent elaborate purification rituals as part of the celebration. Her cult was especially associated with the Edonian Thracians and closely paralleled the cult of the Thracian goddess Bendis, already recorded on this atlas; it spread from Thrace to Corinth by around 425 BC and then to Athens, eventually reaching Italy and Sicily. Later sources describe her as a huntress goddess comparable to Artemis, and some ancient Greek writers identified her with Cybele or regarded her as an aspect of Persephone.