the king's priestly function, and hence held a mediating function (the libation cup was also a symbol held by the king among the Greeks), but were also signifiers of social status. Thus, in Thrace as well as Scythia and the Near East, the royal insignia included the cup and the bow, the possession of which had a symbolic meaning. Additional attributes of kingship included pieces of armour, especially the belt, which was given to Indo-European warriors a marker of their completed initiation, and was therefore called "wolf-like" and hence Thracian belt-buckles were decorated with images showing their ritual function: they were sometimes designed in the shape of a wolf figure, or modelled in an openwork technique to look like an animal figure, or feature scenes representing the royal customs. Another insignia of the Thracian kings' priestly function was the pointed pileus hat, which marked their membership in the priestly caste, the () or , and therefore depictions of heroes sometimes showed them wearing a pileus hat. The royal divine marriage The royal investiture scenes depicting the goddess, such as the goddess about to give a rhyton to a horseman riding towards her on the plate of the Brezovo gold ring, and the goddess walking leftwards and is followed by a horseman holding a rhyton she has just given him on the Rosovets ring, represent the Hero 's (assimilated in these with the king) union with the Mother Goddess, an act which ensured the plentifulness of the country, but was also indispensable for him to obtain royal power. This ritual union between the king and the Goddess thus paralleled the hierogamy scene of the Letnitsa Treasure representing the Hero (with whom the king was identified and an earthly substitute for) explicitly entering in a hierogamy with the Great Goddess. This has its origin in the role of as the goddess of the hearth, who therefore presided over the centre of things, the home, the proper, the familiar, and wealth. In this role, possessed the attributes common to the hearth goddess throughout various Indo-European religions: she was bound to the circle of the hearth and never left the home, thus always being a maid but never a wife, and was associated to the snake, and, since the snake was the representation of the "below," therefore to the earth itself. The hearth-goddess also symbolised the continuity of the clan, which, by guaranteeing the