legitimacy of the royal line and he continuity of power, was an important part of the Thracian royal customs. These various attributes together made of the goddess of the "autochthonic principle," that is the concept of a ruler's right to rule the land he inhabited deriving from him originating from that place, which held a very important place in archaic societies such as in Thrace, was attested there by the presence of snake-shaped hearth decorations in ancient Thrace. This importance of the hearth-goddess as the embodiment of the "autochthonic principle" is reflected across various Indo-European religions in the emphasis on the hearth-goddess in the rituals through which kings would take over new territory: according to legend, the Argive Perdiccas I used his knife to cut a circle on the floor around the hearth of the king of Lebaea before becoming king of Macedonia among the Scythians, a substitute ritual king would ride around a group of sacred objects believed to be gifts from (the Scythian hearth-goddess) to mark the boundaries of his kingdom whenever the Macedonian king Philip II conquered or sought to conquer a new country, he would marry its princess, that is he would ritually unite with its local personification of Hestia (the Greek hearth-goddess). A depiction of the ritual divine marriage is the mural of the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak, in which the deceased chieftain, having already been deified and become an anthropodaemon, is seated at a table with food on it and holds a phiale in one hand while his other hand is tenderly placed under that of his wife, who is seated on a throne next to him. To the left of the chieftain is a tall woman wearing a long peplos and carrying a tray of fruit who approaches the couple, who is the Snake-Goddess foremother, who in the Letnitsa Treasure holds a twig over and during their hierogamy. The chieftain's gesture is similar to that of Zeus drawing Hera to him from a metope from Selinus, and represents the royal rank of the chieftain which he acquired by his union with his deified wife who is assimilated to in the presence of the ancestral Snake-Goddess. The phiale he holds in his hand was a symbol of investiture, and which therefore linked the hierogamy with the royal investiture. By standing for the Hero in the divine hierogamy, the king also took over the role