hero (and, by extension, his descendant the Scythian king) was believed to acquire royal power by uniting with the Scythian goddess Artimpasa, who was herself equivalent to the Thracian Great Goddess . Therefore, another goal of the fight against the Chaos-dragon was the elevation of the Hero himself to the status of ruler, which was symbolised by the bow, which was similarly a symbol of kingship in Achaemenid Persia, and this insignia of power was given to the Hero by the Great Goddess herself as part of his investiture. The Golden Fleece An important myth was that of the Golden Fleece, according to which a golden ram appears among the king's sheep as a divine favour, and is then sacrificed, after which its skin is guarded as a royal talisman: this myth symbolised the domestication of the mobile wealth, its transfer from the domain of "Hermes" to that of the hearth-goddess , and its transformation from a living being into an object. The ram itself was an animal closely associated with "Hermes", similarly to whom it was a mediator, and occupied the middle part of the Cosmos in many myths and rituals. According to ancient Greek sources, the Greek myth of the Golden Fleece likely originated in this Thracian myth. A representation of this myth of the golden fleece is visible on the Helmet of Coțofenești, where a warrior is depicted pressing with his knee down on a fallen ram whose head he has twisted upwards with one hand, while in the other hand he holds a short sword with which the ram is to be stabbed. Temples Thracian temples and sanctuaries were always built in fine groves on mountain tops where the Sun would light them immediately on rising. Sanctuaries of The oldest Thracian sanctuaries were the simplest, and were dedicated to . They consisted of a large rock in a sacred grove and near a spring, and worship was carried out by leaving gifts at the stone and burning resins and incenses there. In the earlier phases of Thracian religion at the end of the Bronze Age, and her daughter were represented by two idols, with one being placed inside the other. In later Thracian sanctuaries to , beginning in the middle of the first millennium BCE, the stone was used as an altar which was located either in the open, or in a building with an open