Phrygia: A Visual History

Phrygia was a kingdom of central Anatolia founded by migrants from the Balkans after the Hittite collapse; its capital Gordion on the Sangarius flourished from about 800 BC. King Midas (Assyrian Mita of Mushki), who reigned around 738-696 BC, fought Sargon II, married a Greek princess and dedicated a throne at Delphi. Cimmerian nomads sacked Gordion around 696 and Midas reportedly killed himself by drinking bull's blood; Phrygia fell under Lydian and then Persian rule but kept its language and cults, including the mother goddess Cybele, into Roman times.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Phrygia. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Phrygian territory

Timeline of the Phrygia

1. 1,200 BC
   Phrygians settle Anatolia
2. 1,115 BC
   Mushki fight Tiglath-Pileser I
3. 800 BC
   Gordion's citadel built
4. 738 BC
   Midas king
5. 709 BC
   Midas sends tribute to Sargon II
6. 696 BC
   Cimmerians sack Gordion
7. 333 BC
   Alexander cuts the Gordian knot

Origins

Greek tradition says the Phrygians came from Thrace and Macedonia; their language was Indo-European and closer to Greek than to the Anatolian tongues. Settling in the ruins of the Hittite world after 1200 BC, they built Gordion into a citadel of megaron halls, with a great gate and rich burial mounds. Assyrian records call them Mushki, first mentioned fighting Tiglath-Pileser I around 1115 BC.

Midas

Midas ruled from the Halys to the Aegean, intrigued with Urartu and Carchemish against Sargon II, then made peace and sent tribute around 709. He married Damodice, daughter of the king of Cyme, and Herodotus says he was the first foreigner to send gifts to Delphi. The 'Midas Mound' at Gordion, 53 metres high, held an elderly man in a log chamber with bronze cauldrons and inlaid furniture, and residues of a funeral feast; it is more likely his father's tomb, but it shows the wealth of the court.

Fall and afterlife

Cimmerians from the steppe, who had already ravaged Urartu, sacked Gordion around 696 BC; Strabo says Midas drank bull's blood. Phrygia never recovered as a state; Lydia absorbed the west and Persia the whole. But Phrygian remained spoken for a millennium, Cybele's cult reached Rome in 204 BC, the Phrygian cap became the symbol of freed slaves and later of French revolutionaries, and Alexander cut the Gordian knot at Gordion in 333 BC.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• New Hittite Kingdom (Hittite Empire) (1,400 BC to 1,180 BC)
• Neo-Assyrian Empire (911 BC to 609 BC)
• Urartu (860 BC to 590 BC)
• Lydia (680 BC to 546 BC)
• Scythia (800 BC to 300 BC)
• Achaemenid Empire (550 BC to 330 BC)
• Macedonian Empire (359 BC to 323 BC)

8 surprising things about the Phrygia

1. The Midas of the golden touch and the ass's ears is the same historical king who fought Sargon II of Assyria.
2. The Gordian knot tied by Midas's father Gordias was said to bind the yoke of a cart; whoever loosed it would rule Asia.
3. The 'Midas Mound' tomb yielded the world's oldest known intact wooden furniture and residue of a spiced wine, beer and mead cocktail.
4. The Phrygian cap, a soft conical hat, became the liberty cap of the French and American revolutions.
5. The Phrygian mode in music is named after them; Plato thought it suited warriors.
6. Cybele, the Phrygian mother goddess, was brought to Rome as a black stone in 204 BC during the war with Hannibal.
7. The Phrygian language survived until at least the third century AD, mainly in curse formulas on tombstones.
8. King Midas is said to have founded the city of Ancyra, modern Ankara.

Sources

• Phrygia Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Phrygia Wikipedia
• Phrygia World History Encyclopedia
• Lynn E. Roller, In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele (1999) University of California Press

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