Phrygia in central Anatolia
Phrygia lay on the high plateau of central and western Anatolia, in country once dominated by the Hittites, whose capital Hattusa lay to the east. After the Hittite capital was abandoned and the state collapsed around 1200 BCE, new groups rose in the region. The Phrygians were one of them. Greek tradition said they had come from southeastern Europe, perhaps from a people called the Bryges, but whether they migrated or developed locally is debated. By about the ninth and eighth centuries BCE, they had a kingdom with its main centre at Gordion, a mound site beside the Sangarios River, at Yassihoyuk near modern Polatli in Turkey.
The Phrygian story is separate from that of the Lydians, their later neighbours and conquerors. The focus here is Gordion, King Midas, Phrygian language and culture, and the kingdom’s decline.
Gordion
Gordion was a fortified citadel with palace buildings, large storage rooms, workshops and an extensive lower town. Excavations, led for decades by the University of Pennsylvania Museum, uncovered a series of large gate complexes and megaron-style buildings, a type of hall with a porch that is also known from Greek and Hittite contexts. Workshops at Gordion produced pottery, textiles and metal. Phrygian bronzework, including bowls and belts, was admired and exported, and Phrygian textiles had a good reputation in Greek writing. Bronze alloying techniques at the site have attracted scientific study, and ancient weaving of wool and dyed cloth was a notable craft of the region.
The citadel was surrounded by large burial mounds. The densest cluster of tumuli is found near the site, and several have been excavated.
The Midas Mound
The largest mound at Gordion, known as the Midas Mound or Tumulus MM, is about fifty metres high. Inside was a timber burial chamber, with a pitched roof and walls of juniper and pine logs, which is often called the oldest surviving standing wooden building in the world. The tomb held the body of a man, apparently in his sixties, laid on a bed of textiles, with a rich set of bronze vessels, mostly cauldrons, jugs and bowls, many of which still contained residues of food and drink.
The residues suggest a funeral feast with a spiced stew and a mixed drink of wine, beer and mead, according to chemical analysis. A Greek symposium is a useful contrast, since the Phrygians appear to have valued shared feasting just as the Greeks did, but with different drink and vessels.
Dating the mound has been aided by tree-ring dating of the timbers, which points to around 740 BCE, somewhat earlier than once thought. That date suggests that the man buried there was not the Midas known from Assyrian texts around 709 BCE, but perhaps his father or a predecessor. Not all scholars agree on how to identify the occupant, and his name is not known.
King Midas, real and legendary
The historical Midas is probably the king named “Mita of Mushki” in Assyrian records from the time of Sargon II, around the end of the eighth century BCE. The Assyrians describe him as an opponent, then as a ruler who sent envoys. Matching Mita with the Phrygian Midas is widely accepted, though not every detail is certain.
Greek tradition associated Midas with gold and with a throne dedicated at Delphi, which was said to be a gift to the Delphi sanctuary. It also gave him a marriage connection with Greeks and, in later myth, the golden touch and donkey’s ears. The golden touch is a story told by later Greek and Roman writers, including Ovid, and it should be treated as myth. The Pactolus river, which flowed through Lydian Sardis, was said to carry gold because Midas washed in it, which tells us more about Lydian legend than about Phrygia.
Language, writing and the cap
Phrygian was an Indo-European language, probably closer to Greek and other Balkan languages than to the Hittite group, although the evidence is limited. The Phrygians wrote with an alphabet derived from Phoenician, adopted in the eighth century BCE. Two main groups of inscriptions survive: Old Phrygian texts of the Iron Age, many of them on rock monuments, and New Phrygian texts of the Roman period. Part of the vocabulary is understood, but much remains unclear. Among the monuments, the Phrygian highlands around Midas City preserve rock-cut facades, one carrying the name Midas, and sanctuaries dedicated to a mother goddess.
The Phrygian cap, a soft cap with the top pulled forward, was worn by Phrygians according to Greek art. Greek artists used it to indicate easterners, such as Paris and the Trojans, and it later became associated with freedom after freed slaves in Rome wore similar caps. How far real Phrygians wore the cap is not certain. Greek sources also link Phrygians with the Iliad, in which they appear as allies of Troy, and the site of Troy, explored in the Hisarlik excavations, lies not far from their western edge.
Alexander and the Gordian Knot
A legend associated with Gordion concerns the Gordian Knot. In 333 BCE, Alexander the Great is said to have cut the knot tied to a wagon in the citadel, which, according to prophecy, would give mastery of Asia to whoever undid it. Ancient writers disagree about whether he cut or untied it. The story reflects the later fame of the site more than Phrygian history.
Decline and fall
The traditional account says the Phrygian kingdom fell when Cimmerian horsemen raided Anatolia around the end of the eighth century or in the early seventh century BCE. A late source says Midas ended his life in this crisis. The archaeology is more complicated. A major destruction level at Gordion has been dated by radiocarbon dating and other methods to about 800 BCE, earlier than the Cimmerian arrival, and the city’s greatest buildings were rebuilt after it. The Midas period therefore fits a phase of recovery, not simple collapse.
Phrygia was gradually drawn under the control of Lydia in the sixth century BCE, and then the Persians took over after the fall of Lydia. Gordion remained inhabited, and Phrygian cults continued into Greek and Roman times. In the third century BCE, Galatian groups settled in the region, and the old kingdom became part of a patchwork of Hellenistic and Roman districts.
Merchants and kings
The title’s reference to merchants suits Phrygia only loosely. Their wealth came from farming, herding, metalwork and control of routes across the plateau, and the evidence for long-distance trade is mixed. Kingship, in contrast, is well attested at Gordion. The surviving remains show a state able to organise major construction and to display status through feasting, tombs and fine craft.