Gordion and King Midas: The Phrygian Kingdom in Anatolia

Gordion was the capital of Phrygia, a powerful Iron Age kingdom of central Anatolia, and the seat of King Midas, who ruled from about 740 to 696 BC according to traditional dates. Greeks remembered Midas as a byword for wealth and turned him into the king whose touch made everything gold. Excavations at Gordion, including the giant burial mound known as Tumulus MM, have revealed the real kingdom behind the legend and the setting of the famous Gordian knot.

Background: who were the Phrygians?

The Phrygians spoke an Indo-European language and, according to Greek tradition, had migrated into Anatolia from the Balkans. They rose to prominence in central Anatolia after the collapse of the Hittite Empire around 1180 BC, occupying land that had once been part of the Hittite heartland around Hattusa.

Gordion stood on the Sangarios River, now the Sakarya, about 90 km south-west of modern Ankara. Its citadel mound grew over thousands of years of settlement, but it became a royal centre in the Early Phrygian period, from roughly the 9th century BC. The Phrygians wrote their language in an alphabet closely related to early Greek alphabets.

The Early Phrygian citadel

The Early Phrygian citadel was an impressive planned complex. A massive gate building led into courtyards lined with megarons, large rectangular halls with a porch and a central hearth. One megaron had a floor of coloured pebble mosaic, among the earliest known. Long terrace buildings held rows of rooms where women ground grain and wove textiles on an industrial scale.

This citadel was destroyed in a great fire, which preserved thousands of objects in place. For decades archaeologists linked the fire to the Cimmerian invasion of about 700 BC. New radiocarbon and tree-ring dates published from 2001 onwards moved the destruction back to around 800 BC, before Midas, and it is now usually seen as an accident or local event. The citadel was rebuilt on an even grander scale on a thick layer of clay fill.

King Midas in history

The historical Midas appears in Assyrian records as Mita, king of the Mushki. Between about 717 and 709 BC he backed rebellions against Sargon II in south-eastern Anatolia, then made peace: a letter from Sargon’s reign notes the arrival of Midas’s envoy and welcomes him as a new partner. Phrygia was at that time one of the major states of Anatolia, a neighbour and rival of both Assyria and Urartu.

Greek sources remember Midas as the first foreign ruler to make a dedication at Delphi. Herodotus says he gave his royal throne to the sanctuary of Apollo, where it could still be seen in the 5th century BC. Later writers say he married a Greek princess, the daughter of a king of Aeolian Cyme. These links show that Phrygia was in close contact with the Greek world of western Anatolia.

The traditional dates of Midas’s reign, about 740 to 696 BC, come from the late chronicle of Eusebius and should be treated as approximate. His fate is tied to the Cimmerian invasions: Strabo records a story that when nomadic Cimmerians overran his kingdom, Midas killed himself by drinking bull’s blood.

Tumulus MM: the great burial mound

The landscape around Gordion is dotted with more than 100 burial mounds, or tumuli. The largest, known as Tumulus MM (for “Midas Mound”), still stands about 53 m high and some 300 m across, making it one of the largest burial mounds in Anatolia.

In 1957 a team from the University of Pennsylvania Museum led by Rodney Young drilled into the mound and then cut a tunnel to the centre. They found a tomb chamber built of pine planks and enclosed by juniper logs, sealed under layers of rubble and clay. It is among the oldest standing wooden buildings in the world.

Inside lay the skeleton of a man aged about 60 to 65 on a wooden coffin bed, with no gold or silver. Instead the tomb held what was then the finest collection of Iron Age furniture ever discovered: an inlaid wooden table, two inlaid serving stands and several plainer tables, together with bronze cauldrons, around 100 bronze bowls and well over 100 bronze fibulae, or safety-pin brooches.

Tree-ring analysis of the timbers dated the felling of the wood to around 740 BC. This suggests the tomb was built for Midas’s father or predecessor, perhaps a king called Gordias, rather than for Midas himself. Chemical analysis of residues by Patrick McGovern revealed the remains of a funeral feast: a spicy lamb or goat stew and a mixed fermented drink made from grape wine, barley beer and honey mead.

Myths and facts

Two famous myths gathered around Midas. In the version told by the Roman poet Ovid, the god Dionysus granted Midas a wish after he returned the god’s companion Silenus; Midas asked that everything he touched turn to gold, and found he could not eat. He washed the gift away in the river Pactolus, which explained the gold in its sands. In another tale, Apollo gave Midas donkey’s ears for preferring Pan’s music to his own.

These stories are myths, not history. They seem to reflect the Greek memory of Phrygia as rich and exotic, and the gold-bearing Pactolus actually flowed past Sardis in neighbouring Lydia, where electrum later fed the first coins. Ironically, the excavated royal tomb contained bronze rather than gold.

The Gordian knot belongs to a separate tradition. A wagon said to have belonged to the founder of the dynasty was kept at Gordion, its yoke tied with an intricate knot. An oracle promised the rule of Asia to whoever untied it. When Alexander the Great reached Gordion in the spring of 333 BC, he is said to have slashed the knot with his sword; one ancient account, by Aristobulus, says he simply pulled out the pin of the pole. “Cutting the Gordian knot” still means solving a problem by bold action.

Later history and legacy

Phrygian power declined after the Cimmerian attacks of the early 7th century BC, and Gordion passed under Lydian control in the 6th century and then under the Persian Empire after 547 BC. It remained an important stop on the Persian Royal Road. Elsewhere in Phrygia, the carved rock façade at Yazılıkaya known as the Midas Monument bears an inscription naming Midas, probably honouring him long after his death.

Gordion was first excavated by the German brothers Gustav and Alfred Körte in 1900. The University of Pennsylvania Museum has worked there since 1950, making it one of the longest-running excavations in the Near East. Gordion was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023. The analysis of the Tumulus MM feast even inspired a modern recreation of the drink, sold by an American brewery.

Timeline

• c. 1180 BC: Collapse of the Hittite Empire; Phrygian-speaking groups settle in central Anatolia.
• c. 800 BC: The Early Phrygian citadel at Gordion is destroyed by fire.
• c. 740 BC: Timbers are felled for the tomb chamber of Tumulus MM.
• c. 717-709 BC: Mita of Mushki (Midas) opposes and then makes peace with Sargon II of Assyria.
• c. 696-676 BC: Cimmerian invasions devastate Phrygia; traditional date of Midas’s death.
• 547 BC: Gordion comes under Persian rule after Cyrus the Great conquers Lydia.
• 333 BC: Alexander the Great at Gordion and the episode of the Gordian knot.
• 1957: Rodney Young’s team opens the tomb chamber of Tumulus MM.

Why it matters

Gordion shows how archaeology can separate a historical ruler from his legend. Midas was not a king cursed with a golden touch but a real 8th-century BC monarch who dealt with Assyria and Delphi, and his capital preserves some of the richest evidence for daily life, furniture and feasting in the Iron Age Near East.