Phrygians/History

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Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of the Anatolia. The Phrygian people started to live in the area from around 1200 BCE, and made a kingdom in the 8th century BCE. Archaeological finds across Turkey suggest that the Phrygians first lived in Central Anatolia, building settlements over the ashes of Hittite cities like Hattusas, Alacahöyük, Pazarli and Alisar, eventually founding their capital of Gordion four centuries later. It was ruined by Cimmerian invaders around 690BCE, then conquered by its neighbor Lydia, before it passed successively into the Persian Empire of Cyrus, the empire of Alexander and his successors, was taken by the king of Pergamon, and became part of the Roman Empire. The Phrygian language survived until about the 6th century CE.

Mysterious Origins[edit | edit source]

Almost nothing about the pre-sedentary origins of the Phrygians can be said to be tenable to us, although a slew of philologists and historians using Greek and Roman literature as sources have postulated that the Phrygians had an origin either east from the Caucasus, or (as the renowned Herodotus claimed) west from beyond the Bosporus, where a people in the Balkans known as the Bryges lived. The Iliad itself states that the Phrygians were amongst the many peoples allied to the Trojan cause at the siege of Troy, and were based in what is now the Kocaeli Subregion of the present-day Republic of Turkey.

At this point, however, the records we have received have only increased the intensity of the debate, not quell it. Greek sources, dominated by Herodotus, point to an origin in Eastern European before crossing the Bosporus some time between 1000-900BCE. Yet, if Assyrian sources are correct, the people we know of as the Phrygians may have long settled eastern Anatolia a few centuries well before this date. So while excavations in the ruins of Gordium have revealed that the Phrygian language belonged to the Indo-European group of languages, it has done nothing to resolve the debate on Phrygian origins, let alone how they appeared in Asia Minor. Nevertheless, the effects of Phrygian settlement and culture in Asian Minor are nevertheless most tangible in classical history.

Royal Phrygia[edit | edit source]

The kingdom was created by Indo-Europeans who began to infiltrate into Bithynia in western Anatolia from the Balkans after about 1450 BC. Moving south and east, they settled the region a little way inland from the north-western corner of Anatolia, with Mysia and the Troad to their north-west. If the Greeks were right, the Phrygians as invaders from Thrace (may have) played a decisive role in the destruction of the Hittite Kingdom and possibly the fall of Troy (but this is negated by Homer, who states that the Phrygians were allies of Troy). Along with their eastern neighbours, the Kaskans, the Phrygians seized power in Anatolia after the fall of the Hittite empire. Thereafter, they found themselves bordered to the south-west by the neo-Hittite kingdom of Maeonia, with Mysia and the rest of the Troad forming part of their territory.

A recognisably unified kingdom emerged by the eighth century BCE, but the list of kings predates that and is influenced by Greek legends. It found itself ruler of a vast nation of mountain and plain, with westerly and southerly storms carrying rain deep even into the mountains, bringing denser settlement and a greater degree of cultivation in their train. It was this farming potential which enabled Phrygia even in early classical times (and most definitely other nations before and thereafter) to develop a powerful kingdom of its own with many towns and cities. Its fringes, where east met west, were a battleground for Persians and Lydians, and would remain so for countless centuries.

This independent Phrygian kingdom of the 8th and 7th c BC maintained close contacts with the Aryans in the east and the Greeks in the west. Its early history is only briefly chronicled (Herodotus), recounting the suicide of its last king, Midas, in Gordion when it fell to the Cimmerians (696 BC). Excavations of Phrygian sites have so far yielded 80 ancient Phrygian inscriptions (7th-4th c. BC), written in a script rather like Greek and over 110 neo-Phrygian writings in Greek from Roman times. Linguistic excavations of these inscriptions suggest that Phrygians bore some relationship with the Armenians who later occupied the mountains in the north of Mesopotamia in the kingdoms of Nairi and Urartu. For this reason, they could well have had links to the people known as the Mušku, a name that first appeared in Assyrian records in the twelfth and eleventh centuries BC when these Mušku were penetrating into the Upper Tigris.





We are familiar with King Midas from his epic, and from the discovery of his burial chamber. Midas, who succeeded to the throne in 738 BC, defended the frontiers of Phrygia quite well, but could not resist the attacks of the Cimmerians. After his defeat by Cimmerians in 695 BC, it is said that he committed suicide by drinking bull's blood. Phrygians built the largest mound (tumulus) in Gordion known as the Tumulus of Midas; it is 53 meters high and 300 meters wide.

With the establishment of the Galatians in eastern Phrygia the fertility cult of Cybele, the mother goddess, spread widely amongst town dwellers, while country folk tended to worship Men, the moon god, ruler of Paradise and the Underworld. In 188 BC Phrygia came under Pergamum, followed by Rome, who made it a province in 133 BC.

Tomb?[edit | edit source]

The large, almost square-shaped burial chamber is 6.20m by 5.15m. The skeleton of King Midas was laid on a large bench, surrounded by other benches full of gifts for the afterworld. Close observation of the skeleton revealed that King Midas died when he was around 60 years old and he was 1.59m tall. On the floor of the chamber were found 166 bronze funeral gifts and 145 bronze fibula laid at the head of the deceased. The lack of gold reveals that it was not a custom among the Phrygians to present funerary gifts of gold.

Influenced by Hittite art, Phrygian art, in turn, influenced Etruscan art in Italy. However, they were also directly influenced by the Urartu in Eastern Anatolia. For instance, they imported the Urartu figure of a bull's head and worked it on a cauldron of strictly Phrygian form. Metal ores were known and used in metalwork during the Early and Mid-Bronze Ages, from 2500 BC onwards. However, it was only around 1000 BC that Phrygian metalwork forms borrowed from pottery and metal vessels entered popular use. Phrygian art can be divided into three categories:

   Local Phrygian ware
   Urartu import ware
   Assyrian import ware.

These groups are again divided into two major phases consisting of artifacts found in mounds dating before 695 BC.

The pottery of the Phrygian period was fine polychrome ware, which can be distinguished basically as early and late ware. Because of the Lydian domination of Anatolia during the late period, it bears western Anatolian influence after 695 BC.

As a contrast to the Hittite based motifs of the early period, in later ware we see studded patterns within lozenge shaped frames, and again studded motifs on animal forms. Complicated motifs took the place of very simple and geometric motifs from the old period. Instead of one color painted over another color, they started to be painted in many colors. Where animal shapes previously took on a schematic look to them, pieces from the late period showed evolvement. In addition, the late period witnessed motifs of meander, dots and plaited hair. Filtered vessels that had little application in daily life were seen to be popular as a funerary gift. Today Phrygian works of art are on exhibit at the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara.

Apart from their capital Gordion were you can visit the Tumulus of King Midas and nearby small museum, Pessinus was also a major Phrygian settlement. Examples of megaron planned, semerdam roofed houses were carved into the rock tombs. These may be seen around Afyon Arslantas and Eskisehir Yazilikaya.

The Arslantas rock monument near Afyon and the ruins of Midas near Eskisehir are among the most important Phrygian monuments in Anatolia, and are where the Phrygians worshipped their major deity Cybele and her lover Attis.



Aside from architecture and artifact remains in the Gordion destruction level, important material was recovered from tumulus burials at Gordion, Ankara, and Elmali. Among the most important are those from Gordion, especially the largest and richest Phrygian burial (over 50 meters in height, 300 meters in diameter), called “Midas Mound” (MM). It was probably built by Midas for his predecessor and contains a large quantity of Phrygian objects along with imported goods probably from northern Syria. Among the former are masses of bronze and brass vessels and fibulae (safety pins) of various forms, and exquisite inlaid wooden furniture; of the imported goods are large bronze cauldrons with handles in the form of winged human busts, and animal-headed pouring vessels. Other characteristic Phrygian artifacts include bronze belts, wood and bronze animal figurines, and decorated pottery painted with geometric motifs or with friezes of animals.



Legacy: Of Seeds Scattered into the Wind[edit | edit source]

Today, only ruins and age-old monuments abound up on the rolling plateau around the upper reaches of the Sakarya, with here and there towering rocky outcrops and a few scraggy trees, although nowadays signs of settlement are few and far between. To this day, only three major cities from that time of yore still stand: Afyon, the opium city, Eskisehir, a hub of industry and the main railroad junction, and Kütahya, a centre for ceramics and the mining of brown coal. Yet, Phrygia's cultural heritage outlived the loss of her independence.

Phrygia and the Greek world were closely connected, as demonstrated by the Phrygian borrowing of the Greek alphabet (possibly during Midas’ reign), Greek knowledge of Phrygian music, and the fact that Midas is said to have married an eastern Greek princess—a typical expression of a royal alliance. For centuries the Greeks also remembered that Midas had sent his sumptuous throne (probably made of inlaid wood) as an offering to the sanctuary at Delphi, most probably seeking an oracle. Ancient historians inform us that Midas killed himself in despair after the Cimmerians destroyed his city and kingdom. Nonetheless, Phrygia continued to exist and prosper for decades after the destruction. The state was eventually conquered by Lydians from the west, and then incorporated in turn into the empires of Persia, Macedonian Greece and finally Rome.

References[edit | edit source]