Phrygia
|
Location of Phrygia - traditional region (yellow) - expanded kingdom (orange line) |
In antiquity,
Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of the
Anatolian Highland, part of modern
Turkey. The Phrygian people settled in the area from ca.
1200 BC, and established a kingdom in the
8th century BC. It was overwhelmed by
Cimmerian invaders ca.
690 BC, then briefly conquered by its neighbor
Lydia, before it passed successively into the
Persian Empire of
Cyrus, the empire of
Alexander the Great and his successors, was taken by the king of
Pergamon, and eventually became part of the
Roman Empire. The
Phrygian language survived until ca. the
6th century AD.
Phrygians were mentioned by
Homer as settled on the banks of the River
Sangarius (now
Sakarya, the second largest river in modern Turkey), which flows north and west to empty into the
Black Sea.
Later, Phrygia was conceived as lying west of the
Halys River and east of
Mysia and Lydia.
|
The Phrygian goddess Cybele with her attributes. |
The
Mother Goddess as worshiped in Phrygia was
Cybele. In her typical Phrygian form, she wears a long belted dress, a
polos, or high cylindrical headdress and a veil covering the whole body. The later version of Cybele was established by
Pheidias' pupil, the sculptor
Agoracritos, and became the image most widely adopted by Cybele's expanding following, both in the
Aegean world and at Rome. It shows her humanized though still enthroned, her hand resting on an attendant lion and the other holding the tambourine-like drum, the
tympanon.
It was the Great Mother, Cybele, as the Greeks and Romans knew her, who was originally worshiped in the mountains of Phrygia where she was called the Mountain Mother. It appears, however, that her original seat of power was in
Colchis to the north, which was the home of the
Medea, the Eponymous Mother of the
Medes. Her temples and shrines were always in mountains or caves and her guardians were lions (or leopards) as Her priestesses had a close affinity with nature. [
1]
The Phrygians also venerated
Sabazios, the sky and father god depicted on horseback. Though the Greeks associated Sabazios with
Zeus, representations of him, even into Roman times, show him as a horseman god. His early conflict with the indigenous Mother Goddess, whose creature was the
Lunar Bull, may be surmised in the way that Sabazios' horse places a hoof on the head of a bull, in a Roman relief at
Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Phrygia is mentioned in the
book of Acts in the
Bible as one of the places visited by
Paul and
Silas on Paul's second missionary journey (Acts 16:6).
It is also mentioned as the birthplace of the fabulist
Aesop in the pseudobiography "Life of Aesop".
Phrygia developed an advanced
Bronze Age culture. The earliest traditions of
Greek music, derived from Phrygia and transmitted through the Greek colonies in
Asia Minor, included the
Phrygian mode, considered the warlike mode in ancient Greek music. And Phrygian
Midas, the king of the "golden touch," was tutored in music by
Orpheus himself, according to the myth. Another musical invention that came from Phrygia was the
aulos, a reed instument with two pipes.
Marsyas, the
satyr who first formed the instrument using the hollowed
antler of a
stag, was a Phrygian follower of Cybele. He unwisely competed in music with
Olympian Apollo, and inevitably lost. Whereupon Apollo flayed Marsyas alive and provocatively hung his skin on Cybele's own sacred tree, a
pine.
Phrygia retained a separate cultural identity. Classical Greek iconography identifies the
Trojan Paris as non-Greek by his Phrygian cap, which was worn by
Mithras and survived into modern imagery as the "
Liberty cap" of the American and
French revolutionaries.
The Phrygians spoke an
Indo-European language. Although the Phrygians adopted the
alphabet originated by the
Phoenicians, and several dozen inscriptions in the Phrygian language have been found, they remain untranslated, and so much of what is thought to be known of Phrygia is second-hand information from Greek sources.
Josephus claimed the Phrygians were founded by the biblical figure
Togarmah grandson of
Japheth and son of
Gomer: "and
Thrugramma the
Thrugrammeans, who, as the Greeks resolved, were named Phrygians". By this historical account, the Phrygians would be an offshoot of the
Galatians.
Mythic kings of Phrygia were alternately named
Gordias and Midas. Some sources place
Tantalus as a king in Phrygia. Tantalus is endlessly punished in
Tartarus because he killed his son
Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of
human sacrifice.
In the mythic age before the
Trojan war, during a time of
interregnum,
Gordius (or 'Gordias'), a Phrygian farmer, became king, fulfilling an oracular
prophecy. The kingless Phrygians had turned for guidance to the oracle of Sabazios ("Zeus" to the Greeks) at
Telmissus, in the part of Phrygia that later became part of
Galatia. They had been instructed by the oracle to acclaim as their king the first man who rode up to the god's temple in a cart. That man was Gordias (Gordios, Gordius), a farmer, who dedicated the ox-cart in question, tied to its shaft with the "
Gordian Knot." Gordias refounded a capital at Gordium in west central Anatolia, situated on the old trackway through the heart of Anatolia that became
Darius' Persian "Royal Road" from
Pessinus to
Ancyra, and not far from the
River Sangarius.
Myths surrounding the first king Midas connect him with
Silenus and other satyrs and with
Dionysus, who granted him the famous "golden touch." In another episode he judged a musical contest between Apollo, playing the
lyre, and
Pan, playing the rustic
pan pipes. Midas judged in favor of Pan, and Apollo awarded him the ears of an
ass.
The mythic Midas of Thrace, accompanied by a band of his people, travelled to Asia Minor to wash away the taint of his unwelcome "golden touch" in the river
Pactolus. Leaving the gold in the river's sands, Midas found himself in Phrygia, where he was adopted by the childless king Gordias and taken under the protection of Cybele. Acting as the visible representative of Cybele, and under her authority, it would seem, a Phrygian king could designate his successor.
Homer recounts briefly that the Trojan king
Priam had in his youth come to aid the Phrygians when the
Amazons attacked them. (
Iliad 3.189). The Phrygians were led by
Otreus and
Mygdon, according to Homer, who does not elaborate on these leaders. Both appear to be little more than eponyms: there was a place named Otrea near the Ascanian lake; and the Mygdones were a people said to live in the neighborhood of the Troad (there was also a
Mygdonia in Macedonia). Priam's wife
Hecabe is usually said to be of Phrygian birth, as a daughter of King
Dymas, who ruled over the Phrygians who lived by the River Sangarius. The Phrygians sent forces to aid
Troy during the
Trojan War, led by
Ascanius and
Phorcys, the sons of
Aretaon. Ascanius and Phorcys hailed from Phrygian
Ascania, by the Ascanian lake (
Ascanius).
Asius, son of
Dymas and brother of Hecabe, is another Phrygian noble who fought before Troy.
Quintus Smyrnaeus mentions another Phrygian prince, named
Coroebus, son of
Mygdon, who fought and died at Troy; he had sued for the hand of the Trojan princess
Cassandra in marriage. The connection between the Phrygians of Ascania and the Phrygians from by the River Sangarius is unclear in the
Iliad, as elsewhere. The Homeric tradition is suggestive of two separate Phrygian tribes in northwest Asia Minor, each with a separate king. Nevertheless, the accounts of Phrygian potentates given by Homer and other ancient writers appear to contradict the story of
Gordias and
Midas.
The Phrygian
Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the
Apollonian oracle at Phrygia.
According to
Herodotus (
Histories 2.9), the Egyptian pharaoh
Psammetichus II had two children raised in isolation in order to find the original language. The children were reported to have uttered
bekos which is Phrygian for "bread", so Psammetichus admitted that the Phrygians were a nation older than the Egyptians.
|
Tomb at Midas City (6th century BC) |
Migration
After the collapse of the
Hittite Empire at the beginning of the
12th century BC, the political vacuum in central/western Anatolia was filled by a wave of
Indo-European migrants and "
Sea Peoples", including the Phrygians, who established their kingdom, with a capital eventually at
Gordium. It is still not known whether the Phrygians were actively involved in the collapse of the Hittite capital
Hattusa, or whether they simply moved into the vacuum that followed the collapse of Hittite hegemony. The so called Handmade Knobbed Ware was found by archaeologists at sites from this period in Western Anatolia. According to Greek mythographers
[JG MacQueen, The Hittites and their contemporaries in Asia Minor, 1986, p. 157], the first Phrygian
Midas had been king of the
Moschi (Mushki), also known as
Bryges (Brigi) in the western part of archaic
Thrace.
8th to 7th centuries
Assyrian sources from the 8th century BC speak a king Mita of the
Mushki, identified with king Midas of Phrygia. An Assyrian inscription records Mita as an ally of
Sargon of Assyria in 709 BC. A distinctive Phrygian pottery called Polished Ware appears in the
8th century BC. The Phrygians founded a powerful kingdom which lasted until the
Lydian ascendancy (7th century BC). Under kings alternately named Gordias and Midas, the independent Phrygian kingdom of the 8th and 7th centuries BC maintained close trade contacts with the her neighbours in the east and the Greeks in the west. Phrygia seems to have been able to co-exist with whichever was the dominant power in eastern Anatolia at the time.
The invasion of Anatolia in the late 8th century BC to early 7th century BC by the
Cimmerians was to prove fatal to independent Phrygia. Cimmerian pressure and attacks culminated in the suicide of its last king, Midas, according to legend. Gordium fell to the Cimmerians in 696 BC and was sacked and burnt, as reported much later by Herodotus.
A series of digs have opened Gordium as one of Turkey's most revealing archeological sites. Excavations confirm a violent destruction of Gordion around 675 BC. A tomb of the Midas period, popularly identified as the "Tomb of Midas" revealed a wooden structure deeply buried under a vast tumulus, containing grave goods, coffin, furniture, food offerings, (Archaeological Museum, Ankara). The Gordium site contains a considerable later building program, perhaps by Alyattes, the Lydian king, in the 6th century BC.
Minor Phrygian kingdoms continued to exist after the end of the Phrygian empire, and the Phrygian art and culture continued to flourish. Cimmerian people stayed in Anatolia but does not appear to have created a kingdom of their own. The Lydians repulsed the Cimmerians in the 620s, and Phrygia was subsumed into a short-lived Lydian empire. The eastern part of the former Phrygian empire fell into the hands of the
Medes in 585 BC.
According to
Herodotus, the
Armenians moving to the area of
Lake Van in about the
7th century BC were colonists of the Phrygians.
Croesus' Lydian Empire
Under the proverbially rich king Croesus, (r. 560â€"546 BC), Phrygia remained part of the Lydian empire that extended east to the Halys River. There may be an echo of strife with Lydia and perhaps a veiled reference to royal hostages, in the legend of the twice-unlucky Adrastus, the son of a king Gordias with the Queen, Eurynome. He accidentally killed his brother and exiled himself to Lydia, where King Croesus welcomed him. Once again, Adrastus accidentally killed Croesus' son and then committed suicide.
Persian Empire
Lydian
Croesus was conquered by
Cyrus in 546 BC, and Phrygia passed under Persian dominion. After Darius became Persian Emperor in 521 BC he remade the ancient trade route into the Persian "Royal Road" and instituted administrative reforms that included setting up satrapies. The capital of the Phrygian satrapy was established at Dascylion.
Under Persian rule, the Phrygians seem to have lost their intellectual acuity and independence. Phrygians became stereotyped among later
Greeks and the
Romans as passive and dull.
Alexander and the successors
Alexander the Great passed through
Gordium in 333 BC, famously severing the
Gordian Knot in the temple of Sabazios "
Zeus". The legend (possibly promulgated by Alexander's publicists) was that whoever untied the knot would be master of Asia. With Gordium sited on the
Persian Royal Road that led through the heart of Anatolia, the prophecy had some geographical plausibility. With Alexander, Phrygia became part of the wider
Hellenistic world. After Alexander's death, his successors squabbled over Anatolian dominions.
Gauls overran the eastern part of Phrygia which became part of
Galatia. The former capital of Gordium was captured and destroyed by the Gauls soon afterwards and disappeared from history. In imperial times only a small village existed on the site and, in 188 BC, the remnant of Phrygia came under control of
Pergamon. In 133 BC, western Phrygia passed to Rome.
Rome
For purposes of provincial administration the Romans maintained a divided Phrygia, attaching the northeastern part to the province of
Galatia and the western portion to the province of Asia. Phrygia ceased to exist on the map. The name Phrygia continued in intermittent use until the collapse of the
Byzantine Empire in 1453.
*
Phrygian language*
Phrygian cap*
Paleo Balkan languages*
Neo-Hittite*
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
