Royal Tomb Discovery in Turkey: Possible Link to King Midas
- An ancient tomb discovered in Turkey may have been made for a member of the family of the legendary King Midas, who lived in the eighth century B.C.
- The possibly royal tomb, from the ancient kingdom of Phrygia (1200 to 675 B.C.), is more than 100 miles west of the kingdom's ancient capital at Gordion. Its...
- "Historically, Phrygia was frequently enough viewed as a centralized kingdom similar to the Assyrian or Urartian empires," archaeologist Hüseyin Erpehlivan of Turkey's Bilecik University told Live...
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An ancient tomb discovered in Turkey may have been made for a member of the family of the legendary King Midas, who lived in the eighth century B.C. and is renowned for his mythical “golden touch.”
The possibly royal tomb, from the ancient kingdom of Phrygia (1200 to 675 B.C.), is more than 100 miles west of the kingdom’s ancient capital at Gordion. Its distant location suggests Phrygian society wasn’t politically concentrated in the capital city, a new study finds. Rather, it truly seems that political power was distributed over the ancient kingdom in central Anatolia.
“Historically, Phrygia was frequently enough viewed as a centralized kingdom similar to the Assyrian or Urartian empires,” archaeologist Hüseyin Erpehlivan of Turkey’s Bilecik University told Live Science in an email.
But the tomb,in the Karaağaç Tumulus in Turkey’s northwestern Bozüyük district,suggests otherwise; the fact that an elite tomb was made so far from the capital “supports the idea that the Phrygian political organization was not limited to a strictly-centralized,urban-focused system” at
Erpehlivan and his colleagues determined that the grave goods included numerous ceramic jars, one of which was inscribed with a Phrygian name, and several situlas – elaborately-crafted bronze vessels, often decorated with scenes of battles, hunts and processions - that could indicate the person in the grave had a local royal rank or ties to the royal family of Midas. The presence of situlas is important becuase, before this study, the only documented examples were discovered in the “Midas Mound” at Gordion, which was likely the tomb of his father Gordias.Erpehlivan wrote that the artifacts also help date the tomb to between 740 and 690 B.C.
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Ancient kingdom
Midas is widely known today for the myth of his “golden Touch” or “Midas Touch” that turned everything to gold – including his food, his drink and his daughter. This cautionary tale was known to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who cited it in fourth century B.C. as an example of greed. The myth was embellished by later writers; the daughter was added in the 19th century by the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Old Bones
Archaeologists discovered human remains within the Karaağaç Tumulus, but these bones likely don’t belong to the tomb’s original occupant. some are from an older cemetery already present at the site, while others represent burials made after the phrygian burial mound and tomb were constructed.
“The newly discovered tumulus is unique in that it contains graves spanning a period of nearly three millennia,” said Brian Rose, an archaeologist at the University of pennsylvania, in an email to Live Science. Rose, who wasn’t involved in the recent study, has excavated tombs at Gordion for decades. “Especially welcome is the details that it dates to the reign of King Midas in the late eighth century,since two other newly excavated burial mounds at the Phrygian capital of Gordion date to the same period.”