The Phrygians were an ancient Indo-European people, initially dwelling
in the southern Balkans – according to Herodotus – under the name of Bryges,
changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the
Hellespont. From tribal and village beginnings, the
state of Phrygia arose in the eighth century BC with its capital at Gordium.
During this period, the Phrygians extended eastward and encroached upon
the kingdom of Urartu, the descendants of the Hurrians, a former rival of the
Hittites. Meanwhile, the Phrygian Kingdom was
overwhelmed by Cimmerian invaders around 690 BC, then briefly conquered by its
neighbour Lydia, before it passed successively into the Persian Empire of
Cyrus the Great and the empire of Alexander and his successors, was taken
by the Attalids of Pergamon, and eventually became part of the Roman
Empire. The last mention of the language in literature dates to the fifth century
CE and it was likely extinct by the seventh century.
Culture The Phrygians spoke an Indo-European
language. Some contemporary historians, among which Strabo is the most known,
consider the Phrygians a Thracian tribe, part of a wider "Thraco-Phrygian" group.
Other linguists dismiss this hypothesis since Thracian seem to belong to the
Satem group of Indo-European languages, while Phrygian shared several
similarities with other Indo-European languages of the Centum group. According
to the latter group, of all the Indo-European languages, Phrygian seems
to have been most closely linked to Greek, suggesting that the two languages
belonged to the same dialectal subgroup of early Indo-European. Although the
Phrygians adopted the alphabet originated by the Phoenicians, only a
few dozen inscriptions in the Phrygian language have been found, primarily
funereal, and so much of what is thought to be known of Phrygia is second-hand
information from Greek sources. A conventional date of c. 1180 BC is
often used for the influx of the pre-Phrygian Bryges or Mushki,
corresponding to the very end of the Hittite empire. Following this date,
Phrygia retained a separate cultural identity. E. g. in classical Greek
iconography the Trojan Paris is represented 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.
Phrygia developed an advanced Bronze Age culture. The earliest traditions of
Greek music are in part connected to Phrygian music, transmitted through the
Greek colonies in Anatolia, especially the Phrygian mode, which was considered
to be the warlike mode in ancient Greek music. 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 instrument
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 the Olympian Apollo and inevitably lost, whereupon
Apollo flayed Marsyas alive and provocatively hung his skin on Cybele's
own sacred tree, a pine. Religion
It was the "Great Mother", Cybele, as the Greeks and Romans knew her, who was
originally worshipped in the mountains of Phrygia, where she was known as
"Mountain Mother". In her typical Phrygian form, she wears a long belted
dress, a polos, and a veil covering the whole body. The later version of Cybele
was established by a pupil of Phidias, the sculptor Agoracritus, 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 tympanon, a
circular frame drum, similar to a tambourine.
The Phrygians also venerated Sabazios, the sky and father-god depicted on
horseback. Although the Greeks associated Sabazios with Zeus,
representations of him, even at Roman times, show him as a horseman god. His
conflicts 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 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Mythological accounts The name of the earliest known mythical
king was Nannacus. This king resided at Iconium, the most eastern city of the
kingdom of Phrygia at that time, and after his death, at the age of 300
years, a great flood overwhelmed the country, as had been foretold by an
ancient oracle. The next king mentioned in extant classical sources was called
Manis or Masdes. According to Plutarch, because of his splendid exploits, great
things were called "manic" in Phrygia. Thereafter the kingdom of Phrygia seems
to have become fragmented among various kings. One of the kings was Tantalus who
ruled over the north western region of Phrygia around Mount Sipylus. Tantalus
was endlessly punished in Tartarus, because he allegedly killed his son
Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the
suppression of human sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing
from the lotteries he had invented. In the mythic age before the Trojan war,
during a time of an interregnum, Gordius, a Phrygian farmer, became king,
fulfilling an oracular prophecy. The kingless Phrygians had turned for
guidance to the oracle of Sabazios 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, 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's Persian "Royal Road" from Pessinus to Ancyra, and not
far from the River Sangarius. Later mythic kings of Phrygia were
alternately named Gordias and Midas. Myths surround the first king Midas.
connecting him with a mythological tale concerning Attis. This shadowy figure
resided at Pessinus and attempted to marry his daughter to the young Attis in
spite of the opposition of his lover Agdestis and his mother, the goddess
Cybele. When Agdestis or Cybele appear and cast madness upon the members of the
wedding feast. Midas is said to have died in the ensuing chaos.
The famous king Midas was said to be a son of the kind Gordius mentioned above.
He is said to have associated himself with Silenus and other satyrs and with
Dionysus, who granted him the famous "golden touch".
The mythic Midas of Thrace, accompanied by a band of his people, traveled 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. According to the Iliad, the Phrygians
were Trojan allies during the Trojan War. The Phrygia of Homer's Iliad
appears to be located in the area that embraced the Ascanian lake and the
northern flow of the Sangarius river and so was much more limited in extent than
classical Phrygia. Homer's Iliad also includes a reminiscence by the Trojan
king Priam, who had in his youth come to aid the Phrygians against the Amazons.
During this episode, the Phrygians were said to be led by Otreus and Mygdon.
Both appear to be little more than eponyms: there was a place named Otrea
on the Ascanian Lake, in the vicinity of the later Nicaea; and the Mygdones were
a people of Asia Minor, who resided near Lake Dascylitis. During the Trojan War,
the Phrygians sent forces to aid Troy, led by Ascanius and Phorcys, the sons of
Aretaon. 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. King Priam's wife Hecabe is
usually said to be of Phrygian birth, as a daughter of King Dymas.
The Phrygian Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at
Phrygia. Herodotus, claims the priests of
Hephaestus told him a story that the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus had two
children raised in isolation in order to find the original language. The children
were reported to have uttered bekos meaning "bread" in Phrygian. It was then
acknowledged by the Egyptians that the Phrygians were a nation older than the
Egyptians. 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". History
= Migration= After the collapse of the Hittite Empire
at the beginning of the twelfth 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 presently unknown whether the Phrygians were
actively involved in the collapse of the Hittite capital Hattusa or whether they
simply moved into the vacuum left by 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, the
first Phrygian Midas had been king of the Moschi, also known as Bryges in the
western part of archaic Thrace. Though the migration theory is still
defended by many modern historians, most archaeologists have abandoned the
migration hypothesis regarding the origin of the Phrygians due to a lack
substantial archeological evidence, with the migration theory resting only on the
accounts of Herodotus and Xanthus = 8th to 7th centuries=
Assyrian sources from the 8th century BC speak of 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. Under kings alternately
named Gordias and Midas, the independent Phrygian kingdom of the 8th and 7th
centuries BC maintained close trade contacts with her neighbours in the east
and the Greeks in the west. Phrygia seems to have been able to co-exist with
whatever power was dominant 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, a coffin,
furniture, and food offerings. 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 do 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.
= Croesus' Lydian Empire= Under the proverbially rich King
Croesus, 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.
= Post-State History= 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. In the 5th century, Phrygia was made into two administrative
provinces, that of Hellespontine Phrygia, with its provincial capital
established at Dascylium, and the province of Greater Phrygia.
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. Phrygians remained subjects to the Hellenistic
kingdoms that ruled the area and later to the Roman Empire, but the Phrygians
retained their culture and their language until it became extinct in the
5th Century. See also
References and notes