The Phrygians (Greek language: Φρύγες, Phruges or Phryges) were an ancient Indo-European speaking people who inhabited central-western Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) in antiquity.
Ancient Greek authors used "Phrygian" as an umbrella term to describe a vast ethno-cultural complex located mainly in the central areas of Anatolia rather than a name of a single "tribe" or "people", and its ethno-linguistic homogeneity is debatable.[ pp. 82–83.] Phrygians were initially dwelling in the southern Balkans – according to Herodotus – under the name of Bryges (Briges), changing it to Phryges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the Hellespont. Many historians support a Phrygian migration from Europe to Asia Minor BC, although Anatolian archaeologists have generally abandoned the idea.
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. In classical Greek iconography Paris, a Troy, is represented as non-Greek by his Phrygian cap, which was also worn by Mithras and survived into modern imagery as the "Phrygian cap" of the American and French revolutionaries.
Phrygians spoke the Phrygian language, a member of the Indo-European linguistic family. Modern consensus regards Greek language as its closest relative.[Brixhe, Cl. "Le Phrygien". In Fr. Bader (ed.), Langues indo-européennes, pp. 165–178, Paris: CNRS Editions.]
History
A conventional date of c. 1180 BC is often used for the influx (traditionally from Thrace) 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. From tribal and village beginnings, the state of
Phrygia arose in the 8th century BC with its capital at
Gordium. Around 690 BC, it was invaded by the
Cimmerians. Phrygia was briefly conquered by its neighbour
Lydia, before it passed successively into the Persian Empire of Cyrus the Great and later the
empire of Alexander and his
Diadochi. Later, it was taken by the
Attalids of
Pergamon, and eventually became part of the
Roman Empire. The last mention of the Phrygian language in literature dates to the 5th century AD and it was likely extinct by the 7th century.
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,
[JG MacQueen, The Hittites and their contemporaries in Asia Minor, 1986, p. 157.] Midas had been king of the Phrygians, who were originally called the
Bryges (Brigi) and came from the western part of archaic
Thrace or
Macedon. Midas has been linked to the
Mushki king Mita. However, the origins of the Mushki, and their connection to the Phrygians, is uncertain.
Some scholars have suggested that Mita was a
Luwian name (it was recorded in Asia Minor in the 15th century BC).
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 II 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
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 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 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 (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 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 (reigned 560–546 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.
Post-state history
Lydian
Croesus was conquered by Cyrus in 546 BC, and Phrygia passed under Persian dominion. After
Darius I 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 (provinces). In the 5th century,
Phrygia was made into two administrative provinces, that of Hellespontine Phrygia (or Lesser Phrygia), with its provincial capital established at
Dascylium, and the province of Greater Phrygia.
Culture
Language
The Phrygian language is a member of the Indo-European linguistic family with its exact position within it having been debated due to the fragmentary nature of its evidence. Though from what is available it is evident that Phrygian shares important features with
Greek language and Armenian. Phrygian is part of the centum group of Indo-European languages. However, between the 19th and the first half of the 20th century Phrygian was mostly considered a satəm language, and thus closer to Armenian and Thracian, while today it is commonly considered to be a centum language and thus closer to Greek.
The reason that in the past Phrygian had the guise of a satəm language was due to two secondary processes that affected it. Namely, Phrygian merged the old labiovelar with the plain velar, and secondly, when in contact with palatal vowels /e/ and /i/, especially in initial position, some consonants became palatalized. Furthermore, Kortlandt (1988) presented common sound changes of Thracian and Armenian and their separation from Phrygian and the rest of the palaeo-Balkan languages from an early stage.
Modern consensus regards Greek as the closest relative of Phrygian, a position that is supported by Claude Brixhe, Neumann, Matzinger, Woodhouse, Ligorio, Lubotsky, and Obrador-Cursach. Furthermore, 34 out of the 36 Phrygian isoglosses that are recorded are shared with Greek, with 22 being exclusive between them. The last 50 years of Phrygian scholarship developed a hypothesis that proposes a Graeco-Phrygian stage out of which Greek and Phrygian originated, and if Phrygian was more sufficiently attested, that stage could perhaps be reconstructed.
Archaeology
Based on an extremely slight archaeological record, some scholars such as Nicholas Hammond and Eugene N. Borza suggested that the Phrygians were members of the
Lusatian culture that migrated into the southern
Balkans during the Late Bronze Age.
[Borza, Eugene N. In the Shadow of Olympus: the Emergence of Macedon. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990, , p. 65. "What can be established, despite an extremely slight archaeological record (especially along the slopes of Mt. Vermion), is that two streams of Lusatian peoples moved south in the later Bronze Age, one to settle in Hellespontine Phrygia, the other to occupy parts of western and central Macedonia."][The Gordion Excavations 1950–1973: Final Reports Volume 4, Rodney Stuart Young, Ellen L. Kohler, Gilbert Kenneth, p. 53.] Many historians support a Phrygian migration from Europe to Asia Minor BC; though, Anatolian archaeologists have generally abandoned the idea due to lack of western (European) ceramic ware, and the continuation of the pre-Bronze Age collapse pottery styles in central Asia Minor.
It has been suggested that the Phrygian migration to Asia Minor, mentioned in Greek sources to have occurred shortly after the
Trojan War, happened much earlier, and in many stages.
Religion
The Phrygians worshipped the goddess
Cybele. In their language it was known as , and was also referred to as (from which the Greek and Latin Cybele derive) or .
In her typical Phrygian form, she wears a long belted dress, a
polos (a high cylindrical headdress), and a veil covering the whole body. The later version of Cybele was established by a pupil of
Phidias, the
Sculpture 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.
Obrador-Cursach (2020) analysed a new Phrygian inscription from Dorylaion, that mentions the gods , and the .
Mythological accounts
The name of the earliest known mythical king was
Nannacus (aka Annacus).
[Suidas s. v. Νάννακος; Stephanus of Byzantium s.v. Ἰκόνιον; Both passages are translated in: "A New System: or, An Analysis of Antient Mythology" by Jacob Bryant (1807): 12–14.] 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.
[Plutarch, "On Isis and Osiris", chap. 24.] 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,
Gordias (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's Persian "Royal Road" from
Pessinus to
Ancyra, and not far from the
Sakarya River.
Later mythic kings of Phrygia were alternately named Gordias and Midas. Myths surround the first king Midas. There were seven altogether connecting him with a mythological tale concerning Attis.[Pausanias Description of Greece 7:17; Arnobius Against the Pagans 5.5] This shadowy figure resided at Pessinus and attempted to marry his daughter to the young Attis in spite of the opposition of his mother figure Agdestis and his lover, 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 ( Iliad 3.189). During this episode (a generation before the Trojan War), 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 (there was also a Mygdonia in Macedonia). 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 Hecuba 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.
Marsyas, a Phrygian follower of Cybele, was a satyr who is regarded as the inventor of the aulos, which he created using the hollowed antler of a stag. He unwisely competed in music with the Twelve Olympians Apollo and inevitably lost, whereupon Apollo flayed Marsyas alive and provocatively hung his skin on Cybele's own sacred tree, a pine.
Herodotus[ Histories 2.2] claims the priests of Hephaestus told him a story that the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik I 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".
See also
References and notes
Further reading
-
Drew-Bear, Thomas and Naour, Christian. "Divinités de Phrygie". In: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt (ANRW) Rise. Band 18/3. Teilband Religion (Heidentum: Die religiösen Verhältnisse in den Provinzen Forts.). Edited by Wolfgang Haase, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 1990. pp. 1907–2044.
-
Accessed 24 May 2023.
-
Räthel, Maximilian (2019). Midas und die Könige von Phrygien. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Phrygiens und seiner Herrscher vom 12. bis zum 6. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Midas. München: utzverlag, .
-
Wittke, Anne-Maria (2004). Mušker und Phryger. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Anatoliens vom 12. bis zum 7. Jh. v. Chr. Muscans. Wiesbaden: Reichert, .
