Gordion, Turkey

... More

River Sakarya had deposited a layer of sediment several meters thick over the ruins of Gordion's lower town. By 1963 169 bronze vessels and 175 bronze fibulae (ornamental brooches) had been unearthed. There was no trace however of the legendary Phrygian treasure, presumed to have been taken by the Cimmerians.

Myth and history

Excavations at Ahlâtlibel (south of Yassihüyük) show that the area around Gordion was already settled in the Early Bronze Age (2500 B.C.), while a cemetery discovered beneath the Phrygian necropolis suggests a subsequent Hittite presence. The Phrygians are thought to have been one of the so-called Sea Peoples who overran Asia Minor in about 1200 B.C. in a series of invasions. There are references to them in Assyrian sources from around 1100 B.C. when, as the Mushki or Mosher, they settled on both sides of the Kizilirmak, from where they began to threaten their eastern neighbors. Phrygian finds at Gordion date from the mid-ninth century B.C.

The legend of the founding of the Phrygian dynasty and capital has been preserved in Greek sources. A farmer named Gordius, ploughing his fields, was startled when a myriad of birds flocked around his oxen. Keen to learn the meaning of this omen he set out to consult augurs in a nearby town, meeting a beautiful maiden (later his wife) who told him the birds were a sign of his royal destiny and offered herself for his queen. Gordion then drove his ox-cart to the temple where he was immediately greeted by the people as their ruler, an oracle having prophesied that the first person they saw driving thus to the temple would be their king. The appreciative Gordion set up his ox-cart in the temple, attaching the yoke to the shaft with a long elaborately knotted strap, the legendary Gordion Knot, by cutting which Alexander the Great was later to make history.

The most famous Phrygian ruler was King Midas, the son of Gordius. When the kingdom was overrun by the Cimmerians (between 700 and 670 B.C.) and the Scythians, he committed suicide.

From the rubble of the kingdom of Phrygia emerged the Lydian Empire (Alyattes 615-560 B.C., and Croesus), under the auspices of which Phrygian culture was, for a period, preserved. In 546 B.C. the Persian Archaemids defeated Croesus and built a new settlement at Gordion. This was destroyed by an earthquake around 400 B.C. Rebuilt yet again the city was so devastated by the Galatians in 278 B.C. that thereafter only a village remained.

Gordian knot

The elaborate Gordian knot had no visible end and was considered impossible to unravel. According to legend whoever succeeded would become ruler of Asia Minor. When Alexander the Great set up his winter quarters in Gordion in 334/333 B.C., the ambitious general resolved to fulfill the prophecy. Climbing up to Gordius's ox-cart on the citadel hill, he is said to have cut the knot with his sword. But according to the Greek historian Aristobulos Kassandreia (ca. 300 B.C.), Alexander removed the peg holding the shaft, so freeing the end of the knot.