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ThePhrygians (Greek: Φρύγες,Phruges orPhryges) were an ancientIndo-European speaking people who inhabited central-westernAnatolia (modern-dayTurkey) in antiquity.
Ancient Greek authors used "Phrygian" as anumbrella 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.[1] Phrygians were initially dwelling in the southernBalkans – according toHerodotus – under the name ofBryges (Briges), changing it to Phryges after their final migration toAnatolia, via theHellespont. Many historians support a Phrygian migration from Europe to Asia Minorc. 1200 BC, although Anatolian archaeologists have generally abandoned the idea.[2] It has been suggested that the Phrygian migration to Asia Minor, mentioned in Greek sources to have occurred shortly after theTrojan War, happened much earlier, and in many stages.[3]
Phrygia developed an advancedBronze Age culture. The earliest traditions ofGreek music are in part connected to Phrygian music, transmitted through the Greek colonies in Anatolia, especially thePhrygian mode, which was considered to be the warlike mode in ancient Greek music. According to a myth, the Phrygian KingMidas (of the "golden touch") was tutored in music byOrpheus. Another musical invention that came from Phrygia was theaulos, a reed instrument with two pipes. In classical Greek iconography,Paris, aTrojan, is represented as non-Greek by his Phrygian cap, which was also worn byMithras and survived into modern imagery as the "liberty cap" of theAmerican andFrench revolutionaries.
Phrygians spoke thePhrygian language, a member of theIndo-European linguistic family. Modern consensus regardsGreek as its closest relative.[4][5][6][7]
A conventional date of c. 1180 BC is often used for the influx (traditionally from Thrace) of the pre-PhrygianBryges orMushki, corresponding to the very end of theHittite Empire. Following this date, Phrygia retained a separate cultural identity. From tribal and village beginnings, the state ofPhrygia arose in the 8th century BC with its capital atGordium. Around 690 BC, it was invaded by theCimmerians. Phrygia was briefly conquered by its neighbourLydia, before it passed successively into thePersian Empire ofCyrus the Great and later theempire ofAlexander and hissuccessors. Later, it was taken by theAttalids ofPergamon, and eventually became part of theRoman Empire. The last mention of thePhrygian language in literature dates to the 5th century AD and it was likely extinct by the 7th century.[8]
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 ofIndo-European migrants and "Sea Peoples", including the Phrygians, who established their kingdom with a capital eventually atGordium. It is presently unknown whether the Phrygians were actively involved in the collapse of the Hittite capitalHattusa or whether they simply moved into the vacuum left by the collapse of Hittite hegemony. The so-calledHandmade Knobbed Ware was found by archaeologists at sites from this period in Western Anatolia. According to Greek mythographers,[9]Midas had been king of the Phrygians, who were originally called theBryges (Brigi) and came from the western part of archaicThrace orMacedon. Midas has been linked to theMushki king Mita. However, the origins of the Mushki, and their connection to the Phrygians, is uncertain.[10][11][12] Some scholars have suggested that Mita was aLuwian name (it was recorded in Asia Minor in the 15th century BC).[13]
Though the migration theory is still defended by many modern historians, most archaeologists have abandoned it as the origin of the Phrygians due to a lack substantial archeological evidence, with the theory resting only on the accounts ofHerodotus andXanthus.[14][15]
Assyrian sources from the 8th century BC speak of a king Mita of theMushki, identified with king Midas of Phrygia. An Assyrian inscription records Mita as an ally ofSargon 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 theLydian 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 theCimmerians 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 theMedes in 585 BC.
Under the proverbially rich KingCroesus (reigned 560–546 BC), Phrygia remained part of the Lydian empire that extended east to theHalys River. There may be an echo of strife with Lydia and perhaps a veiled reference to royal hostages, in the legend of the twice-unluckyAdrastus, 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.
LydianCroesus was conquered byCyrus in 546 BC, and Phrygia passed underPersian dominion. AfterDarius 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 ofHellespontine Phrygia (or Lesser Phrygia), with its provincial capital established atDascylium, and the province of Greater Phrygia.
ThePhrygian language is a member of theIndo-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 withGreek andArmenian. Between the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, Phrygian was mostly considered part of thesatem group of the Indo-European languages, and thus close to Armenian andThracian, while today it is commonly considered to be a centum language and thus closer to Greek.[16] The reason that, in the past, Phrygian had the guise of a satem 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 thepalaeo-Balkan languages from an early stage.[6][17]
Modern consensus regards Greek as the closest relative of Phrygian, a position that is supported byBrixhe, 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 aproto-Graeco-Phrygian stage out of which Greek and Phrygian originated, and if Phrygian was more sufficiently attested, that stage could perhaps be reconstructed.[6][7][18][19][20]
Based on an extremely slight archaeological record, some scholars such asNicholas Hammond andEugene N. Borza, suggested that the Phrygians were members of theLusatian culture that migrated into the southernBalkans during theLate Bronze Age.[21][22] Many historians support a Phrygian migration from Europe to Asia Minorc. 1200 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.[2] It has been suggested that the Phrygian migration to Asia Minor, mentioned in Greek sources to have occurred shortly after theTrojan War, happened much earlier, and in many stages.[3]
The Phrygians worshipped the goddessCybele. In their language it was known asMatar'Mother', and was also referred to asMatar Kubileya'Mother of the mountain' (from which the GreekKybele and LatinCybele derive) orMatar areyastin.[23] In her typical Phrygian form, she wears a long belted dress, apolos (a high cylindrical headdress), and a veil covering the whole body. The later version of Cybele was established by a pupil ofPhidias, thesculptorAgoracritus, and became the image most widely adopted by Cybele's expanding following, both in theAegean world and atRome. It shows her humanized though still enthroned, her hand resting on an attendant lion and the other holding thetympanon, a circular frame drum, similar to atambourine.
The Phrygians also veneratedSabazios, the sky and father-god depicted on horseback. Although the Greeks associated Sabazios withZeus, representations of him, even at Roman times, show him as a horseman god. His conflicts with the indigenous Mother Goddess, whose creature was theLunar Bull, may be surmised in the way that Sabazios' horse places a hoof on the head of a bull, in aRoman relief at theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Obrador-Cursach (2020) analysed a new Phrygian inscription fromDorylaion, that mentions the godsMiθrapata,Mas Tembrogios and thePontic Bas.[24][25] Other attested deities in the Phrygian corpus areTi-'Zeus',βας'the shining one'; and borrowed deitiesartimitos'Artemis',mas'Men' (possibly a moon god) andδιουνσιν'Dionysos'.[26]
The name of the earliest known mythical king wasNannacus (aka Annacus).[27] 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.[28] Thereafter the kingdom of Phrygia seems to have become fragmented among various kings. One of the kings wasTantalus who ruled over the north western region of Phrygia aroundMount Sipylus. Tantalus was endlessly punished inTartarus, because he allegedly killed his sonPelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression ofhuman sacrifice. Tantalus was also falsely accused of stealing from the lotteries he had invented. In the mythic age before theTrojan War, during a time of aninterregnum,Gordius (or Gordias), a Phrygian farmer, became king, fulfilling an oracularprophecy. The kingless Phrygians had turned for guidance to the oracle of Sabazios ("Zeus" to the Greeks) atTelmissus, in the part of Phrygia that later became part ofGalatia. 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 becameDarius's Persian "Royal Road" fromPessinus toAncyra, and not far from theRiver Sangarius.
Later mythic kings of Phrygia were alternately namedGordias andMidas. Myths surround the first king Midas. There were seven altogether connecting him with a mythological tale concerningAttis.[29] 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 goddessCybele. 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 withSilenus and other satyrs and withDionysus, 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 riverPactolus. 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 theIliad, the Phrygians were Trojan allies during theTrojan War. The Phrygia ofHomer'sIliad 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'sIliad also includes a reminiscence by the Trojan kingPriam, who had in his youth come to aid the Phrygians against theAmazons (Iliad 3.189). During this episode (a generation before the Trojan War), the Phrygians were said to be led byOtreus andMygdon. Both appear to be little more than eponyms: there was a place named Otrea on the Ascanian Lake, in the vicinity of the laterNicaea; and the Mygdones were a people of Asia Minor, who resided near LakeDascylitis (there was also aMygdonia in Macedonia). During the Trojan War, the Phrygians sent forces to aidTroy, led byAscanius andPhorcys, the sons ofAretaon.Asius, son ofDymas and brother of Hecabe, is another Phrygian noble who fought before Troy.Quintus Smyrnaeus mentions another Phrygian prince, namedCoroebus, son ofMygdon, who fought and died at Troy; he had sued for the hand of the Trojan princessCassandra in marriage. King Priam's wifeHecabe is usually said to be of Phrygian birth, as a daughter of KingDymas.
The PhrygianSibyl was the priestess presiding over theApollonian oracle at Phrygia.
Marsyas, a Phrygian follower of Cybele, was asatyr who is regarded as the inventor of theaulos, which he created using the hollowedantler of astag. He unwisely competed in music with theOlympianApollo and inevitably lost, whereupon Apollo flayed Marsyas alive and provocatively hung his skin on Cybele's own sacred tree, apine.
Herodotus[30] claims the priests ofHephaestus told him a story that the Egyptian pharaohPsammetichus had two children raised in isolation in order to find the original language. The children were reported to have utteredbekos 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 figureTogarmah, grandson ofJapheth and son ofGomer: "andThrugramma theThrugrammeans, who, as the Greeks resolved, were named Phrygians".
The Phrygian migration, which is mentioned in the Greek sources to have taken place shortly after the Trojan War, is likely to have occurred much earlier and in many stages.
This question is of course only just separable from the question of which languages within Indo-European are most closely related to Phrygian, which has also been hotly debated. A turning point in this debate was Kortlandt's (1988) demonstration on the basis of shared sound changes that Thraco-Armenian had separated from Phrygian and other originally Balkan languages at an early stage. The consensus has now returned to regarding Greek as the closest relative.
Unquestionably, however, Phrygian is most closely linked with Greek.
Scholars have long debated the exact position of Phrygian in the Indo-European language family. Although this position is not a closed question because of the fragmentary nature of our current knowledge, Phrygian has many important features which show that it is somehow related to Greek and Armenian. ... Indeed, between the 19th and the first half of the 20th c. BC Phrygian was mostly considered a satem language (a feature once considered important to establishing the position of a language) and, especially after Alf Torp's study, closer to Armenian (and Thracian), whereas it is now commonly considered to be closer to Greek. ... Brixhe (1968), Neumann (1988) and, through an accurate analysis, Matzinger (2005) showed the inconsistency of the Phrygo-Armenian assumption and argued that Phrygian was a language closely related to Greek.
2.1.4. Phrygian belongs to the centum group of IE languages (Ligorio and Lubotsky 2018: 1824). Together with Greek, Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Hittite and Tocharian, Phrygian merged the old palatovelars with plain velars in a first step: NPhr. (τιτ-)τετικμενος 'condemned' < PIE *deiḱ-; NPhr. γεγαριτμενος 'devoted, at the mercy of' < PIE *ǵhr̥Hit-; NPhr. γλουρεος 'golden' < PIE *ǵhl̥h3-ro-. However, two shifts affected this language. Phrygian merged the old labiovelar with the plain velar (the etymological and the resulting ones): OPhr. ke(y), NPhr. κε (passim) 'and' < PIE *ku̯e; OPhr. knais (B-07), NPhr. κ̣ναικαν 'wife' (16.1 = 116) < *gu̯neh2i-. Secondly, in contact with palatal vowels (/e/ and /i/, see de Lamberterie 2013: 25–26), and especially in initial position, some consonants became palatalised:PIE *ǵhes-r- 'hand' > OPhr. ↑iray (B-05),7NPhr. ζειρα (40.1 = 12) 'id.' (Hämmig 2013: 150–151). It also occurs in glosses: *ǵheu̯-mn̻ >ζευμαν 'fount, source' (Hesychius ζ 128). These two secondary processes, as happened in Tocharian and the Romance languages, lend Phrygian the guise of a satəm language.
Furthermore, if Phrygian were not so-poorly attested perhaps we could reconstruct a Proto-Greco-Phrygian stage of both languages.
With the current state of our knowledge, we can affirm that Phrygian is closely related to Greek. This is not a surprising conclusion: ancient sources and modern scholars agree that Phrygians did not live far from Greece in pre-historic times. Moreover, the last half century of scientific study of Phrygian has approached both languages and developed the hypothesis of a Proto-Greco-Phrygian language, to the detriment to other theories like Phrygio-Armenian or Thraco-Phrygian.
To the best of our current knowledge, Phrygian was closely related to Greek. This affirmation is consistent with the vision offered by Neumann (1988: 23), Brixhe (2006) and Ligorio and Lubotsky (2018: 1816) and with many observations given by ancient authors. Both languages share 34 of the 36 features considered in this paper, some of them of great significance:…The available data suggest that Phrygian and Greek coexisted broadly from pre-historic to historic times, and both belong to a common linguistic area (Brixhe 2006: 39–44).
