Gordium

Gordium was the capital of ancient Phrygia, modern Yassih?y?k. It is located about 70-80 km southwest of modern Ankara (capital of Turkey) near town Polatli. The ancient city is also called Gordiyon in Turkey.

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Gordium is situated on the place where the ancient Royal road between Lydia and Assyria/Babylonia crosses the river Sangarius (Sakarya), which flows from central Anatolia to the Black Sea.

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Remains of the road are still visible. In the 12th century BCE, the city became the capital of the Phrygians, a Thracian tribe that had invaded and settled in Asia. They created a large kingdom, that occupied the greater part of Turkey west of the river Halys.

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The kings of Phrygia built large tombs near Gordium. These wooden chambers were covered by artificial hills that are usually called tumuli. There are about 80 of them. In the eighth century, the citadel was fortified and in the next century, the town became very large indeed. A palace was built in the citadel. To the south of it was a lower city, and a large suburb was to be found on the other bank of the Sangarius.

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The most famous king of Phrygia was Midas. (Contemporary Assyrian sources call him Mit-ta-a.) During his reign, a nomadic tribe called Cimmerians invaded Turkey, and in 710/709, Midas was forced to ask for help from the Assyrian king Sargon II. However, this did not prevent the Cimmerian invasion. In 696/695, Midas committed suicide after a lost battle. There are traces of destruction at Gordium, but they may be older than the attack by the Cimmerians.

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The so-called 'mound of Midas', the greatest tumulus near Gordium, was excavated in 1957. Its diameter is a little short of 300 meters and it is 43 meters high. In the wooden chamber, which measured 5 × 6 meters, a man's corpse was found, and even the contents of his last dinner could be reconstructed. The tumulus also contained one of the oldest alphabetic inscriptions outside Phoenicia (c.740 BCE). On chronological grounds, the possibility that the dead man was indeed king Midas can be excluded. He may have been the famous king's father or grandfather.

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After half a century of confusion, western Turkey was reunited by the Lydians, whose first great king was Gyges (c.680-c.644). One of his successors, Alyattes (c.600-560), built a massive fortress on a hill near the citadel.

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When Lydia was conquered by the Persian king Cyrus the Great and its last king Croesus killed (547), a Persian garrison took possession of this fortress. Gordium was now included in the satrapy of Greater Phrygia. The garrison stayed there until the last months of 334, when the Macedonian commander Parmenion captured the city. During the winter, his king Alexander the Great joined him. (For the famous story about Alexander cutting the so-called Gordian Knot in the palace, check the link below)

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After the troubles following the death of Alexander, Gordium was first ruled by the Seleucid kings of Asia, then by the Celts (the remains of their human sacrifices have been found), then by the Attalid rulers of Pergamum, and eventually by the Romans. It remained one of the most important commercial centers in the region, but the size of the city itself diminished. The old center -citadel and lower town- was abandoned after the Roman conquest in 189 BCE; only the western suburbs remained occupied in the Roman era.

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Phrygia: In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of the Anatolian highlands, part of modern Turkey, from ca. 1200 BC to 700 BC. It had a rich mythological heritage, as the homeland of the Great Mother Cybele, and an influential history, before it was overwhelmed by Cimmerian invaders, th...

Ankara: Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after ?stanbul. The city has a population of 5,153,000 (as of 2005), and a mean elevation of 850 m. (2800 ft.) It was formerly known as Angora or Eng?r?, and in Roman times as Ancyra, and in classical and Hellenistic periods as ??...

Turkey: The Republic of Turkey or Turkey (Turkish: T?rkiye), is a bicontinental country that is located mainly in the Middle East (Southwest Asia) and partly in Southeast Europe; The Anatolian peninsula comprises most(97%) of its territory, and is situated between the Black Sea on the north and the Mediter...