Approximately 90 km west/southwest of Ankara, near the modern village of Yassıhüyük, is the ancient site of Gordion, capital city of the Phrygian empire I wrote about two posts ago. We took a day trip there last Saturday to get out of the city, but also to show the girls and Lizzie's parents the so-called Tomb of Midas, which holds the bittersweet distinction of simultaneously qualifying for most amazing and most anticlimactic archaeological experience in Turkey.
King Midas is often dubbed a "quasi-legendary" figure because although his factual existence is attested and roughly dated to 700 BC, both by Assyrian texts and an account in Herodotus about him dedicating a throne of ivory to the oracle at Delphi, most of the information we have about him comes down to us from Greek myths, vague inscriptional references, and locally varying legends. The most widely known of these, of course, is the curse of his golden touch. It also appears the name "Midas" was so common among Phrygian royalty that it might very well have been more of an honorific, like Caesar, so it's unclear whether we're talking about one man or a succession of kings.
The ancient Phrygians honored their noble dead in one of two ways: either they carved a tomb directly into rock or they built some sort of burial chamber and then piled a bunch of earth on top. In both cases, the actual space where the dead were laid to rest was usually designed to model a gable-roofed house. Scholars like Lizzie are still working out all the whys and wherefores, but which method was chosen was likely a matter of resources and topography. We saw a bunch of the former in the Highlands, where soft and dramatically situated rock outcrops are plentiful. The latter, called tumuli, are much more common on the relatively flat plateau between Ankara and the Highlands. They're also very common in Lydia, the ancient kingdom to the west that eventually supplanted Phrygia as the dominant force in western Anatolia.
Besides the effort required, another problem with burying your dead beneath a massive dirt mound is that it makes it pretty obvious where to go grave robbing. No need for a treasure map when a man-made mountain marks the spot. The Phrygians had surprising prescience on this front and often offset the burial chambers in an effort to fool would-be thieves. Nevertheless, the discovery and proper excavation of a burial mound that hasn't already been looted is pretty rare. The so-called Tomb of Midas at Gordion is the largest intact tumulus ever excavated. Rodney Young was the man responsible, along with a team from the University of Pennsylvania, which has been sponsoring excavations at Gordion for the last sixty years. They used a well drill on top to locate a cavity in the mound and then tunneled toward the cavity from the side.
Inside was oldest standing wooden building ever found--a large gable roofed house, with no entrance or exit, constructed sometime around 740 BC of massive (and I mean massive) logs of old growth juniper. The flooring was cedar, the inner walls pine. All the earth atop it, as well as several layers of gravel and a sort of clay casing, had created a hermetic, temperature-regulated environment and the first people to see the burial chamber were greeted with the horrifying sound of all that ancient wood cracking from the in-rush of moist air. After stabilizing everything and building a concrete frame, they cut a rough hole through one wall. Inside were the human remains, laid inside a log/coffin, along with an incredible assemblage of grave goods that suggested a great feast had been held and then all its implements--the tables, the bowls, the cooking vessels--had been placed inside before sealing. Gold and jewel-encrusted grave goods are impressive to some, but the hobbyist woodworker in me finds the beautifully inlaid tables and screens from the so-called Tomb of Midas (now on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilization in Ankara) to be the most impressive ancient artifacts ever found. The skill they exhibit, the level of craftsmanship, is absolutely magnificent. One can only imagine what that ivory throne at Delphi must have looked like.
By now, you've no doubt noticed my repeated use of the phrase "so-called." Most scholars now agree it isn't the tomb of Midas. Even Rodney Young, once he had excavated it, thought the tomb probably contained the remains of Midas's father, Gordius, after whom both the city and the legendary knot was named (a topic for another day, perhaps). There are two main reasons why: the age of the tomb, first and foremost (done via dendrochronology, or tree ring dating), but also the history of what happened to Gordion. The Cimmerians sacked the city sometime around 700 BC and Midas would have been too busy dealing with that to build himself an expensive grave monument. Legend has it that, like Hitler, he committed suicide when it became clear his city was about to be taken. However, times being what they were, old Midas opted for drinking bull's blood instead of cyanide or shooting himself in the head.
Few non-classicists have ever heard of Gordius, though, so perhaps we can forgive the Turkish Ministry of Culture for continuing to call it the Tomb of Midas. That's one reason I say it's a bit anticlimactic to go there. The second is that after the drama and suspense of entering the tumulus through an elaborate gate and walking down a long narrow tunnel to the burial chamber, you are now greeted by an iron fence that keeps you from going inside or even seeing much of the structure. Both Lizzie and I recall at least walking around it when we were there in 2000 (possibly due to special treatment afforded the group we accompanied), but it certainly makes sense to protect this national treasure from the tourist hordes. In any case, you can still gape in awe at the massive logs used to build the oldest wooden structure in the world and the tunnel itself is a very cool feature (in every sense of the word).
For anyone who might never have the opportunity to get to this part of the world, but still wants to experience a little taste of the Phrygian high life, there's always Midas Touch, a beer made by the pioneering craft brewery Dogfish Head with the help of Dr. Patrick McGovern, a U. Penn Archaeological Scientist, who analyzed the molecular remains of a serving vessel found inside the tomb and came up with a very accurate recipe. Curiously enough, one of the key ingredients in the brew (along with honey and white muscat grapes) is saffron, which currently holds the title of most expensive spice in the world. Fortunately, I picked up a jar of the good stuff for a reasonable price in Safranbolu and plan to whip up a batch as soon as I get back to the States. It might not be quite as delicious or authentic as the original, but it sure beats drinking bull's blood.
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