Reconstructing King Midas: a First Report

Abstract

In 1957 the team from Pennsylvania University Museum excavating at Gordion in Phrygia entered the wooden burial chamber in the “Midas Mound”, the largest of the tumuli that dot the plain of the Sakarya. Inside they discovered the body of a man of 60–65 years, 1·59 m. (5′ 2½″) tall, lying on a bed, and surrounded by over 350 bronze vessels and ornaments, three iron stands, wooden furniture and a little pottery. Despite its traditional name, the excavator, Professor Rodney Young, doubted whether the tomb was indeed that of the most famous king of Phrygia, the Midas who according to Eusebius ruled from 738 to 696 B.C., which agrees with the Assyrian records: that king's reign ended with the destruction of his city by the invading Cimmerians. In some accounts the king committed suicide by drinking bull's blood, in others he was killed in the sack. Young believed that after this disaster the Phrygians could not have afforded so wealthy a burial nor so large a tumulus (it still measures some 53 m. high, and was originally 70 or 80 m. in height), and he preferred Midas' predecessor Gordios as the likely occupant of the tomb.