Speculations on the Territories of Phrygia and its Neighbours
This paper attempts to take a fresh look at the evidence for the territories of Phrygia and its neighbours in the Middle Iron Age, that is, in the time of the Dynasty to which King Midas belonged. Thus the timespan is from the ninth to the early seventh centuries BCE. The thrust will be to the east of Phrygia, essentially the lands that the Neo-Assyrians called Tabal, Cilicia to the southeast where Neo-Assyrian texts tell us that Midas was active, and to the south as far as the Mediterranean coast. The study builds on the author’s recent paper on polities and territories (to be published in AoF 2023) at the same time as considering new evidence from ongoing work in the Konya plain and southwest ‘Cappadocia’. While textual evidence is very thin and archaeological evidence even thinner, it will be argued that some speculative progress can be made, and that as a result a more nuanced picture of the Kingdom of Phrygia and be envisaged than that which has been forcefully proffered from the perspective of the capital city of Gordion.