Recent Fieldwork at Gordion, Royal City of Midas

Lecture by Brian Rose, James B. Pritchard Professor of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of Excavations at Gordion

Located approximately 100 km southwest of Ankara, Gordion was continually inhabited for nearly 4000 years and is one of the most important archaeological sites in the Near East. Its heyday was in the first half of the first millennium BCE when it was the royal capital of the powerful Iron Age kingdom known as Phrygia to the Greeks and Mushki to the neighboring Assyrian empire. Gordion’s fabled king Midas, in myth cursed with asses' ears and the "golden touch," was actually an historical figure, and the monumental burial mound (Tumulus MM) that bears his name was probably one of his first building projects. This talk presents an overview of the most recent fieldwork conducted under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, including new discoveries with the "Midas Mound" and a new circuit of fortifications revealed by remote sensing.