The
Gordion Archaeological Project at Gordion, Turkey
In 1950, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology
and Anthropology began excavations at the ancient Phrygian
capital of Gordion in central Turkey. The Museum's Gordion Project
continues into the new century, with researchers from many disciplines
and with many specializations contributing to a growing-and sometimes
changing-body of information and understanding about this complex
and multifaceted site, inhabited by peoples and diverse civilizations
for millennia.
"King Midas" laid out in state on piles of purple- and blue-dyed
textiles in his coffin, Tumulus MM tomb chamber, from south (courtesy
of the Gordion Project, University of Pennsylvania Museum)
In its seventh
season, in 1957, the early Gordion expedition team, led by Dr. Rodney
Young, made one of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries of
the 20th century. In the largest burial mound at the site, they located
what eventually came to be identified as the tomb of Gordion's most famous
son, King Midas.
A drilling
rig was used to bore deeply into the mound. Some 40 meters below the upper
surface, the team was rewarded with the discovery of a chamber, 5 by 6
meters in area. The excavators dug a horizontal trench into the side of
the mound, then tunneled through a double wall of tree logs and timbers
to reach the inner chamber-the earliest known intact wooden structure
in the world.
Breaching
the timber wall, the excavators were met with an amazing sight; at their
feet was a body, laid out in state on a thick pile of dyed textiles inside
a unique log coffin. An examination of the bones determined that the body
was that of a male, aged 60-65. Taking other facts available at the time
into consideration-the tomb's rich contents, a palace complex then believed
to be of the same period at the site, and Assyrian records documenting
a king named Mita who ruled over the Mushki (known as Phrygians by the
Greeks) in eastern Anatolia-scholars were generally agreed that this was
very likely the tomb of King Midas.
The preservation
of the tomb's ancient organic materials, which generally degrade and rapidly
disappear, was remarkable. Although the body of the king had disintegrated,
patterns of purple and brown dyes were seen on the textile bedding when
the tomb was first opened. (Indigo blue was confirmed as one of the dyes
by Dr. Patrick McGovern and his laboratory in the UPM's Museum Applied
Science Center for Archaeology.)
Dendrochronology-the scientific dating system that uses the distinctive
pattern of yearly tree-rings-increasingly has become key in dating the
wooden tomb. Dr. Peter Kuniholm, once a graduate student working under
Rodney Young, now Director of the Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory
for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology at Cornell University, has
been instrumental in this work. His previous date for the cutting of the
tomb's logs was 718 B.C., a date that would still be reasonably compatible
with the building of a tomb for King Midas, believed to have died around
the end of the late 8th century B.C.. With new dendrochronology analysis
conducted by Dr. Kuniholm, the cutting date has shifted to 740 B.C.-and
with that revision comes a necessary reconsideration of who the tomb occupant
really was. For detailed scientific information about this exciting, and
potentially history-re-making new discovery, visit "Anatolian Tree Rings
and a New Chronology for the East Mediterranean Bronze Iron Ages," at
Science Express, http://www.sciencexpress.org/,
posted December 6, 2001.
Gordion Project Senior Staff
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