The Phrygians and their capital Gordion

According to the source, the Phrygians were an Indo-European people who once lived on the lower Danube among related Thracian tribes. In the 15th–13th centuries BC they began to move into Asia Minor. The Phrygian capital, Gordion, lay on the Sakarya River, west of present-day Ankara. Only mounds now remain on the site of the ancient city; in the largest of them the so-called tomb of Midas was found.

Herodotus wrote that the ancestors of the Armenians of his day were “Phrygian colonists”. According to the Soviet historian Igor Diakonoff, Phrygian tribes in antiquity became part of the Armenian people as a relatively small minority.

The picture shows the ruins of the stone walls of an ancient city, some of them surrounded by scaffolding. In the distance are green fields and conical mounds.