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Reconstructing King Midas: a First Report

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

A. J. N. W. Prag  and
Danaë Thimme
Danaë Thimme
Affiliation:
Indiana University Art Museum.
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Extract

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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anatolian Studies , Volume 39 , December 1989 , pp. 159 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute at Ankara 1989

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References

1 Young, R. S., Three Great Early Tumuli: Gordion I (Pennsylvania University Museum Monograph 43, 1981) 79–190Google Scholar.

2 E.g. Strabo i 61.

3 Op. cit. 102; AJA xii (1958) 149Google Scholar; Expedition xi no. 1, 19; Hesperia xxxviii (1969) 260Google Scholar; Gordion, A Guide to the Excavations and Museum (Ankara, 1975)Google Scholar.

4 De Vries, K. in Young, Gordion I, 271–2Google Scholar etc.: the view is shared by Professor G. K. Sams, the present director of the Gordion mission (pers. comm.). On Midas in history, e.g. Hawkins, J. D. “Mita”, in Reallexikon der Assyriologie VII/5–6Google Scholar (forthcoming); Mellink, M. J., “Mita, Mushki and Phrygians” in Anadolu Araştirmalari (Jahrbuch fur Kleinasiatische Forschung) ii (1965) 317–25Google Scholar.

5 Prag, A. J. N. W., Musgrave, J. H. and Neave, R. A. H., “The Skull from Tomb II at Vergina: King Philip II of Macedon” in JHS civ (1984) 60–78Google Scholar.

6 The team, based in the University of Manchester, comprised on this occasion Dr. A. J. N. W. Prag as project director, Mr. Richard Neave as medical illustrator, assisted by his wife Mrs. Avril Neave; and Mrs. Danaë Thimme (Indiana University Art Museum) as conservator. Aside from those people named elsewhere in this paper we also owe warm thanks to Dr. A. Ahmed, Mr. A. Bentley, Mr. David Hawkins, and Miss Serena Ronan. Although the author alone bears responsibility for the results, this has been and continues to be essentially a collaborative interdisciplinary project, and without the ideas and the help of all these colleagues it could not have progressed this far.

7 E.g. JHS civ (1984) 65–68Google Scholar, where further references are given.

8 See e.g. Marsh, Brenda, “Faces from the Past” in World Medicine 19 no. 8 (Jan. 21, 1984) 19–21Google Scholar; Krogman, W. M., The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine (Thomas, Springfield, 1962)Google Scholar, passim; R. A. H. Neave, “Facial Reconstruction of the Unidentified King's Cross Fire Victim and the Great Harwood Fire Victim: an Assessment of the Problems and Results” in M. Yasar Iscan and Richard P. Helmer (eds.), Craniofacial Reconstruction (forthcoming).

9 Gerasimov, M. M., The Face Finder (London, 1971) 52–61Google Scholar; JHS civ (1984) pl. IV bGoogle Scholar.

10 Aristophanes, , Plut. 287Google Scholar; fullest in Ovid, , Met. xi 146 ffGoogle Scholar. Although the story of Midas' capture of Silenus appears on Attic black-figure vases, it is only on the red-figure vases of the mid-fifth century and later that Midas is shown with ass's ears: e.g. the name vase of the Polygnotan Midas Painter, a stamnos in the British Museum (E447: Beazley, J. D., Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters2 (Oxford, 1963) 1035 no. 3Google Scholar, CVA pl. 22.2, etc.); or the interior of a late red-figure cup, Vatican Museum inv. 16585 = Richter, G. M. A., The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans (London, 1966) 21 fig. 69Google Scholar: see e.g. Brommer, F., “Bilder der Midassage”, AA (1941) 36–51Google Scholar; most recently Miller, Margaret C., “Midas as the Great King in Attic Fifth-Century Vase-Painting” in Antike Kunst xxxi (1988) 78–89Google Scholar, pls. 18–19 (I owe this reference, along with others to Midas's appearance in Greek art, to Dr. N. Sekunda). See also the next note.

11 Eitrem, S. in RE XV.2, 1526 ff.Google Scholar, who also gives further references to vase illustrations (p. 1535) s.v. “Midas”; see now also Roller, L. E., “The Legend of Midas” in Classical Antiquity ii (1983) 299–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar pls. I–IV, for a clear and reasoned account of the history and the stories of Midas, and of his appearance in Greek art: on the ass's ears, see esp. pp. 305–6, 308, 310—she concludes that they symbolize the folly to which a very rich and powerful man may succumb. Contrast e.g. Miller, op. cit. 81 n. 15, who leaves the question unresolved. For other versions in modern Greece, Yugoslavia, Ireland and even Mongolia, see also Frazer, J. G. on Pausanias, , Description of Greece 1.4.5 (London, 1913) = vol. 11 p. 74Google Scholar. Ethnographic explanation: e.g. Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough III: Taboo and the Perils of the Soul (London, 1936) 258 no. 1Google Scholar.

12 Gates, R. Ruggles and Bhaduri, T. N., “The inheritance of hairy ear-rims”, in Mankind Monographs i (1961)Google Scholar (The Mankind Quarterly, Edinburgh); Pianetta, C., “Un caso di ipertricosi in alienato” in Archivio de Psichiatria, Antropologia Criminale e Scienze Penali xxii (1901) 454–7Google Scholar; Thurston, E. and Rangachari, K., Castes and Tribes of Southern India (Madras, 1909) vii 121Google Scholar. My warm thanks to Dr. Wood for reading a draft of this paper, and for the generosity with which he shared his knowledge with me. All the references in this note, and much of the text that they accompany, I owe to him.

13 Hdt. vii 73, viii 138; Strabo vii 295, xiv 680–1. Cf. RE xv.2 1526Google Scholar, s.v. “Midas, 1”, id. XXI 882 ff., s.v. “Phrygia, Geschichte” (E. Kirsten); M. J. Mellink, op. cit. (n. 4).

14 Ezekiel xxvii 13Google Scholar, with Mellink, op. cit., 319–20.

15 Cf. RE xv.2, 1536–8Google Scholar, s.v. “Midas, 2”.

16 Young, op. cit. (n. 1), 101; cf. pp. 9, 196–7; I am most grateful to Professor DeVries for letting me see copies of the relevant pages of the notebooks, and to Professor Sams for discussing the problem with me.

17 Young, op. cit., 101, 156, 168 ff., 187, pl. 41A–3A: Gordion Notebook 63 (Bones) July 22nd 1957.