An ancient tomb discovered in Turkey may have been made for a member of the family of the legendary King Midas, who lived in the eighth century B.C. and is renowned for his mythical "golden touch."
The possibly royal tomb, from the ancient kingdom of Phrygia (1200 to 675 B.C.), is more than 100 miles west of the kingdom's ancient capital at Gordion. Its distant location suggests Phrygian society wasn't politically concentrated in the capital city, a new study finds. Rather, it seems that political power was distributed over the ancient kingdom in central Anatolia.
"Historically, Phrygia was often viewed as a centralized kingdom similar to the Assyrian or Urartian empires," archaeologist Hüseyin Erpehlivan of Turkey's Bilecik University told Live Science in an email.
But the tomb, in the Karaağaç Tumulus in Turkey's northwestern Bozüyük district, suggests otherwise; the fact that an elite tomb was made so far from the capital "supports the idea that the Phrygian political organization was not limited to a strictly-centralized, urban-focused system" at Gordion, Erpehlivan said.
However, he acknowledged that the tomb's lavish grave goods might not indicate a royal burial, but rather a royal gift exchange with an important person who had regal connections, such as the area's governor.
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