Phrygian Religion

The Phrygians were an ancient Indo-European speaking people who inhabited central-western Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) in antiquity. According to Herodotus, Phrygians initially dwelled in the southern Balkans where they were called Bryges, changing it to Phryges after their final migration to Anatolia via the Hellespont. It has been suggested that the Phrygian migration to Asia Minor, mentioned in Greek sources to have occurred shortly after the Trojan War, happened much earlier and in many stages. These Greek sources, including Herodotus, cannot be authenticated. Phrygia developed an advanced Bronze Age culture. The earliest traditions of Greek music are partly connected to Phrygian music, especially the Phrygian mode which was considered warlike by the ancient Greeks. Phrygian King Midas, renowned for his golden touch, was, according to myth, tutored in music by Orpheus himself. The invasion of Anatolia in the late 8th century BCE to early 7th century BCE by the Cimmerians ended Phrygian independence. The capital of Phrygia, Gordium fell, to the Cimmerians in 696 BCE and was sacked and burnt (according to Herodotus who wrote of this sack nearly two centuries later). The Phrygians worshipped the goddess Cybele. In her typical Phrygian guise she wears a long belted dress, a polos (a high cylindrical headdress), and a veil covering her whole body. The later Greek version of Cybele was established by a pupil of Phidias, the sculptor Agoracritus, and became the image most widely adopted by Cybele's growing number of  followers. In this later depiction she humanized, but still enthroned. One hand rests on an attendant lion and the other hand holds a tympanon, a circular frame drum similar to a tambourine. The Phrygians also venerated Sabazios, the sky and father-god depicted on horseback. Although the Greeks associated Sabazios with Zeus, representations of him, even at Roman times, continued to portray him as a horseman god. Ongoing conflicts with the indigenous Mother Goddess, whose creature was the Lunar Bull, may be surmised  by the way that Sabazios' horse is depicted placing a hoof on the head of a bull in a Roman relief. Classical philologist Obrador-Cursach analyzed a newly discovered Phrygian inscription from Dorylaion in 2020. It mentions the gods Miθrapata, Mas Tembrogios and the Pontic Bas. Other attested deities in the Phrygian pantheon are Ti (Zeus), βας (the shining one), and borrowed deities artimitos (Artemis), mas (Men, possibly a moon god) and διουνσιν (Dionysos). Greek inscriptions from Phrygia Epiktetos reflect a cult of the dead, at least acting as intermediaries between gods and men. The name of the earliest known mythical Phrygian king was Nannacus (aka Annacus). After his death at the age of 300 years, a great flood overwhelmed the country. This flood had been foretold by an ancient oracle. One later king was mythical Tantalus, who ruled over the north western region of Phrygia around Mount Sipylus. Tantalus was endlessly punished in Tartarus because he allegedly killed his son Pelops and sacrificially offered him to the Olympians, a reference to the suppression of human sacrifice. In the mythic era before the Trojan war, during a time when Phrygia had no king, Gordius (or Gordias), a Phrygian farmer, became king. An oracle decreed that the next man to enter the city driving an ox-cart should become their king. Gordius was that man. Out of gratitude, his son Midas dedicated his father's ox-cart to the Phrygian god Sabazios and tied it to a post with an intricate knot, later described by Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus as comprised od "several knots all so tightly entangled that it was impossible to see how they were fastened." This was the legendary "Gordian Knot" later cut (perhaps apocryphally) by Alexander the Great.