Archaeology in Action

Gordion has a strategically important location in what is now Central Turkey. Its heyday was in the first half of the first millennium BCE when it was the royal capital of the powerful Iron Age kingdom known as Phrygia (to the Greeks) or Mushki (to the neighboring Assyrian empire). It was a major population center, with an urban fabric spread over two kilometers, dominated by monumental buildings and fortifications and over 100 elite burial mounds. Its fabled King Midas, in myth cursed with the "golden touch," was actually a real figure, and it was also here that Alexander the Great was said to have cut the famous Gordian Knot. Hear from a leading scholar about recent discoveries from the last two excavation seasons, including a monumental citadel gate from a likely palace of the Phrygian kings, and the shrine where Alexander the Great likely cut the Gordian Knot.