Iron Age · 8th century BC · Karaağaç Tumulus, Bilecik, Bilecik Province, Turkey
Phrygian royal-style tomb found in Turkey 160 km from Midas's capital Gordion
A wooden burial chamber, decorated bronze buckets and an inscribed pot from the Karaağaç Tumulus near Bilecik closely match royal burials at Gordion, a new study argues.
Peer-reviewed paper
Karaağaç Tumulus, Bilecik, Turkey A burial mound near Bilecik in north-western Turkey contained an Iron Age tomb that closely resembles the royal burials at Gordion. Gordion was the capital of ancient Phrygia, about 160 kilometres away. The closest parallels are the tomb's wooden chamber and its bronze vessels.
The tomb in the Karaağaç Tumulus dates to the 8th century BC, the time of King Midas. The study's author argues that the person buried there may have been a member of the royal family or a high-ranking official close to the court.
The study is by Hüseyin Erpehlivan of Bilecik Şeyh Edebali University. It appears in the January 2026 issue of the American Journal of Archaeology. Its title is "Karaağaç Tumulus: An Iron Age Elite Burial from Rural Western Phrygia".
Arkeonews, which reported the paper, dates the burial to the 8th century BC. It also gives a wider span of about 800–540 BC.
A tumulus is an artificial mound of earth and stone raised over a grave. Gordion, near the modern town of Polatlı south-west of Ankara, has a large cemetery of such mounds. They were built for the Phrygian elite.
The biggest, known as the Midas Tumulus, covered a timber burial chamber. The University of Pennsylvania excavated it in 1957.
Chamber and grave goods match Gordion's royal tombs
The Karaağaç tomb also has a monumental wooden burial chamber. According to the study, this kind of funerary architecture was previously known mainly from the royal cemetery at Gordion. Erpehlivan takes it as a sign that the dead person held a special place in the Phrygian hierarchy. He argues that the burial is not a typical tomb of a local notable.
The grave goods point the same way. They include bronze vessels of the type found in elite Phrygian burials. Among them are situlae, which are decorated bronze buckets. The ones at Karaağaç show scenes of warfare and ceremonial procession.
Arkeonews reports that such objects had previously been documented only in the royal tombs of Gordion, including the Midas Tumulus. The study reads their presence at Karaağaç as a sign of a direct connection to the royal court.
The excavators also found a ceramic vessel inscribed with a Phrygian name. Inscribed objects are uncommon in Phrygian burials. They give rare evidence for personal identity, literacy and elite ownership.
The report does not give the name. Nor does it say whether the name belonged to the person in the tomb.
Author sees a kingdom run through regional power holders
The tomb's location is the main point of the study. Scholars have generally assumed that royal power and elite burial practices in Phrygia were concentrated around the capital.
Erpehlivan argues that a royal-style tomb this far from Gordion counts against one picture of Phrygia. In that picture, Phrygia was a rigidly centralised kingdom on the model of Assyria or Urartu. He proposes instead a decentralised political system with several centres. In it, authority reached across a wide territory through regional power holders loyal to the royal house.
This is an interpretation of a single burial. The identity of its occupant remains open. The study puts forward two possibilities, a relative of Midas or a senior noble, without settling between them.
In either case, the study takes the tomb as a sign that members of the Phrygian elite were active across central Anatolia, and not only in the capital.
The mound was used for much longer than the Phrygian period. Excavations found several layers of burials, spanning nearly 3,000 years in all. They include an Early Bronze Age cemetery, the main Phrygian tomb and later graves from subsequent periods. Further studies and analyses of the finds are continuing.
Sources
- 8th Century Royal Tomb Found 160 km from Gordion: Midas’ Kingdom May Have Been Bigger Than We Thought (Arkeonews)
Paper: H. Erpehlivan (2026), "Karaağaç Tumulus: An Iron Age Elite Burial from Rural Western Phrygia", American Journal of Archaeology, 130. https://doi.org/10.1086/738272
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