A spectacular collection of furniture and wooden artifacts was excavated by the University of Pennsylvania at the site of Gordion (Latin: Gordium), the capital of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia in the early first millennium BC. The best preserved of these works came from three royal burials, surviving nearly intact due to the relatively stable conditions that had prevailed inside the tomb chambers. The Gordion wooden objects are now recognized as the most important collection of wooden finds recovered from the ancient Near East.
The group comprises over 100 fine wooden artifacts, including tables, a bed, a throne, serving stands, stools, footstools, plates, spoons, boxes, a parasol, and 12 carved wooden animals. Several pieces of furniture are highly ornate, profusely inlaid with geometric patterns that exhibit sophisticated types of symmetry, and featuring designs that symbolize the Phrygian Mother Goddess Matar (Kybele). The furniture from the largest tomb at Gordion, Tumulus MM, is associated with King Midas, the powerful Phrygian ruler of the eighth century BC.
The wood has been conserved over a period of 30 years using innovative methods developed by an international team of conservators; these methods are now considered standard for the treatment of dry archaeological wood. The good state of preservation of the Gordion wooden objects has allowed scientists to identify the woods used and investigate their deterioration. Chemical analyses of the residues from the associated bronze vessels have indicated how the bronzes were used with the furniture - and have even determined the menu of a royal Phrygian funerary feast. Several of the most elaborate pieces have been mounted for display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey.
Ancient wooden artifacts from Gordion
The central Anatolian site of Gordion was first excavated by Gustav and Alfred Körte in 1900 and then by Professor Rodney S. Young of the University of Pennsylvania in a major campaign between 1950 and 1973.Körte and Körte, Gordion. Young, Three Great Early Tumuli. Among the many exceptional Phrygian artifacts recovered were more than one hundred wooden objects dating to the eighth century BC—a rare find, since organic materials seldom survive in buried conditions. The wood discovered by the Körte brothers consisted mainly of furniture fragments from a tumulus burial (K-III), which were significant but too fragmentary to be well understood. Young’s excavations, however, produced a spectacular collection of wooden furniture and other types of objects, many of which were in relatively good condition.
These came mainly from three early royal tumuli (Tumulus MM, Tumulus P, and Tumulus W), along with carbonized remains from the destruction level of the city mound. Young died in 1974, before finishing his final report on the excavation of these tombs, but his monograph, Three Great Early Tumuli, The Gordion Excavations Final Reports, Volume 1, was published posthumously by a group of his colleagues, based on his original notes. Three Great Early Tumuli detailed the excavation of the burials and their grave goods in preliminary interpretations and working drawings. During the production of this volume, many of the early interpretations of the wooden artifacts were found to be incorrect, and a reassessment of the finds was begun by Dr. Elizabeth Simpson, now emeritus professor of ancient art and archaeology at the Bard Graduate Center, New York, NY.
In 1981, Simpson went to Turkey to photograph and draw the objects and discovered that the wood was deteriorating. lt was believed that this had been caused by water that seeped into the tomb as a result of drilling in order to determine the location of the chamber prior to excavation. A project to study and conserve the Gordion wooden artifacts was then organized under her direction with the support of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Work has been carried out since that time by the Gordion Furniture Project team in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (Anadolu Medeniyetleri Müzesi), Ankara, Turkey. More than 40 archaeologists, conservators, scientists, and artists have been affiliated with the project since its inception, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Geographic Society, the 1984 Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Getty Grant Program, and other foundations and individual donors. During the past 30 years, most of the wood has been conserved, and many of the objects have been reconstructed for display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.Simpson and Spirydowicz, Gordion Wooden Furniture. Simpson, “Phrygian Furniture from Gordion.” Spirydowicz, “The Conservation of Ancient Phrygian Furniture from Gordion, Turkey.” The collection is now considered to be the largest and most important group of well-preserved ancient wooden artifacts excavated from the Near East.
Tumulus MM Rodney Young named the largest burial mound at the site Tumulus MM—for “Midas Mound,” after the famous Phrygian king Midas, who ruled at Gordion during the second half of the eighth century B.C. Young eventually came to believe that the tomb’s occupant was not Midas but rather his father, although in either case the wooden finds from the burial can be associated with King Midas. When Midas took the throne on the death of his father, he surely would have officiated at the funeral, with the grave goods provided by him for the deposition.Simpson, “Celebrating Midas.” The historical King Midas was a contemporary of the Assyrian king Sargon II (r. 721–705 BC) and was also well known to the Greeks. Midas was the first foreigner to make an offering at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote that the king had dedicated his throne, which was “well worth seeing.”Herodotus 1.14. Unfortunately, this tantalizing comment tells us little about the appearance of the throne of Midas. However, the magnificent wooden furniture from Tumulus MM at Gordion suggests that the throne was likely made from beautiful woods with carved and inlaid decoration, including a complex of geometric patterns that reflected the power of the Phrygian royal house and its connection to the Phrygian mother goddess Matar (Kybele).Simpson, “Phrygian Furniture from Gordion,” 198-201.Tumulus MM produced an array of priceless artifacts: 170 bronze vessels, some with deposits of organic residues; 10 bronze-and-leather belts; more than 180 bronze fibulae (ancient safety pins); pottery vessels containing the remains of food; and 15 pieces of fine wooden furniture.Young, Three Great Early Tumuli, 100–190. Simpson and Spirydowicz, Gordion Wooden Furniture, 35–52. For a detailed discussion, see Simpson, The Furniture from Tumulus MM, and appendices, listed by author under References below. The exact nature of the furniture was not clear to Young and his team when they entered the chamber in 1957, as many of the objects had broken along the lines of the joinery, with their constituent parts dispersed on the tomb floor. The first thing the excavators saw was the skeleton of the king lying on a mass of textiles, covering what Young thought was a four-poster bed. To the east of the “bed” were several furniture legs scattered among remnants of cloth. Leaning against the east wall were two ornate, inlaid objects, called “screens” by Young and initially identified as “throne backs.” To the south of these, a fancy inlaid table had collapsed with its frame intact, and nearby were the tops and legs of eight “plain” tables. Most of the bronze vessels found in the tomb had once been hung on the walls or placed on the tables, but all had fallen to the floor.
The inlaid table, Tumulus MM
The inlaid table, called the “Pagoda Table” by Young because of its exotic design and decoration, was made of 46 separate components.Simpson, “Reconstructing an Ancient Table.” The table had three legs, with lion-paw feet, and three structural supports that rose from the feet to prop up the frame at its corners. The four-sided frame was carved as a series of panels, connected by double bars, and inlaid with geometric patterns such as fields of squares or diamonds, configurations of hooks, rosette-like designs, and mazes. Some of these patterns appear elsewhere as markings on early figurines and clothing, and survive on women’s dowry textiles and ritual cloths in Europe and Anatolia up to the present. Evidence suggests that these designs were protective and empowering, with connotations of procreation and fertility.
The inlaid table was thus decorated with apotropaic and magical imagery, suggesting that it may have had a ritual function. It was also a practical, portable banquet table, with four handles and a tray-shaped top. Boxwood was used for the frame and legs, juniper for the inlay, and walnut for the table top. In 1983, the table was reconstructed for display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, where it could be seen assembled for the first time in 2700 years. The mount was refurbished and the display reinstalled in 1989.Simpson and Payton, “Royal Wooden Furniture from Gordion,” 45-46.
The plain tables, Tumulus MM The other eight tables found in the tomb were simpler versions of the inlaid table.Simpson, “Banquet Tables at Gordion,” 136-137. Each had three curved boxwood legs and a tray-shaped top. The tops of seven of the tables were made of walnut; the wood of the top of the eighth table was probably maple or cherry. Contrary to Young’s earlier supposition, the legs were not steam bent but were made from naturally curved or trained branches. Tenons at the tops of the legs were fit into “collars” that extended down from the lower surface of the table tops. Research has shown that this system of joinery was widespread in antiquity, attested in the Middle Bronze Age tombs of Jericho and in the Pazyryk burials of the fourth century BC.Simpson, “Furniture in Ancient Western Asia,” 1654–1655, 1662–1666, 1668–1669.
The serving stands, Tumulus MM Young's “screens” were made of boxwood, inlaid with juniper, with walnut top pieces and curved “legs” set into the front faces. At the center of each face was an inlaid rosette, supported by two curved legs with stylized lion-paw feet.
These elements were set within a grid of inlaid square designs surrounded by thousands of tiny diamonds and triangles. Most of the square designs were symmetrical with respect to rotations of 180 degrees, which allowed several basic designs to be turned and flipped to form derivative versions, adding complexity and obscuring the underlying patterns in which the basic designs had been arranged.Simpson, “The Phrygian Artistic Intellect,” 29-34. This surprising play with symmetry indicates that the Phrygian woodworkers were clever, imaginative artisans with a pronounced mathematical orientation.
This impression was confirmed by an analysis of the prominent designs at the center of the screen faces, which have now been identified as religious symbols. The rosette represented the Phrygian goddess Matar and the curved legs her two attendant lions, in an abstract version of the figures in the niche of Arslan Kaya, the monumental rock-cut shrine of the Phrygian highlands.Simpson, “Phrygian Furniture from Gordion,” 198-201. The Tumulus MM screens thus took the form of portable shrines of the goddess Matar.