Explore Ancient Anatolia

The Hattians were an ancient people who inhabited the land of Hatti in Asia Minor in the 3rd to 2nd millennia BC. They spoke a non-Indo-European language of uncertain affiliation called Hattic (now believed by some to be related to the Northwest Caucasian language group). They eventually merged with or were replaced by the Hittites, who spoke the Indo-European Hittite language.

In Greek mythology, Midas is popularly remembered for his ability to turn everything he touched into gold: the Midas touch. In alchemy, the transmutation of an object into gold is known as chrysopoeia. Midas was king of Pessinus, a city of Phrygia, who as a child was adopted by the king Gordias and Cybele, the goddess whose consort he was, and who by some accounts was the goddess-mother of Midas himself. Some accounts place the youth of Midas in Macedonian Bermion In Mygdonia Midas was known for his garden of roses: Herodotus remarks on the settlement of the ancient kings of Macedon on the slopes of Mount Bermion "the place called the garden of Midas son of Gordias, where roses grow of themselves, each bearing sixty blossoms and of surpassing fragrance. In this garden, according to the Macedonian story, Silenos was taken captive." According to Iliad (v.860), he had one son, Lityerses, the demonic reaper of men; but in some variations of the myth he had a daughter, Zoë or ...

Gold has been a highly sought-after precious metal for coinage, jewelry, and arts since the beginning of recorded history. It has been a symbol of wealth and a store. Gold standards have provided a basis for monetary policies. Gold is thought to have been formed from a supernova, a stellar explosion.

The Hattian mythology deals with the myths and stories of the Hatti gods, as they were handed down by the Hittites. They can be captured quite well by the source position, in contrast to Hattian cults, rituals and religious beliefs that can not be separated satisfactorily from Hittite and other elements.

The Sea Peoples are thought to have been a confederacy of seafaring raiders who could have possibly originated from either western Anatolia or southern Europe, specifically a region of the Aegean Sea, who sailed around the eastern Mediterranean. They invaded and destroyed Anatolia, Syria, Canaan, Cyprus, and Egypt toward the end of the Bronze Age. However, the actual identity of the Sea Peoples has remained enigmatic and modern scholars have only the scattered records of ancient civilizations and archaeological analysis to inform them.

The Bronze Age collapse was a transition in the Aegean Region, Southwestern Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age that historians believe was violent, sudden and culturally disruptive. The palace economy of the Aegean Region and Anatolia which characterised the Late Bronze Age was replaced, after a hiatus, by the isolated village cultures of the Greek Dark Ages.

Juliopolis was a titular see in the province of Bithynia Secunda, suffragan of Nicaea. The city was founded under the Emperor Augustus by a robber chieftain named Cleon, who was a native of the region; previously it had been called Gordoucome. Its ruins are about six miles SSE of Çayırhan, and about three miles north of the Sangarius River (Sakarya) near Ankara. According to ancient authors (Herodotus, Xenophon, Strabo, etc.), the Bithynians were an immigrant Thracian tribe. The existence of a tribe called Thyni in Thrace is well established, and the two cognate tribes of the Thyni and Bithyni appear to have settled simultaneously in the adjoining parts of Asia, where they expelled or subdued the Mysians, Caucones and other minor tribes, the Mariandyni maintaining themselves in the northeast. Herodotus mentions that the tribe Thyni and Bithyni as existing side by side; but ultimately the latter must have become the more important, as they gave their name to the country. They were inc...