Midas Monument Inscription

The Midas Monument Inscription (TM 756906 ) is one of a series of Phrygian inscriptions on a monument in in Yazılıkaya in southern Turkey. Roughly 350 inscriptions of language closely related to Greek use the Palaeo-Phrygian script, and this is probably the most famous one: a dedication to a 'leader and king Midas', high on an almost 18 m high facade. It is of course tempting to equate this Midas with his famous namesake whose touch allegedly turned everything into gold, but there are some chronological difficulties which contradict this equation. As a matter of fact, it rather seems that the Midas mentioned in the Phrygian text is an epithet of the goddess Kybele, and that the monument is a temple rather than a tomb, as was first thought.