Phrygian Painted Animals: Anatolian Orientalizing Art

As early as 1900, with the Körte brothers' excavation of Tumulus III at Gordion, Anatolian archaeology has been aware of the existence of a Phrygian linear animal style. In 1941, further examples of the same style were retrieved from the mound of Alaettin Tepe in Konya. Since 1950 and the beginning of the University of Pennsylvania's excavations at Gordion, the corpus of examples of this style has grown considerably. While important in itself as the only attested school of early Phrygian figure painting, the style also bespeaks importance in a larger sphere, for the evidence at hand strongly suggests that the forms were derivative, adopted by the Phrygians from the world of North Syrian art. As such, the style represents an important addition to the growing list of fields in which Phrygian indebtedness to the North Syrian sphere can be documented. The present study will use the evidence of Gordion as its focal point, since this city has yielded the greatest number of examples of Phrygian linear animals.