dominion of it was coming to depend on contact with the vital influence
of Hellenism, rather than on connection with the heart of west Asia.

A king Mita of the Mushki first appears in the annals of the New
Assyrian Kingdom as opposing Sargon, when the latter, early in his
reign, tried to push his sphere of influence, if not his territorial
empire, beyond the Taurus to include the principalities of Kue and
Tabal; and the same Mita appears to have been allied with Carchemish in
the revolt which ended with its siege and final capture in 717 B.C. As
has been said in the last chapter, it is usual to identify this king
with one of those "Phrygians" known to the Greeks as Midas--preferably
with the son of the first Gordius, whose wealth and power have been
immortalized in mythology. If this identification is correct, we have to
picture Phrygia at the close of the eighth century as dominating almost
all Asia Minor, whether by direct or by indirect rule; as prepared to
measure her forces (though without ultimate success) against the
strongest power in Asia; and as claiming interests even outside the
peninsula. Pisiris, king of Carchemish, appealed to Mita as his ally,
either because the Mushki of Asia Minor sat in the seat of his own
forbears, the Hatti of Cappadocia, or because he was himself of Mushki
kin. There can be no doubt that the king thus invoked was king of
Cappadocia. Whether he was king also of Phrygia, i.e. really the same as
Midas son of Gordius, is, as has been said already, less certain. Mita's
relations with Kue, Tabal and Carchemish do not, in themselves, argue
that his seat of power was anywhere else than in the east of Asia Minor,
where Moschi did actually survive till much later times: but, on the
other hand, the occurrence of inscriptions in the distinctive script of
Phrygia at Eyuk, east of the Halys, and at Tyana, south-east of the
central Anatolian desert, argue that at some time the filaments of
Phrygian power did stretch into Cappadocia and towards the land of the