ABSTRACT
In western Anatolia consideration of the transition from the Bronze to Iron Ages is colored by the rich legacy of myths, epics, and histories retroactively imposed on it by the Greek tradition. In any until 2001 the chronology of Early Phrgyian Gordion was discussed in late 8th-century terms, and because this was a key sequence tied, however tenuously, to historical records, much of Iron Age central and western Anatolia went with it. Unlike the Phrygians, the Lydians do not appear to be new to Anatolia in the Iron Age. The transition between Phrygian and Lydian control at Gordion takes place in the Middle Phrygian period without a noticeable break in the archaeological record. Herodotus's account of the rest of Lydian history focuses on the themes of the kingdom's subjugation of the Greek city-states of Ionia, and the expansion of Lydia to the east, where it confronted the Medes coming from the opposite direction.
