The stele has hieroglyphs boasting off the conquest of Phyrgia and its king. Phyrgia, an Iron Age kingdom in the 700s BCE in Anatolia, was ruled by a couple of King Midases. But the dating of this particular stele suggests it commemorates the most famous King Midas.
The stone markings also contained a special hieroglyphic symbolizing that the victory commemoration was created by a different king, a man called Hartapu. The hieroglyphs suggest Midas was captured by Hartapu’s forces. This makes the stele doubly significant as nothing was previously known about this King Hartapu or the kingdom he ruled. The newly-found stele suggests the giant mound of Türkmen-Karahöyük that the archaeologists were excavating may have been Hartapu’s capital city. And it was a big city, sprawling over 300 acres in its heyday.
