A photograph of Arslan Kaya, a 15-foot tall ancient engraved stone monument, beneath cloudy skies and surrounded by trees.
Arslan Kaya, front. Photograph courtesy of Mark Munn.

One classics specialist believes he has solved the centuries-long debate over an ancient Phrygian monument. In April, Penn State University professor Mark Munn had a chance to photograph the previously indecipherable inscription on Arslan Kaya, a 50-foot tall carved hunk of volcanic rock in eastern Turkey. After analyzing his imagery, Munn has published his conclusion that Arslan Kaya honors the Mother goddess Materan, the leader of the Phrygian pantheon also worshiped by the Greeks and Romans.

“This is one of a group of ancient Phrygian monuments of the 7th or 6th centuries B.C.E with inscriptions in the ancient Phrygian language,” Munn told me over email. “The language is not well understood, so any new evidence is of interest to scholars of ancient Anatolian languages and cultures.”

Today, the Phyrgians are best remembered for their conical caps, favored throughout art history by Eugène Delacroix and Martin Puryear. From the 12th to 7th centuries B.C.E., however, Phyriagia was a polytheistic power that dominated Central Anatolia, joined the Trojans in their war, and delivered us the real-life King Midas.

British archaeologist William Mitchel Ramsay discovered Arslan Kaya in 1884. He identified the site’s heritage based on the tall, narrow letters inscribed upon the base of its pediment, beneath two sphinxes. Experts visited Arslan Kaya over the following century to try and decode its weathered inscription, which was clearly once part of a much longer phrase, perhaps explaining who erected the monument. Even in 1984, an oft-cited study by French linguists Claude Brixhe and Michel Lejeune claimed the inscription would never be read.

Arslan Kaya, rear. Image: Mark Munn.

Munn incorporated all these opinions, drawings, photographs into his own conclusion. He also made sure to photograph Arslan Kaya between 10:30 a.m. and 11:15 a.m., in optimal daylight. Pairing his photos with pre-existing materials meant Munn could crosscheck his shots with imagery of Arslan Kaya before it was so battered by both the elements and treasure seekers, who blew off an engraving of the Mother formerly held in Arslan Kaya’s niche back in 2000.

Monuments large and small to the Mother abound across the region. “None of the larger ones actually had a standing image of the Mother carved in them, although probably movable statues were placed there,” Munn told me. “Arlsan Kaya is unique in that it is (or was) the only Phrygian monument with an image of the Mother and with an inscription naming her.”

In addition to substantiating Arslan Kaya’s previously raised Materan translatiion, Munn noted stylistic details that confirm its date—and underscore the Mother’s reign. After all, Arslan Kaya dates to the Phrygian decline. The monument may illustrate Materan‘s preeminence throughout the region—particularly amongst the Lydians, who hit their peak during Phyrgia’s demise.