Phrygians (Bryges or Briges) and Macedonia

Thessaloniki, location of ancient Mygdonia, Macedonian home of the Bryges.

Phrygians are supposed to have migrated from the Balkans (Macedonia and Thrace) somewhere between 12th and the 8th centuries BC. This point is not clear, as many works are dealing on the object now, so we can expect new knowledge.The beginning of the Phrygian state is unknown. It appears for the first time as a well-organized kingdom, under Midas' authority, in the end of the 8th c. BC. We know nothing for sure before him, but there was probably a king Gordias. We have very little information about the rise of Phrygia" Prof. Garance Fielder, Aix-en-Provence Univercity, France.

Legends and history also record how the Phrygians had initially settled in area of Macedonia. Known in this area in classical times as the Bryges, we can theorize whether they prompted the Dorian, Thessalian and other movements south about this time, or if they were part of a general southward movement of peoples in the Balkans in this era. The Bryges were known to have lingered at various locations in the region of greater Macedonia for centuries after their brethren had debarked for Anatolia".

Establishing their capital at Edessa in their decades sojourning in Macedonia, the Bryges™ language and culture mixed with that of the local Thracians while they dominating an area equivalent to Philip’s Macedonia. After some time dominating northern Greece and the southern Balkans, the bulk of the Bryges moved on into Anatolia, picking up the mantle dropped by the Hittites and filling up the power vacuum there to become known as the Phrygians. The reason for this may have been connected with their knowledge of the legends of the former Hittite riches or that of the contemporary Near Eastern states. New pressures from the north by the Illyrians and others could also have prompted their new "Edessa, the most ancient city of first Macedonians, the legendary and historical capital of Argeades royal dynasty, known in the era of Macedonian kings as Aegae, was built by Bryges a prehistoric pepople existing in the middle of 3th millenium BC, long ago before Greek tribes emerged in Europe"Alice Stougianakis, Greek archaologist worked in 60's Edessa's excavations.

Abstract from her article in Edessan Chronicles Magazine, May 1972

According to the Telegony (Epic Cycle), Odysseus came upon the land of Thesprotia where he stayed for a number of years. He married Thesprotia's queen, Kallidike (Callidice, Kallidice) and had a son with her Polypoetes. Odysseus led the Thesprotians in the war against the Brygoi (Brygi), but lost the battle because Ares was on the Brygoi side. Athena went to support Odysseus, by engaging the war god in another confrontation until Apollo separated them. When Kallidike died, Odysseus returned home to Ithaca, leaving their son, Polypoetes, to rule Thesprotia.Ares Blessings - The BrygoiSome text mentioning the Mushki in Hittite area:This left the Hittite homelands vulnerable to attack from all directions, and Hattusa was burnt to the ground sometime around 1180 BC following a combined onslaught from Gasgas, Bryges and Luwians. The Hittite Empire thus vanished from the historical record.By 1160 BC, the political situation in Asia Minor looked vastly different from how it had only 25 years earlier. In that year, the Assyrians were dealing with the Mushku pressing into northernmost Mesopotamia from the Anatolian highlands, and the Gasga people, the Hittites' old enemies from the northern hill-country between Hatti and the Black Sea, seem to have joined them soon after. The Mushku or Mushki had apparently overrun Cappadocia from the West, with recently discovered epigraphic evidence confirming their origins as the Balkan "Bryges" tribe, forced out by the Macedonians.

The Makednoi from the mountains of Epirus moved out towards the south pushing the Bryghes out of the area.or perhaps by the Illyrians prior to 1500B.C..

Also there was a Brucidas capitol of the Bryghes found on the Via Egnatia road between Heracleia Lyncestis and Patrae/Claudanum .

A intresting opinion from Margalit Finkelberg as about the Phrygians and theirs relationship with the IE theory.

The Phrygians spoke an Indo-European language closely related to Greek, which allows us to suppose that their position as regards the Greeks could not have differed much from that of the Macedonians.Yet, no ancestor of the Phrygians is mentioned in Greek genealogies on a par with Makedon and Graikos. This ‘structural amnesia’ was obviously due to the fact that, as distinct from the Macedonians who remained in their original habitat in southeastern Europe, the Phrygians moved to Anatolia in the time of the great migrations at the end of the Bronze Age.

Of all the languages of the East Indo-European group only Greek, Macedonian and Phrygian are centum languages, that is, they did not develop the palatalisation of the velar consonants characteristic of the other East Indo-European languages (Armenian, Albanian, Indo-Iranian, the Slavic and Baltic languages). This common retention can only be accounted for if we assume that the Greeks, Macedonians and Phrygians jointly separated from the proto-Indo-European unity and left for the Balkans before satemisation of the rest of the East Indo-European languages had taken place. Had Greek and Phrygian separated before the arrival of the Greeks in the Balkans, Phrygian should have been related to Greek approximately as are Armenian or Iranian, which also belong to the Eastern group of Indo-European languages and are quite close to Greek.

sources:

1. http://phrygians.org/chrono.html
2. Margalit finkelberg, Greeks and pre-Greeks
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryges