The entrance is unassuming; more of a trail head in the countryside than anything else. We drive right by it and have to double back to the parking area that only has two or three other cars when we arrive. If it were not for the paragraphed signs that give a brief history of the site, their surfaces cracked by the sun and years of neglect, we would have thought we were in the wrong place. Far too much text is focused on the westerners who “discovered” this place instead of the history of the people who built it. It strikes me as funny that anyone could take credit for finding a place that has a huge, carved boulder 17 meters high standing on its own. As if the locals living near it for hundreds of years didn’t know it was there and needed a western archeologist to come “find” it for them.

This place has been sacred for thousands of years and ruled by many different people. The Phrygians being the most powerful people to inhabit the area and for which the valley is named. They worshipped the Mother Goddess Kubileya in this valley going back at least to the 7th millennium BC and believed the spring in Yazilikaya to be sacred.

The orangish red rock face before me is carved with intricate maze like geometric patterns. In the 6th through 8th century BC, the door like niche in the center would have held a statue of the Mother Goddess. The writing on the side is best seen in the midday light and bears the Phrygian word “mida”, an epithet for the Mother Goddess that was mistakenly translated as “Midas” somewhere along the way.

Midas was a legendary king who ruled the Phrygian valley and was known during his time as ‘Midas with the donkey ears’. As the story goes, Midas was given the donkey ears by Apollo for having said Pan was a better musician than he. The fable of King Midas is the story of a ruler that everything he touched turned to gold; a fate that seemed like a blessing at first but he quickly realized was a curse. He would have reigned in this area in the late 7th century BC. The valley is dotted with tombs and shrines and one can explore the sloping hillsides and stumble upon these and other ancient ruins.

I can’t help but reflect on the androcentrism of a place of Goddess worship transforming into a monument to a man and what that says about the evolution of culture. Today the site is able to celebrate both King Midas and the Mother Goddess who was there for thousands of years before his reign.