The Phrygian people (Phruges or Phryges) in earliest history lived in Macedonia under the name of Bruges (or Bryges), which later evolved to Phruges, before that country's adoption of Greek as a national language.

A number of peoples there spoke Balkan languages descended from non-Greek or pre-Greek Indo-European languages, or Greek in some early form of development.

During the ascendancy of the city-state of Troy, a part of the Bruges had immigrated to Anatolia as Trojan allies or under the protection of Troy.

The Trojan language has not survived; consequently, its exact relationship to the Phrygian language and the affinity of Phrygian society to that of Troy remain open questions.

Similarly, the date of migration and the relationship of the Phrygians to the Hittite empire are unknown.

A conventional date of around 1200 BCE often is used, at the very end of the empire.

It is certain that Phrygia is constituted on Hittite land, and yet not at the very center of Hittite power in the big bend of the Halys River, where Ankara now is.

It is presently unknown whether the Phrygians were actively involved in the collapse of the Hittite capital Hattusa or whether they simply moved into the vacuum left by the collapse of Hittite hegemony.

Archaeologists found the so-called Handmade Knobbed Ware at sites from this period in Western Anatolia.

The first light to penetrate the dark age in Anatolia is lit by the very Phrygians who had destroyed Hattusa.

Architects, builders, and skilled workers of iron, they have assimilated the Hittites' syncretic culture and adopted many of their political institutions.

Phrygian kings apparently rule most of western and central Anatolia in the ninth century BCE from their capital at Gordium (a site sixty kilometers southwest of modern Ankara).

Phrygian strength had soon waned, and the kingdom is overthrown in the seventh century BCE by the Cimmerians, a nomadic people who had been pursued over the Caucasus into Anatolia by the Scythians.

The Phrygian kingdom, with its capital at Gordium in the upper Sakarya River valley, has expanded during the eighth century BCE into an empire dominating most of central and western Anatolia and encroaching upon the larger Assyrian Empire to its southeast and the kingdom of Urartu to the northeast.

A distinctive Phrygian pottery called Polished Ware appears, and a system of writing in the Phrygian language develops and flourishes in Gordium, using a Phoenician-derived alphabet similar to the Greek one.

The powerful kingdom founded by the Phrygians is to last until the Lydian ascendancy in the early seventh century BCE.

Under kings alternately named Gordias and Midas, the independent Phrygian kingdom maintains close trade contacts with her neighbors in the east and the Greeks in the west.

Phrygia seems to have been able to coexist with whatever power is dominant in eastern Anatolia at the time.

The Assyrians had detached the eastern part of the Phrygian confederation by about 730, and the locus of power has shifted to Phrygia proper.

According to the classical historians Strabo Eusebius and Julius Africanus, the king of Phrygia during this time was another Midas.

This historical Midas is believed to be the same person named as Mita in Assyrian texts from the period and identified as king of the Mushki.

Scholars figure that Assyrians called Phrygians "Mushki" because the Phrygians and Mushki, an eastern Anatolian people, were at that time campaigning in a joint army.

This Midas is thought to have reigned Phrygia at the peak of its power from about 720 BCE to about 695 BCE (according to Eusebius) or 676 BCE (according to Julius Africanus).

In 716, Sargon of Assyria suppresses a rebellion in Cilicia fomented by Mita; an Assyrian inscription mentioning "Mita" as an ally, dated to 709 BCE, suggests Phrygia and Assyria had struck a truce by that time.

This Midas appears to have had good relations and close trade ties with the Greeks, and reputedly married an Aeolian Greek princess.

The Cimmerians (Gimmari in Assyrian records; Gomer in the Bible) shatter the thriving Phrygian kingdom in 696 and 695, destroying its capital city of Gordion and (according to Herodotus) causing its king, Midas, to commit suicide rather than face capture.

From here, the Cimmerians harry Lydia until being finally driven into Cappadocia by the Scythians.

At Gordium in Phrygia, the old capital of the Phrygian kings (themselves, as stated above, ultimately of alleged Macedonian origin) tradition records Alexander’s “breaking” of the Gordian knot, or fastening, of an ancient chariot, which can only be loosed by the man who is to rule Asia; but this story may be apocryphal or at least distorted.

Alexander cuts it instead—or perhaps pulls out the pole pin, as one tradition insists.

At this point, Alexander benefits from the sudden death of Memnon of Rhodes.

From Gordium, …

…Antigonus Monophthalmus in Phrygia.

The Gauls, after discharging their military service to Bithynia, have by 276 settled in parts of Phrygia but continue to ravage and plunder on their own.

Seleucus III personally leads an army across the Taurus Mountains.

He is assassinated, however, in Phrygia.

After the assassination of Seleucus, his cousin Achaeus, who had accompanied Ceraunus on this expedition against Attalus, revenges his death; and though he might easily have assumed the royal power, he remains faithful to the family of Seleucus.

Antiochus appoints Achaeus to the command of all Asia Minor on the western side of the Taurus mountains.

Achaeus recovers all the districts which Attalus had gained for the Seleucids once more; but being falsely accused by Hermeias of intending to revolt, he does so in self-defense, assumes the title of king, and rules over the whole of Asia on the western side of the Taurus.