Among all the early Iron Age people from the Near East, the Phrygians are perhaps one of the most misunderstood. They built a powerful and wealthy kingdom, but were overshadowed by their more powerful and wealthier neighbors, the Lydians. Although the Phrygians were literate, most of their surviving texts have been little use to modern historians who desire to reconstruct their chronology, so they are left to use often biased Classical and Assyrian sources. Problems concerning nomenclature have also clouded the modern understanding of Phrygia and the Phrygians; the Greeks would often refer to numerous non-Phrygian peoples as Phrygians, and while the Persians acknowledged the Phrygians as a distinct people, they only considered them so as part of a satrapy or province in the vast Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Although there are numerous inherent problems concerning any modern study of ancient Phrygia and the Phrygians, there are still a number of sources that can help illuminate the many aspects of Phrygian culture. The majority of the sources utilized in this study come from the ancient Greek historians, but the Assyrians also wrote about the Phrygians in their annals. The classical and Assyrians sources are augmented with archaeological and numismatic evidence from Phrygia, and finally some of the Phrygian language inscriptions are also considered. The following study reveals that the Phrygians were much more than just their most famous king, Midas; they played an important role in the redevelopment of ancient Anatolia after the Bronze Age collapse and were at times a focal point in the battles between the Greeks and Persians.