with King Midas. When Midas took the throne on the death of his father, he surely would have officiated at the funeral, with the grave goods provided by him for the deposition. The historical King Midas was a contemporary of the Assyrian king Sargon II (r. 721–705 BC) and was also well known to the Greeks. Midas was the first foreigner to make an offering at the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote that the king had dedicated his throne, which was “well worth seeing.” Unfortunately, this tantalizing comment tells us little about the appearance of the throne of Midas. However, the magnificent wooden furniture from Tumulus MM at Gordion suggests that the throne was likely made from beautiful woods with carved and inlaid decoration, including a complex of geometric patterns that reflected the power of the Phrygian royal house and its connection to the Phrygian mother goddess Matar (Kybele).Tumulus MM produced an array of priceless artifacts: 170 bronze vessels, some with deposits of organic residues; 10 bronze-and-leather belts; more than 180 bronze fibulae (ancient safety pins); pottery vessels containing the remains of food; and 15 pieces of fine wooden furniture. The exact nature of the furniture was not clear to Young and his team when they entered the chamber in 1957, as many of the objects had broken along the lines of the joinery, with their constituent parts dispersed on the tomb floor. The first thing the excavators saw was the skeleton of the king lying on a mass of textiles, covering what Young thought was a four-poster bed. To the east of the “bed” were several furniture legs scattered among remnants of cloth. Leaning against the east wall were two ornate, inlaid objects, called “screens” by Young and initially identified as “throne backs.” To the south of these, a fancy inlaid table had collapsed with its frame intact, and nearby were the tops and legs of eight “plain” tables. Most of the bronze vessels found in the tomb had once been hung on the walls or placed on the tables, but all had fallen to the floor. The inlaid table, Tumulus MM The inlaid table, called the “Pagoda Table” by Young because of its exotic design and decoration, was made of 46 separate components. The table had three legs, with lion-paw feet, and three structural supports that rose from the feet