Image Details

Hershel Shanks

Midas’s tomb was a modest chamber 20 feet long and 15 feet wide. Above it, however, lay a massive earthen tumulus more than three football fields in diameter. To support this crushing weight, the Phrygian engineers encased the burial chamber with juniper logs (shown here), which they then covered with rubble and enclosed with a stone wall. Over this structure, they dumped the thousands of tons of earth fill that provide the contours of the mound today.