<P> According to an Irish legend, the king Labraid Loingsech had horse's ears, something he was concerned to keep quiet . He had his hair cut once a year, and the barber, who was chosen by lot, was immediately put to death . A widow, hearing that her only son had been chosen to cut the king's hair, begged the king not to kill him, and he agreed, so long as the barber kept his secret . The burden of the secret was so heavy that the barber fell ill . A druid advised him to go to a crossroads and tell his secret to the first tree he came to, and he would be relieved of his burden and be well again . He told the secret to a large willow . Soon after this, however, a harper named Craiftine broke his instrument, and made a new one out of the very willow the barber had told his secret to . Whenever he played it, the harp sang "Labraid Lorc has horse's ears". Labraid repented of all the barbers he had put to death and admitted his secret . </P> <P> The King Midas who ruled Phrygia in the late 8th century BC is known from Greek and Assyrian sources . According to the former, he married a Greek princess, Damodice daughter of Agamemnon of Cyme, and traded extensively with the Greeks . Damodice is credited with inventing coined money by Julius Pollux after she married Midas . Some historians believe this Midas donated the throne that Herodotus says was offered to the Oracle of Delphi by "Midas son of Gordias" (see above). Assyrian tablets from the reign of Sargon II record attacks by a "Mita", king of the Mushki, against Assyria's eastern Anatolian provinces . Some historians believe Assyrian texts called this Midas king of the "Mushki" because he had subjected the eastern Anatolian people of that name and incorporated them into his army . Greek sources including Strabo say that Midas committed suicide by drinking bulls' blood during an attack by the Cimmerians, which Eusebius dated to around 695 BC and Julius Africanus to around 676 BC . Archeology has confirmed that Gordium was destroyed and burned around that time . </P> <P> In 1957, Rodney Young and a team from the University of Pennsylvania opened a chamber tomb at the heart of the Great Tumulus (in Greek, Μεγάλη Τούμπα)--53 metres in height, about 300 metres in diameter--on the site of ancient Gordion (modern Yassihöyük, Turkey), where there are more than 100 tumuli of different sizes and from different periods . They discovered a royal burial, its timbers dated as cut to about 740 BC complete with remains of the funeral feast and "the best collection of Iron Age drinking vessels ever uncovered". This inner chamber was rather large: 5.15 metres by 6.2 metres in breadth and 3.25 metres high . On the remains of a wooden coffin in the northwest corner of the tomb lay a skeleton of a man 1.59 metres in height and about 60 years old . In the tomb were found an ornate inlaid table, two inlaid serving stands, and eight other tables, as well as bronze and pottery vessels and bronze fibulae . Although no identifying texts were originally associated with the site, it was called Tumulus MM (for "Midas Mound") by the excavator . As this funerary monument was erected before the traditional date given for the death of King Midas in the early 7th century BC, it is now generally thought to have covered the burial of his father . </P>

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