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The following points, therefore, must be left open at present: whether the Mushki ever settled in Phrygia at all; whether, if they did, the Phrygian kings who bore the names Gordius and Midas can ever have been Mushkite or have commanded Mushkite allegiance; whether the kings called Mita in records of Sargon and Ashurbanipal were not lords rather of the eastern Mushki than of Phrygia.
No one of equal power seems to have taken their place; but there is reason to think that the Mushki, who had brought them low, now filled some of their room in Asia Minor.
But whether this uniformity of civilization implies any general overlord, such as the Mushki king, is very questionable. The past supremacy of the Hatti is enough to account for large community of social features in 1000 B.C. over all Asia Minor and north Syria.
But meanwhile, let it be borne in mind that their royal name Mita does not necessarily imply a connection between the Mushki and Phrygia; for since the ethnic "Mitanni" of north Mesopotamia means "Mita's men," that name must have long been domiciled much farther east.
It is not unlikely that the Mermnad dynasty inherited most of what the Phrygian kings had held before the Cimmerian attack; and perhaps it was due to an oppressive Lydian occupation of the plateau as far east as the Halys and the foot of Anti-Taurus, that the Mushki came to be represented in later times only by Moschi in western Armenia, and the men of Tabal by the equally remote and insignificant Tibareni.
The Hatti power, however, tried hard to close the passages and it was not until its catastrophe and the retirement of those who brought it about the Mushki and their allies that about 1100 Tiglath Pileser I could lead his Assyrian raiders into Syria, and even, perhaps, a short distance across Taurus. Why his empire died with him we do not know precisely.
The peoples, which were of most account in 1000, are still of the most account in 800 the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Mushki of Cappadocia, the tribesmen of Urartu, the Aramaeans of Damascus, the trading Phoenicians on the Syrian coast and the trading Greeks on the Anatolian.
Turn to the annals of Assyria and you will learn, from records of Tiglath Pileser I, that this northern wave was followed up in the same century by a second, which bore on its crest another bold horde from Asia Minor. Its name, Mushki, we now hear for the first time, but shall hear again in time to come.
Mita of Mushki and Midas of Phrygia coincide well enough in date; both ruled in Asia Minor; both were apparently leading powers there; both fought with the Gimirrai or Cimmerians. But there are also certain difficulties of which too little account has perhaps been taken.
But, by way of caution, it must be remarked that the identification depends ultimately on another, namely, that of Mita, King of the Mushki, against whom Ashurbanipal would fight more than a century later, with Midas, last King of Phrygia, who is mentioned by Herodotus and celebrated in Greek myth. To assume this identity is very attractive.