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The Mongols Dined Atop their Live Enemies and Other Fascinating Historic Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 2, 2020 36 min

Battle of the Kalka River - Mongol Empire — Mongols feasting atop captives. Pintrest

King Midas turning his daughter into a golden statue – the Midas Touch is myth, but King Midas was real. It’s All Greek to Me

2. There Actually Was a King Midas

In Greek mythology, King Midas was blessed by the gods with the ability to turn whatever he touched into gold, only to discover too late that the blessing was actually a curse. As it turns out, there actually was an 8^th century BC King Midas of Phrygia, whom we know of from ancient Greek and Assyrian sources. According to Greek sources, this Midas married a princess Hermodice, who is credited by some ancient sources with inventing Greek coinage, or money. Simultaneously, Assyrian tablets from that period refer to a king “Mita” attacking Assyria’s east Anatolian territories.

Thanks to Midas’ wife, Phrygia, as an early adopter of coined money, would have probably experienced an economic boom. Especially compared to neighboring states, that still relied on inefficient barter for trade. So from that perspective, it is not hard to see how the stories of Phrygia’s King Midas having a “golden touch” got started.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.