an ancient country in western and central Asia Minor

A mountainous region between Asia and Galatia, notable mainly as the home of Cybele, the Great Mother goddess. That cult, very popular and influential in the first couple of centuries CE, used the taurobolium as its rite of entry, a rite somewhat similar to Christianity, where the initiate went down into a pit and was baptized with the blood of a bull that was slaughtered on a grate above the initiate's head.

In antiquity, Phrygia (Greek: ) was a kingdom in the west central part of the Anatolian Highland, part of modern Turkey. The Phrygian people settled in the area from c. 1200 BC, and established a kingdom in the 8th century BC. It was overwhelmed by Cimmerian invaders c. 690 BC, then briefly conquered by its neighbor Lydia, before it passed successively into the Persian Empire of Cyrus, the empire of Alexander and his successors, was taken by the king of Pergamon, and eventually became part of the Roman Empire.