According to a Phrygian tradition, at Telmissus, the ancient capital of Phrygia, which was in the eastern part of Phrygia that later became part of Galatia, an oracle decreed to the Phrygians, who found themselves temporarily without a legitimate king, that the next man to enter the city driving an ox-cart should become their king. Gordias, a poor peasant, happened to drive into town with his wife, both riding on an ox-cart, and he was declared king. In gratitude, he dedicated the ox-cart to the Phrygian god Sabazios— whom the Greeks identified with Zeus— and either tied it to a post or tied its shaft with an intricate knot of cornel (Cornus mas) bark. It was further prophesied by an oracle that the one to untie the knot would become the king of Asia.

In 333 B.C. Alexander the Great himself attempted the knot. When he could find no end to the knot, to unbind it, he sliced it in half with a stroke of his sword, producing the required ends (the so-called "Alexandrian solution"). Alexander did go on to conquer Asia, though the prophesy itself might have been later propaganda created on his behalf.

Today, the term "Gordian Knot" applies to an apparently insoluble problem requiring a bold and innovative solution.

The ox-cart or chariot was an emblem of power and constant military readiness. that still stood in the palace at Gordium of the former kings of Phrygia, which in the fourth century BCE, when Alexander arrived, had been reduced to a satrapy of the Persian Empire.

The knot may in fact have been a religious knot-cipher guarded by Gordium's priests and priestesses. Robert Graves suggested that it may have symbolized the ineffable name of Dionysus that, enknotted like a cipher, would have been passed on through generations of priests and revealed only to the kings of Phrygia.

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