Mount Nemrut
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- Antiochus shows his ancestry on two rows of relief stelae: his father's line traced back to Darius I of Persia, his mother's to Alexander the Great.
- On the north terrace more than 50 stelae were smoothed for carving but never received reliefs, suggesting the sanctuary was unfinished when Antiochus died around 36 BC.
- Relief stelae show the king clasping hands with the gods, a scene known as dexiosis that presents him as welcomed among them.
- The three planets on the lion relief, Jupiter, Mercury and Mars, are identified with Zeus, Apollo and Heracles, the same gods seated beside the king.
- A long Greek inscription carved on the backs of the colossal statues names each deity and lays down the rules of the royal cult.
- Today the mound stands about 50 metres high, but it is thought originally to have been considerably taller, perhaps around 70 metres.
- Commagene was a small buffer kingdom between Rome and Parthia, and Antiochus I ruled it from about 70 to 36 BC.
- In 1883 the Ottoman painter and archaeologist Osman Hamdi Bey led one of the first expeditions to record the sanctuary.
Why it is worth it
At 2,150 metres, Mount Nemrut is one of the higher summits of the eastern Taurus range, but it is famous for what a king built on top of it. In the 1st century BC Antiochus I, ruler of Commagene, a small kingdom between Anatolia and Syria on the upper Euphrates, turned the peak into his hierothesion, a sanctuary for his own cult and presumably his tomb. A conical mound of loose rock about 49 metres high and 152 metres across caps the summit; the choice of scree may have been intended to defeat tomb robbers, since any tunnel would fill back in. No excavation has yet found the burial chamber.
On the terraces to the east and west of the mound Antiochus placed seated colossal statues, 8 to 9 metres high: himself, two lions and two eagles, and a pantheon of gods in which Greek and Iranian identities are fused, such as Zeus-Oromasdes and Apollo-Mithras-Helios-Hermes. The faces are Greek in style, the dress and headgear Persian, reflecting the dynasty's claim to descend from both Alexander's successors and the Achaemenid kings. At some point the heads were separated from the bodies and now lie scattered across the terraces; the damage, especially to the noses, suggests deliberate iconoclasm. Relief slabs show the king's ancestors, and a lion relief on the western terrace carries a pattern of stars and planets that has been read as a sky chart for July 62 BC, possibly the date the work began.
The site was surveyed in 1881 by the German engineer Karl Sester, who was assessing transport routes for the Ottoman government. The American archaeologist Theresa Goell devoted much of her life to it, excavating from 1954, and the photographer Ara Gรผler's reportage from the late 1950s is counted among his most important work. Mount Nemrut was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. The summit lies in harsh, high country, and visitors come mainly between April and October.
Getting there
The nearest town used as a base is Kรขhta, about 24 km away in a straight line; Adฤฑyaman and Malatya are the other usual starting points, and tours run from all three. Adฤฑyaman Airport (ADF) is about 37 km away. Most visits are by car or tour bus from Adฤฑyaman or Kรขhta, and overnight tours also run from Malatya.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Mount Nemrut or Nemrud is a 2,150-metre-high (7,054ย ft) mountain in southeastern Turkey, notable for the summit where a number of large statues are erected around what is assumed to be a royal tomb from the 1st century BC. It is one of the highest peaks in the east of the Taurus Mountains.
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