Mount Nemrut

A summit 2134 metres high, on which in the first century BC Antiochus I, king of Commagene, set up a tomb and a sanctuary for himself. A mound of fine gravel almost fifty metres high covers a burial chamber that has still not been found: no one has yet managed to dig into the tumulus without bringing it down. On the sides of the mound, on the eastern and western terraces, stood rows of seated statues several metres tall — Zeus-Oromasdes, Apollo-Mithras, Heracles-Artagnes, the goddess of Commagene and Antiochus himself, with a stone lion and eagle at the ends. The pantheon is deliberately mixed: Commagene lay between the Greek and the Persian worlds and claimed kinship with both. Earthquakes threw the heads off the bodies, and now they stand on the ground at the foot of the torsos, which is what made Nemrut recognisable. The western terrace has survived better, and the relief with the lion horoscope lies there. The site is on the UNESCO World Heritage List; an asphalt road leads up, and the last three hundred metres or so are a footpath.

Address

East terrace, Kâhta

On the map