The Heavenly Throne

In 1985, a stranger arrived in the Kahta district of Adiyaman. With his foreign car that shielded his sad eyes under black shades he drove up the Nemrut mountain, holding on to a box in his hands tightly while walking towards the peak. On his way up he held tight not only the box, but also the tears that he kept back. At the peak he slowly opened the box, spreading the  ashes of his elder sister into the wind over the countless blocks of stone covering the tomb of King Antiochos. I do not know from which direction the wind was blowing that day, but some of those ashes must have passed over the heads of the gods standing tall down there. Whenever I give in to the call of Mt Nemrut and find myself on the heavenly throne of the king of Kommagene, I think of Theresa Goell and her ashes that were spread before the setting sun. 

The monuments on Mt Nemrut made their way into the dreams of many people when they were introduced to the world of archaeology. One of these was Theresa Goell, an American archaeologist. When she first climbed upon the peak for an excavation in 1953 Goell was fifty-two years old, and she stayed on Nemrut for the next twenty years, bound to the mystery with a passion as if she had fallen in love. And not only her, but anybody who climbed on Nemrut came down as if they were simply enchanted. 

The mysterious tumulus…

Everything started with the letter written by the Assistant Consul of Germany in ‹zmir to the Prussian Royal Academy in Berlin at the end of 1881. It was mentioned in this letter that a road engineer named Karl Sester had discovered giant Assyrian statues in the Eastern Antitaurus region. The news was at first received with doubt, but after that a difficult journey was undertaken. Puchtein and Sester arrived on the mountain to accumulate new data. The date was May 4, 1882. As the excavations proceeded, it was found out that these giant structures belonged not to the Assyrians but to the people of Kommagene, and that they surrounded a giant tumulus hosting the tomb of their king.

“Indeed it is I who had these god-worthy statues erected: The statues of Zeus-Oromasdes, of Apollon-Mithras-Helios-Hermes, of Herakles-Artagnes-Ares, and a representation of Kommagene that hosts everything as the symbol of my homeland. Next to the gods that hear everything I had a representation of myself erected also, one that is carved from the very same stone and is sitting on the throne right next to them...”

This is what King Antiochos says in the inscription of 200 lines right behind the pedestals on Nemrut. He also states there that his own sacred tomb is also placed inside the tumulus. Who was this Antiochos? Here was a man that had placed his own reflection right next to those of his gods... Was he a megalomaniac? A crazy person? Maybe one in pursuit of his own story of existence? He had placed his own image that carried quite a young face next to the gods of his ancestors that were related to Alexander the Great of Macedonia on the maternal side and to King Darius of Persia on the paternal side. He had had the same statues erected at both sides of his tumulus upon Mt Nemrut as if in an attempt to present an intersection of the East and the West; now his forefathers were going to see them at both sunrise and sunset. Or maybe this was how daylight was going to reach them both in the morning and in the evening, never leaving their faces.   

The footprints of Osman Hamdi…

“We had been walking for two hours. The tumulus became visible from time to time, but it kept quickly disappearing behind steep hills… This difficult climb went on for about five hours, and then we reached the tumulus of Antiochos, the great king of Kommagene… A strong wind blew from behind us, from the northeast… Five giant statues stood in a row before us. The other parts were still covered with snow. Among these five statues, only one of them that belonged to a woman had its head still intact…” These lines are from Osman Hamdi Bey, the pioneer of modern Turkish art of museum keeping, who had climbed on the Nemrut mountain on May, 1883. He used to make excavations on the mountain as the Director of State Museums. The head of Tyche –the goddess of the land of Kommagene– that he had seen intact is no longer on its place; instead it lies on the floor behind its pedestal. Today you can climb Mt Nemrut in your car and spare yourself the difficulties that Osman Hamdi Bey had experienced, and you can reach the tumulus after a mere walk of thirty minutes. There is no snow there during summer and fall, but who can ever restrain the wind? The wind is always there, perpetually present, just like the spirit of Antiochos...

The statues on Mt Nemrut are among the most impressive monuments on the face of the earth, and for their preservation it is considered to replace the statues with their exact copies. Sunrise and sunset in Nemrut is spectacular. The best time to climb the mountain is between the months of June and November, but there may well be those who seek to get a distinct feeling in the freezing cold of the winter. Still, they should know that they would have a tough trip ahead and have to face a hard walk. Although it has not yet been proven that there is a stone pit inside the tumulus and that the ashes of King Antiochos lie here, Mt Nemrut is still a location of great mysteries. The oldest horoscope

known on earth is also in Nemrut, imprinted upon the surface of a relief in the shape of a lion.

There is no telling how many stone-carving craftsmen, workers, and slaves paid with their lives for the dreams of immortality that King Antiochos of Kommagene entertained; but it is certainly known for sure that Mt Nemrut carries upon its head a mysterious masterpiece...

The Kingdom of Kommagene had reigned in the region that lay to the southeastern part of Turkey, inside the boundaries of the cities of Adiyaman, Kahramanmaras, and Gaziantep between 162 BC and 72 AD. There is no telling how many stone-carving craftsmen, workers, and slaves paid with their lives for the dreams of immortality that King Antiochos entertained; but it is known for sure that Mt Nemrut carries upon its head a mysterious masterpiece

Arsemia…

Although Adiyaman’s district of Kahta has its name identified directly with Mt Nemrut, there are many other grand monuments in the area such as the Cendere bridge and the anique city of Arsemia. On the eastern slope of the old Kahta fortress, in the antique city of Arsemia, Antiochos founded a royal center creating a sacred cult site in the name of his father, Mithradates Kallinikos. His father had also had a mausoleum built here for himself before he died. His son, too, had a great stone inscription placed in Arsemia. In a part of the inscription, there is this statement: “It was my forefather Arasmes who founded this Arsemia that hosts the river of Nymph between its double breasts which feed from inexhaustible sources. He formed a city of double banks in accordance with the local natural conditions." On September 28, 1953, archaeologist Friedrich Karl Dörner and his team found the lower corner of a limestone block at the side of the inscripted wall and unearthed a great monument with the completion of an exciting excavation. This 3.34 m high and 1.8 m wide monument is one of the favourite structures of the National Park of Nemrut, displaying the scene of a handshake between King Antiochos I of Kommagene and Heracles the God.   

Climbing of masterpiece

Dörner’s team performed probings in the tumulus of Karakus in 1967 and they found out that not only the tomb, but also the hewn stones of dolomite in the mausoleum chamber were stolen. Who on earth had taken away these stones, and for what? The most probable suspect was the Cendere Bridge, and it was found out that these stones were used for the re-construction of the bridge by the XVIth  Roman Legion based in Samosata between the years 198-200. With its width of 7 meters and length approaching 120 meters, the bridge still offers passage for travelers over the waters of Cendere that used to be called the Chabinas in the early era. There used to be a couple of pillars at each entrance on both ends of the bridge, but today one of the pillars is missing. There are epitaphs in the name of Emperor Septimius Severus and his wife upon the two pillars in the southeastern end, and another upon the pillar at the opposite end for Caracalla, the son of the emperor. The missing pillar was for Gea. Caracalla had fought his sibling for the empire, and after he got Gea killed, he had had everything that was in Gea’s name inside the boundaries of the Roman empire destroyed. That is why one of the pillars is missing from the entrance of the Cendere bridge.    

You may think nothing of “just a pillar missing from the head of a bridge”. But you shall know what a loss it is for one to have missed a chance to climb on the “heavenly throne” of King Antiochos of Kommagene when you are walking down Mt Nemrut and the stars start to twinkle on the evening sky.