Pilgrims to the Mountain
Published by Cornucopia, 2025
Two days after an Istanbul book launch and still wearing the same blue linen suit, in the darkness just before dawn, with the wind cutting like a knife of ice, I discovered for myself that Nemrut Dagi is one of the wonders of the ancient world. We had cheated and accepted a lift in a jeep that took us almost to the summit, but fortunately, Don’s young wife Catherine Fairweather had walked all the way up which made her look more than usually radiant. We were not alone, a group of well-travelled young Brazilians, thoughtfully wrapped up in striped blankets, with glasses of bucks fizz all ready to toast the sunrise, decorated the altar platform. They told me that they were reminded of the heads on Easter Island, and of the solemn mystery of Mayan and Incan shrines. I agreed that it was a truly numinous place.
Nemrut Dagi is majestic in scale but is also always humbled by its horizon. Views over neighbouring mountains, half-hidden valleys, distant plateaux and nearby highland streams, stretch out in every direction. It feels both up above the world, yet looks looking lovingly over it. It was a holy mountain for centuries before King Antiochus of Commagene adorned it with altars and statues. At other sacred mountains, such as Mount Taygetus beside Sparta in southern Greece or at Croagh Patrick of the kingdom of Connaught on the west coast of Ireland, elements of an old universal tradition still survive. Of midsummer mountain summit fires that once honoured the deities of sun and sky (such as Zeus and Helios) but now honour Saint Elias and Saint Patrick.
I pinched myself that we had finally made it. The initial plan had been to just fly out to Istanbul for the launch of Don McCullin’s Journeys Across Roman Asia Minor which was being organised by his Turkish publisher. But before this could happen Don needed a lump taken out of his face, which I had privately dismissed as a piece of cosmetic surgery, until I saw his face punctured with fifty stitches. The surgeon’s knife had danced a tattoo around the eye of Britain’s most celebrated photographer, yet he had risen from his hospital bed the following morning, absolutely determined to ascend Mount Nemrut. He brushed aside some advice to consult a specialist doctor about the effect of high altitudes on a jippy heart, or over-work on the body of an eighty-eight-year-old. Instead, we unfolded a vast map of Central Turkey and found out that all things being equal, we might be able to include the amazingly intact Roman bridge (over the Cendere, a tributary of the Euphrates. It felt a good way to celebrate Don’s book on Roman Turkey, to continue our personal quest to find inspiration from the classical past.
The carvings of gods and heroes that King Antiochus had commissioned to adorn this mountain have now been weathered by two thousand years of winter snow and the fierce heat of summer. Though cracked and fissured by time, the limestone heads are fortunately too vast to have been moved from where they first toppled from the row of seated forms on a line of five raised thrones.
A row of five seated statues originally overlooked both of the courtyard terraces that sit on either side of the foot of the mountain summit. (There is a suggestion that a third terrace might have been planned for the north face but this was never completed). Between these two monumental sets of statues, the mountain summit sit has been crowned with a manmade cone of limestone shards, to form a loose, almost pyramid-like sheath of pale, grey uniform stone. Carved panels (still very visible on the west terrace) were set into the temenos (sanctuary wall) to neatly frame the two flanking sides of the two sacred terraces. These panels illustrated the complex dynastic record of the Kings of Commagene.
Antiochus I was the fourth Orontid King of Commagene. He was born on 16 July 98 BC and inherited the throne from his father, Mithridates I Kallinicos who ruled from 109-70 BC. Before they were crowned kings, the Orontids had dominated the region as hereditary satraps, both serving and intermarrying with the Achaemenid dynasty (the Kings of Kings who ruled the Persian Empire). Through his paternal grandmother Antiochus I was also cousin to the Kings of Pontus, whilst through his mother Laodice VII his family tree embraced all the major Hellenistic dynasties: Seleucid, Antigonid and Ptolemaic. From the second century BC, Commagene had been an ally of Rome, in that stormy century of recurring wars which first destroyed the Kingdom of Macedonia, then weakened Seleucid Syria, before the Romans finally confronted Mithridates of Pontus.
But no ally of Rome, be they ever so devotedly loyal to the Senate and the People, could be certain of maintaining her friendship. For alongside their relentless wars of conquest, the Romans fought each other. Client kings had to trim with each prevailing Roman civil war faction. So as well as negotiating with such powerful neighbours as the Kingdom of Pontus and the Parthian Empire, King Antiochus I of Commagene would (over his long life) have witnessed the triumph of Sulla, the rise and fall of Pompey the Great, then that of Julius Caesar as well as the pitiless civil wars waged by these charismatic leaders. After the extinction of an entire Roman army (led by Crassus at Carrhae which is dangerously close to Commagene), there were another three rounds of Roman civil war (made doubly complicated by a military alliance between Parthia and the restored Roman Republic). The triumph of the Roman general Mark Anthony (who became a King of Kings in the East) looked stable after his marriage to Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. However, this rich and powerful Empire was undermined by Mark Anthony’s catastrophic invasion of Parthia in 34 BC – which can be likened to an ancient version of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. So when King Antiochus carved his repeated thanks to the gods for his survival from ‘desperate situations’ and ‘great perils” he was not exaggerating.
King Antiochus I endowed his mountain sanctuary so that it could afford to offer up lavish sacrificial feasts, witnessed by crowds on the great festival days of the calendar, with the addition of two days to give thanks to the gods on the anniversary of his birth and his coronation. No altar has been discovered on the West terrace, so it is believed that the large altar that still survives on the East Terrace was the liturgical centre. The mountain sanctuary might have functioned for a hundred years. It is believed to have been built by King Antiochus I around the time of Pompey’s victories in the East (somewhere between 70-64 BC) and would have been starved of funds after the Roman annexation of the Kingdom in 72 AD.
King Antiochus I of Commagene, the creator of Nemrut Dagi, died in 31 BC. One of his sons, Mithridates II, commanded the Parthian cavalry serving within the Roman army led by Mark Anthony. Mark Anthony was defeated by Octavian at Actium, yet Mithridates II managed to survive the fall of his patron, while it was his more politically aware younger brother, Antiochus II who was made a public example of. Octavian summoned him to Rome and had him tried before the Senate of Rome and then executed. Mithridates II then ruled Commagene from 31-20 BC as an ally of Octavian. During this period he raised a tomb mound over the burial place of his revered mother, Princess Isias (daughter of King Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia) who was buried beside her daughter Antiochis and her granddaughter Aka. Each of these three princesses was commemorated by their own set of three Doric columns (7 metres high and 1.7 metres thick) that stood like an irregular circumference around the conical tomb mound. The centre of each group of three columns bore an inscription and was flanked on either side by a lion and an eagle perched on a capital. One of these columns has stood for two thousand years, which is probably why this mound was known as Karakus (Black Bird) by locals, for the stone eagle was envisaged as a raven. Mithridates was probably buried nearby, somewhere on Eski Kale (old palace) hill which stands just beside the Yeni Kale fortress. We were shown great livid scars on the cliff faces all around Eski Kale. They had been torn from the mountain by the recent earthquake. So this complex of Mithraic caves, tunnels and relief carvings was off-limits. The castle of Yeni Kale (an advance post of the medieval Mameluke Sultanate) teemed with builders industriously repairing the recent earthquake damage.
Alliances with superpowers are not equable. The obligation to honour a treaty only flows in one direction. King Archelaus I governed Cappadocia for fifty years as a loyal client of Rome, but that did not deter the Emperor Tiberius from suddenly summoning the eighty-year-old monarch to Rome where he was tried before the Senate on ‘suspicion’ of treason. He died before his trial was finished, but this was of no matter, for his kingdom had already been efficiently annexed and sliced up into ten prefectures. The death of King Antiochus III of Commagene in 17 AD gave the Emperor Tiberius the opportunity to annex another Anatolian kingdom. These despotic acts were resented by the general populace but they were supported by the land-owning nobles. They knew that without a monarch they would become the dominant power in the land and the most competent of them had the chance of entering the Senate of Rome. Commagene would be governed as a Roman province for two decades, but in a bizarre twist of fate, once more become a quasi-independent Kingdom when the Emperor Caligula restored the Kingdom to Antiochus IV – complete with a backlog of twenty years of tribute. They had been childhood friends, for Prince Antiochus had been sent to Rome as a hostage, and alongside Julius Agrippa (a grandson of King Herod of Judaea) had been one of the bosom friends of Caligula, his so-called ‘tutors in tyranny’. The kingdom’s revenue was sufficient to support a Commagene army of three thousand archers and two thousand cavalrymen, paid in coins with the head of Antiochus IV Ephiphanes “the Glorious” on one face and a scorpion framed in a laurel wreath on the obverse. They were an efficient unit and served alongside the Roman army in two wars against Parthia (as ordered by the Emperor Nero in 55 and 59 AD) as well as in the force that Titus assembled for the siege of Jerusalem. Antiochus IV gained gifts of territory from Rome as a reward for each of these campaigns. He also brought Commagene to its apogee of influence as a key early supporter of General Vespasian (then in command of an army of three legions in Judea) who would emerge as sole Emperor after the confused political infighting of “The Year of Four Emperors”. But it is an iron law of politics that such actions breed private resentment beneath the public gratitude. Four years into Vespasian’s reign, the Roman governor of Syria marched into Commagene and annexed the kingdom. The Roman legion that now occupied Samosata, the XVI Flavia Firma were not convincing heroes. They were a brand new formation, created by Vespasian from the broken ranks of the XVI Gallica Legion which had disgraced itself by surrendering during the Batavian Revolt. This was the period when the tombs of three princesses at Karakus were ransacked of their buried treasure. Stones from this complex were also quarried to help build a bridge that strides across the Cendere stream. This first bridge did not survive. The immaculate Roman bridge that survives to this day, an essay in confident masonry framing the view up a mountain gorge, has been securely dated to the 3rd century AD.
It is a sad story. The brief flowering of an independent, self-determining kingdom, aspiring to be proud of both its eastern and its western heritage, but which is swept aside with contemptuous ease by the arrogant superpower of the day.
I decided to make one more circuit of the mountain. All the sunrise visitors, a merry chattering lot, had now left. The sun was well and truly up, and so I found myself alone on both terraces and could for the first time really look at the face of Mithras. Images of Mithras from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD are quite common, but free-standing statues from the first century AD are rare. I noticed for the first time how similar the beardless faces of the King and Mithras were, and I remembered that odd coincidence that King Antiochus I’s birthday (on the 16th) was also the day in the month that was holy to Mithras.
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One of the fascinations of Mithraism is that it never evolved into a theologically defined religion but remained a way of looking at (and combining) many existing mythologies, so there are many intriguing variations, stories and associations. Mithras can be understood on a number of levels. At the most easily approachable, he is a deified warrior hero, the perfect example of a knight of Persia (brave, honest and true) who gets assimilated into the Roman Army as part of its grudging respect for auxiliary Parthian cavalry. The armoured knights of Persia were becoming ever more effective as an offensive weapon by the parallel evolution of stirrup and lance, screened by the subtle manoeuvres of highly mobile squadrons of mounted archers. Some of the epithets of Mithras from the Indo-Aryan Steppes of Central Asia, such as Lord of the Wide Pastures, The Protector, the Friend, hold onto this tradition. Mithras is also easily equated with the Divine Rider of Thrace and such heroes as Hercules and Perseus.
But on another level Mithras is a mythic figure in mortal form with whom the populace can identify, to help them charter a path through the otherwise complex Zoroastrian belief system that evolved out of ancient Persia and Central Asia. This spiritual tradition still exists and teaches that our world is governed by two equally balanced powers locked in dynamic conflict. The two forces can most easily be represented as Earth or Spirit, Darkness in contrast to Light, Evil in opposition to Good. Respect for the essential duality of the universe is at the heart of Zoroastrian teachings, with Mithras offering the middle path of moderation living from the earth but aspiring to the spirit.
I looked around and began to see that this Zoroastrian duality is firmly embedded in the architecture of the Nemrut Dagi shrine. Nemrut Dagi is composed of two quite separate sanctuaries: an East terrace and a West terrace, on either side of the mountain cone. The east terrace is lit by the dawn, and the west terrace by dusk – and is part of the insistent evocation of duality which you can recognise in the altar apse of every Mithraic chapel that has been excavated. Cautes (the morning sun, associated with the energy of the bull, the equinox, springtime and a flaming upright torch) will be on one side of the altar apse and on the other side will be Cautopates (the setting sun, associated with the scorpion, the autumnal equinox, the harvest and the down-turned torch of death and darkness).
As we have heard Mithras can symbolize the middle ground of dutiful obedience between these two alternatives. Mithras is associated with the sun at its noonday zenith, and also with the middle of the month and the Solstices. In such a guise Mithras is placed in association with, or the fraternal ally of Sol-Helios-Apollo, the invincible Sun God. When combined with Cautes and Cautopates he forms an immensely powerful trinity of interlocked energies. This was symbolised in many ways: a circle within a triangle, a tree with three branches, three cypress trees on a hillside (or three standing columns) or two torches stacked beside a pine tree. So the cone of Nemrut Dag flanked by its two twin temples can be seen as part of this symbolic Zoroastrian tradition, albeit writ very large.
I sat down again and tried to imagine how the solemn row of seated figures on this mountaintop might have appeared through the eyes of a pilgrim. By some happy coincidence, I was on day four of an involuntary fast, the bi-product of a virulent stomach bug, which put me in the right mood to concentrate on curious little details, such as the outlying figures (almost heraldic in their form) of lion and eagle (or bird of prey) that originally flanked the line of five seated deities on each terrace. Once again, an understanding of Mithraic imagery seemed to offer a key to understanding the architectural forms of Nemrut Dagi. Lion-headed deities, especially when open-mouthed, sexless and frozen in a heiratic form, were used within the Mithraic tradition to express complex Zoroastrian concepts such as infinite time and eternity. In the ritual life of Mithraism these ideas were associated with Saturn (who gets a much better press than the monstrous father of Greek mythology) and with ageless rocks and mountains. In fact one of the titles of Mithras was the new Saturn. Mithras was not born of any woman or fathered by any man but was the new god of light emerging from out of elemental rocks, imagined sometimes in a cave on a mountain. His birthday was symbolically associated with the day of maximum darkness but also the promise of new light, which was the Winter Solstice on December 25th. In some traditions (which would have made emphatic sense on Nemrut Dagi) Mithras is depicted emerging from the summit of a mountain, with a globe of dominion in his hands, witnessed by the four winds combined with the four elements.
The guardian eagle (or raven) headed figures that flank the line of five seated gods at Nemrut Dagi can also be seen as part of Mithraic tradition. The Raven or the Eagle is the Messenger, always associated with magical deities who both trick, guide and teach, such as Hermes, Mercury, Odin and Thoth. It was the special role of the Messenger to call Mithras to his appointed task (which he is reluctant to do) which is to confront and then kill the Bull of Heaven. On Nemrut Dag there is no iconography of this primal scene - for it was almost certainly reserved to a sacred cave. (There are two such locations for such a cave at the foot of the holy mountain, one of them approached through a rock tunnel at Eski Kale.) But from the dozens of excavated Mithreum this scene is well known. Mithras looks away from his victim (which he remains reluctant to kill), so with one foot on the back of the bull, and holding the bull's head, he stabs the bull in the neck from where blood pours. This sacrificial blood is transformed into the sacred wine used in Mithraic communal rituals, while the flesh of the bull gives mythic birth to all the plants on this earth, his tail creates the first crop of corn, while his sperm-filled testicles (once purified by the Moon or another powerful Goddess) is seen as the mythic origin of all the different forms of animal life. The Bull is the primal sacrifice out of which our earth is formed, and which one can connect with the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, but also the lusty Sumerian legend of Gugalanna (the Great Bull of Heaven) who is slain by another deified warrior hero, Gilgamesh and Enkidu. In Sumeria, the Bull is an immensely destructive force, like Poseidon unleashing his tidal waves and earthquakes, but he is also brother to Zeus, the creator and master of heaven. The rituals that surrounded the sacrifice the Bull were part of the yearly cycle of Zoroastrian sacred seasons. This sacrifice was commemorated on the Spring Equinox (March 21st) and arguably remains very much alive under its modern identities: Iranian Nowruz, Christian Easter or Jewish Passover. While the seasonal movement of the stars through the heavens, as mapped through the familiar images of the Zodiac (especially the relationship between the Hunter (Orion), Taurus (The Bull) and Scorpio), are a vital part of this sacred, annual drama.
It was in this frame of mind, that I also recognized that either by chance or by coherent design, that the five-seated statues (King Antiochus, Earth-mother Commagene, Zeus-Orosmades, Apollo-Mithras and Heracles-Artagenes-Ares) can be combined with the two identities of the flanking guardian figures (the Lion and Eagle/Raven) to represent the seven ranks of the Mithraic hierarchy. Seven has always been a powerful number in Zoroastrian teaching. There are seven planets and seven benign spiritual forces ( our archangels) in the Zoroastrian tradition, which gave birth to the seven days of the week and seven graduations of spiritual knowledge. This can be both a metaphor for the journey of the soul through the heavens (patrolled by the seven planets) but was also reflected in the hierarchy of seven ranks by which the Mithraic tradition was expounded.
The first rank of knowledge in Mithraism was associated with the Raven (Latin Corax), the Messenger. As we have already just heard we have a symbol for this on Nemrut Dagi in the pair of Eagles that flank the five thrones.
The Bride (Nymphus) was the second Mithraic rank, placed under the watch of a Goddess and the planet Venus, and whose rituals included choral songs, the wearing of veils and such symbols of emerging light as the torch and the lamp. The Goddess Commagene is an appropriate symbol for this level of knowledge at Nemrut Dagi.
The third Mithraic rank is the Soldier (Miles) under the guidance of the planet Mars, and was conceived as a pious, devout, obedient figure, dressed in a humble brown cloth with a kit bag over his left shoulder and with his lance and helmet at the ready. The statue of Heracles-Artagnes-Ares (Mars) immediately stood forward as the representation of this rank of knowledge.
The fourth Mithraic rank was that of the Lion (Leo), usually depicted in a scarlet cloak and associated with such mystical symbols as the thunderbolts of Jupiter as well as the burning of incense (using fire shovels to tend the sacred fires) and the anointing of honey. As we have already heard we have a pair of Lions flanking the ranks of deities at Nemrut Dagi.
The fifth Mithraic rank was known as the Persian (Perses) who wore a grey cloak, with the sickle and the scythe as his symbols and like Mithras can be depicted in a group of three alongside Cautes and Cautopates. The statue of Apollo-Mithras would perfectly represent this degree of initiation.
The sixth rank, or body of Mithraic teaching was known as the Courier of the Sun (Heliodromos) who is represented with a right hand raised in a greeting, and who is associated with whip, halo and torch, or armed with a long staff and dressed in a red outer garment gathered together by a yellow belt. (Most of these symbols immediately connect us with the style in which the King Antiochus of Commagene is depicted on the carved stone panels). So once again we have an immediately obvious symbol for this Mithraic rank amongst the line of statues that were raised at Nemrut Dagi.
The last figure of authority and instruction in the Mithriac hierarchy is Father (Pater) who is usually depicted with the Phrygian cap of liberty worn by Mithras, the sickle of Saturn and the ring of wisdom. He is steeped in mysticism and knowledge and astrology. From inscriptions found elsewhere, such as “Father of the Fathers from amongst the ten superiors” and “hail all Fathers from east to west under the protection of Saturn” we can guess that some sort of collective spiritual hierarchy existed within Mithraism. The central, bearded statue of Zeus-Oromades is the figure on Nemrut Dagi that would immediately connect a worshipper with these traditions. As one of the royal inscriptions attests, it was King Antiochus’s pious hope that “my body, will sleep in eternal rest separated from the pious soul flying off towards the celestial regions of Zeus-Oromades.”
But if you were not on the summit of a holy mountain at dawn (empowered by an accidental fast) and in the company of Sir Donald McCullin, I can recognise that perhaps these associations between a row of Hellenistic statues and the seven ranks of Mithraic knowledge might feel mere romantic speculation. But this is of no matter, for we are still left with incontrovertible evidence of the influence of Mithraism at the shrine, in the named statue of Apollo-Mithras, and the twinning of the bearded statue Orosmades (the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda - ‘wise ruler of creation”) with Zeus. While the architecture of the sacred space formed from two shrines (one lit by dawn and the other by dusk) on either side of the peak of Mount Nemrut is an incredibly neat fit with the major themes of Mithraic symbolism, Zoroastrian beliefs and seasonal rituals.
Plutarch informs us that the cult of Mithras was first brought to Rome in the same period as the mountain sanctuary of Nemrut Dag was being constructed. The cult of Mithras was brought to Rome by soldiers who had once served in the army of Mithridates as well as ‘Cilician pirates” suppressed by Pompey. It prospered as a cult religion within the Roman army, almost certainly associated with auxiliary cavalry regiments recruited from the Parthian frontier provinces in Anatolia. Livianus, the commander of the Emperor Trajan’s Praetorian Guard (a post of enormous influence) was a follower of Mithras. The system of seven ranks must have appealed to the military mind, alongside the concept of Mithras reluctantly but obediently executing his task. His influence would most certainly have helped it spread throughout the upper ranks in the legions, in charge of two hundred thousand men serving on every frontier of the Empire as well as guarding the city of Rome. The growth in Mithraic influence culminated in 308 AD when the Emperor Diocletian and his four junior Caesars met at a conference where they dedicated an altar to Mithras who was addressed as “the Benefactor of the Empire.” Julian, the last pagan Emperor of Rome, had been initiated into the Mithraic mysteries in Constantinople where he evolved his triple creed as a just ruler, “Goodness towards the People, Piety to the Gods, and in all things Moderation.” The basilica shape of Mithraic sanctuaries, the ritual meals of bread and wine, the organised hierarchy of its priesthood, even the birth of its deity (25th December), its cycle of seven days (concluding with the holy day of the Sun god) and the symbolic holiness of a trinity would be ‘shared’ if not taken over by a rival mystical cult, that of Christianity. This new cult suddenly emerged dominant under the patronage of the Emperor Constantine, who as a young man also respected the cult of the unconquered sun.
Before the reign of Constantine, there is no architectural evidence of any purpose-built Christian buildings (aside from decorated tombs and house altars) in contrast to the dozens upon dozens of Mithraic temples that have been found all over the Empire. In the city of Rome Mithraic chapels have even been found directly beneath the floors of a number of ancient Christian churches (such as San Clemente and at San Prisca), while even such a poor and faraway province as Britannia some very fine examples of Mithraic places of worship have been discovered. The Mithraeum found in Roman London has been beautifully restored and returned to its subterranean site beside the Wallbrook. I have also visited half a dozen other excavated sites, most of them associated with military frontiers. As ever the poverty of what you find, excavated from the mud of a ditch in Roman Britain is in pitiful contrast to the majestic carved stones that decorate a mountain summit in Turkey.
Later that morning, I rejoined my friends. I could see from the face of Don, that he had been equally elated by the place as I had been. I left the mountain of Nemrut Dagi knowing that it was not just a Hellenistic Heroon to a dead monarch but embraced and incorporated aspects of the cult of Mithras. And though the Roman Empire had annexed the Kingdom of Commagene and silenced the sacrifices established on this mountaintop, they would flourish elsewhere. Two hundred years after the altars at Nemrut Dagi had lain quiet, the cult of Mithras had grown to become the most powerful syncretic belief system in the last glorious centuries of the Roman Empire.
The conquered had conquered.
“The carvings of gods and heroes that King Antiochus had commissioned to adorn this mountain have now been weathered by two thousand years of winter snow and the fierce heat of summer.”