When the Forschungsstelle Asia Minor was inaugurated at the University of Münster in 1968, its director Friedrich Karl Dörner (1911–1992) had already been working in Com-magene for 30 years 1 It is worth stressing that finding support for such an institution was an amazing achievement, since Dörner’s interest in Eastern Anatolia was decidedly outside the mainstream topics of the fields of Classical Archaeology and Ancient His-tory, which tended to rather simply dismiss outlying cultures and their material culture at this time 2 The history of research on Nemrud Dağ and its place in intercultural per-spectives was repeatedly tainted by negative judgements and still calls for studies in between established academic disciplines The difficulties to describe and categorize Nemrud Dağ already started with Carl Sester’s discovery of Antiochos’ I hierothesion in 1880 3 His wrong attribution of the sculpture as Assyrian, although most probably positively connotated, is telling 4 Osman Hamdy Bey in turn, despite his detection of
“a certain sentiment of art” was irritated by the rough stone and the dimensions of the
1 Dörner visited Commagene the first time in 1937 together with Rudolf Naumann supported by the Reisestipendium of the German Archaeological Institute After World War II he returned to Turkey in 1948 and started to work in Commagene in 1951, cf Dörner 1966, 29–31 On the history of the Forschungsstelle cf Winter 2015
2 On Hellenocentrism and resulting Orientalism and exclusion of research topics in 19th and 20th c
‘Altertumswissenschaften’ cf Hauser 2001a and Hauser 2001b/2009
3 At this point Asia Minor had been barely explored at all, the notable exceptions being Texier who travelled intensely between 1833 and 1837 (Texier 1839–42) and Hamilton 1842 After a break in connection with the Crimean War and its aftermath explorative travels and first attempts to excava-tions resumed coeval with and slightly after the discovery of Nemrud Dağ in 1880, cf Alaura 2006, 16–32 On the history of archaeology in Anatolia, cf Matthews 2011; on research in the ancient Near East in relation to politics in the later 19th/early 20th c , Hauser 2014b
4 In retrospect the idea appears nearly as wishful thinking, as the rediscovery of Assyrian palaces in the 1840s and the sensational exhibition of their reliefs and cuneiform texts in London, Paris and elsewhere, prompted a certain Assyromania On the rediscovery of the Assyrians cf Larsen 1996, on their reception Bohrer 2003
statues and ascribed them to an “époche de decadence” 5 Neither one of them could eas-ily consider them Greek or Hellenistic But even the Pergamum altar, nowadays one of the most famous ensembles of ancient art, which was just being excavated by Carl Hu-man at that time, received very ambivalent reactions in the late 19th century Its sculp-tures were considered of minor, i e , non-classical quality and were not easily accepted as valuable examples of Greek art It turned out that a difficult and lengthy debate about the value, the essence and the fuzzy limits of Greek art was needed before it was ac-quired by Prussia and, much later, assigned a prominent place in the Berlin Museum 6
This should apply even more to the statuary program of Nemrud Dağ, which even Otto Puchstein and Carl Humann – who provided the first detailed description, in-cluding excellent plans of the site as well as outstanding drawings and even plaster casts of sculptures that are now only badly preserved – considered of high value in the local context of Hellenized barbarians, but beyond the limits of Greek art 7 As Miguel John Versluys aptly summarized: they “characterized the Antiochan style as (1) a local phenomenon, that was (2) made by non-Greek artisans, that is (3) artis-tically uninteresting and had (4) something to do with a combination of Greek and Persian, even if ‘empty and meaningless’” 8 No wonder summaries of Greek (and Ro-man) art would refrain from embracing this ‘megalomanic’ work Antiochos I’s visual statement of power only finds consideration in rather recent studies of Hellenistic sculpture, but with obvious reluctance Brunilde Ridgeway concluded that “the un-usual layout and the unique character of the sculptures at Nemrud Dagh may seem of little use for the study of Hellenistic sculpture, except to demonstrate the far-reaching diffusion of Greek iconographic and stylistic details intentionally adopted by a mon-arch who at the same time emphasized his descent from a Persian royal line ”9 And for R R R Smith, the sculptural program of Antiochos I is intentionally blemished by this “hereditary local ruler of Kommagene”, “a Hellenised Iranian, with some Seleucid blood in his veins” 10According to him, the dexiosis relief from Arsameia demonstrates that “the sculptors were clearly capable of carving naked male figures in good koine or naturalistic style, as seen elsewhere in the kingdom; but here, in accordance with the king’s stylistic instructions, they make a vigorous effort to introduce ‘un-Greek’
com-5 Hamdy – Effendi 1883, 17–18
6 On the history and political background of German excavations in Western Turkey and the chang-es in the self-asschang-essment of classical scholarship prompted by the new approach, cf Marchand 1996, 92–115 190–199
7 Humann – Puchstein 1890, 345 For the history of research in Commagene and especially at Nem-rud Dağ cf the detailed review by Brijder 2014, 176–431
8 Versluys 2017, 193
9 Ridgeway 2002, 38 Ridgeway refers to a “fusion of imagery”, in which the “use of Oriental at-tire, esp the tall Persian tiaras, convey a predominantly foreign impression”, while the poses, “the occasional presence of sparse folds” and the parted lips “in keeping with late Hellenistic trends”
demonstrate the Greek influence; Ridgeway 2002, 37 10 Smith 1991, 226–227
ponents, by artificially barbarizing the anatomical scheme There could be no genuine Achaemenid element in such figures, because nudity and naked images had always been anathema to Iranians ”11 As a result “the synthetic style of the sculptures has a certain hollowness that well expresses Antiochos’ dynastic vision The monuments of Kommagene were probably the atypical products of a troubled time and a troubled mind ”12 While largely ostracized from discussions of Greek sculpture and given a poor image, Nemrud Dağ did make its entry into a different world: the Parthian-Persian or Iranian world, as westernmost exponent of the ‘Hellenized Iranian East’
This paper, in its first part, reviews the various arguments for the resilient power-ful image of Antiochos I’s Persian/Iranian connections and his visual program and discusses them in respect to the recently changing image of ‘Arsacid art’, by debating concepts of cultural exchange and bricolage 13 The second part addresses the question of systems of ideas in which Antiochos I’ program was situated and how the images created at and by Nemrud Dağ embody and engage with power, social standing and Roman imperialism 14
Nemrud Dağ as Example of Iranian Religion and Persian/Parthian Art The idea of Nemrud Dağ’s relation to Iranian religion and Persian/Parthian art is gen-erally based on three interwoven arguments: a) the Iranian deities featured and vener-ated in Antiochos’ I hierothesia and temene (‘religion’), b) the supposedly non-Greek, presumably Iranian style of the sculptures (‘art’), and c) the Persian(ite) dress of sculptures and cult personal (‘realia’) lending support to the assumption of some kind of Persian cult All three are presented against the background of the Persian-Achae-menid ancestors mentioned by Antiochos I
a) Religious Connections15
Just when Theresa Goell finished her cleaning of the eastern and western terraces,16 Hans Henning von der Osten surmised in his Die Welt der Perser: “The Iranian cul-tural influence was very strong in this Roman-Parthian frontier area […] The most
11 Smith 1991, 228 On other examples of Orientalist judgements cf Root 1991; Hauser 2001a 12 Smith 1991, 228
13 In this case the entire spectrum of meanings for resilience, from indestructible to elastic, is includ-14 This paper is often forced to reiterate arguments provided in much more detail in the most excel-ed
lent study of M J Versluys 2017 in order to add remarks or argue for different opinions 15 This topic is discussed in more detail and depth by de Jong in this volume
16 Cf Sanders 1996, 35–47; Brijder 2014, 312–381
outstanding monument in this area is the tomb of King Antiochos […] Aside from a number of large scale sculptures he had images of his ancestors, who were mainly of Iranian descent, made in relief Greek was only the appearance [outer garb], i e the make-up and design, but the content is purely Iranian ”17 It is not expressly stated why the content appeared Iranian to him, but since he continues with a discussion of Mithras, his interpretation seems to rely on Antiochos I’s relation to this deity 18 In stressing the Iranianess of Antiochos I through his dexiosis with Mithras, von der Os-ten followed Franz Cumont’s idea, who only six years after Nemrud Dağ’s discovery ar-gued for Commagene as link between the ancient Iranian god and Mithras’ later prom-inence in the Roman Empire 19 A special relationship between Mithras and Antiochos I was repeatedly purported for the simple reasons that both are dressed the same way in the dexiosis reliefs at Nemrud Dağ, although they differ in their headdress; Antiochos I is seen wearing the Armenian five-pointed tiara, while Apollo-Mithras-Helios-Hermes wears the typical upright cap (‘tiara’?) used in Roman representations of ‘Parthians’
(Sun) rays emanate from behind his head high-lighting his Helios-persona The im-age of a genuinely Iranian religious setting was taken up by various scholars 20 During
17 von der Osten 1956, 113: “der iranische Kultureinfluß war in diesem römisch-parthischen Grenz-gebiet äußerst stark […] Das weitaus großartigste Monument aus diesem Gebiet ist das Grabmal des Königs Antiochus I […] Außer einer Reihe von Großskulpturen hat er dort auf Relieftafeln seine Ahnen abbilden lassen, die vorwiegend iranischen Ursprungs waren Griechisch ist nur das äußere Gewand, das heißt die handwerkliche Ausführung und Gestaltung, der Inhalt aber ist rein iranisch ” It is funny to observe that for von der Osten the rather fragile argument for Iranian de-scent on Antiochos I father’s side took precedence over the clear sequence of his mother’s Greek ancestors His position can be supported by Str 11,14,16: “The sacred rites of the Persians are held in honor by both Medes and Armenians ”
18 von der Osten 1956, 113: “Auf der einen Relieftafel erscheint Antiochos I , wie er Mithra-Helios zur Bestätigung des Lehnsverhältnisses die Hand reicht ” I refrain from a discussion of the idea of feudal relations Whether there is more than an assumed connection of the Iranian god and Zoro-astrianism with the Roman Mithras cult is an open question While the ‘Persian clothing’ of the deity in Roman contexts clearly insinuates an Iranian background, there is no indication that the idea behind the god and its cult show any continuity The debate cannot be taken up in detail here Severe criticism of Cumont started among specialists in the 1960s, cf Beck 2002, although some defend a connection between Commagene and the Roman cult of Mithras According to Beck 1998 Antiochos I played a major role in the transformation of Mithras worship by his equation of Mithras with Helios, and paved the way for the later transfer of Mithraism to Rome in connection with the deposition of Commagene’s last king Antiochos IV and his relocation to Rome in 72 CE 19 Cumont 1896/1898
20 Cf Duchesne-Guillemin 1984, 17: “Die Wichtigkeit Mithras ist in Kommagene offenbar Erstens ist er der einzige Gott, dem ein spezieller Priester gewidmet ist; zweitens nennt der König sich selbst gerecht (δίκαιος, ein beliebtes Epitheton Mithras); drittens trägt der König Mithras Gewand und Halsband; viertens will Antiochos die Nemrud-Dagh-Anlage als ein zweites Delphi verstanden wissen Darüber hinaus geschah vermutlich, wie wir sahen, die Nemrud-Dagh-Stiftung unter as-trologischem Einfluß, und bekanntlich spielte die Astrologie in den römischen Mithrasmysterien eine große Rolle ” None of these arguments appears fully convincing in my view On the other hand, Duchesne-Guillemin 1984, 13, acknowledges that the deities appear “zuallererst als griechi-sche oder makedonigriechi-sche Götter mit einem dünnen iranigriechi-schen Firnis”
her excavations at Nemrud Dağ, Goell felt forced to identify a highly suspicious fire- altar 21 And also Dörner was enthralled by the idea of Iranian connections Otherwise it would be difficult to understand his interpretation of the 158 m long tunnel at Ar-sameia, which ended in a kind of chamber, as being connected to some Mithras cult in which the king should have appeared from the depths as ‘Epiphanes’ and ‘reborn of Mithra’ 22 It is interesting to note the preparedness of many scholars to look for Iranian traits to the demise of the Greek component, although the latter was obviously at least as important Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin and Bruno Jacobs tried to demonstrate on various occasions that the religious program originally concentrated on Greek deities and that the ‘Iranian’ component was added only during the ‘syncretistic’ reconfigu-ration 23 But regardless of chronology, the important point is that Antiochos I clearly felt the need to make sure that everybody, not only those with a more western ‘Hellen-istic’ background, but also people in the East, understood that his divine support was supreme Therefore, he created deities of high complexity as indicated by their com-binatory names However, the fact that all images of these deities were accompanied by inscriptions detailing their names should be interpreted as evidence that these ex-planations were considered necessary, because otherwise neither the population nor visitors from outside might have (fully) understood their significance 24
But because the interesting aspect of the syncretistic deities is their comprehensibil-ity within various communicative or religious traditions25, the isolation of and empha-sis on Mithras in earlier research appears misguided Concentrating on Mithras not only dismisses the divine aspects of Apollo, Helios and Hermes, it also leaves aside the other ‘syncretistic’ deities represented in dexiosis reliefs and as monumental statues,
21 Brijder 2014, 348–354 Goell’s perspective is summarized by Jacobs 1996, 348: “Bei der religions-historischen Einordnung betonte Goell stärker die iranischen Traditionen Allerdings werden Be-griffe wie ‘Feuerkult’ und ‘Feueraltar’ (z B S 144 f ) schlagwortartig und völlig unreflektiert ge-handhabt; wenn Mithraskult und Feuerverehrung miteinander in Verbindung gebracht werden (S 146), wenn das Barsombündel als Symbol des Heiligen Feuers apostrophiert wird, das während
‘Persian-Mithraic religious sacrifices’ gebraucht wurde (S 101), wird deutlich, daß das Verständnis der orientalischen Komponente eher unscharf blieb ”
22 Dörner 1966, 75 (and several other times since 1960, e g Dörner 1991, 351): “Hier in der Tiefe der Erde entsühnte der König – so scheint es – sich und sein Volk als ein ‘Epiphanes’, wie der Beiname des Königs von Kommagene lautet, das heißt als eine sichtbare Erscheinung göttlichen Wirkens, als ein Wiedergeborener des Gottes Mithras ” The idea was originally prompted by the failure to reach any water source as expected Doubtful about this pre-Mithraeum already Duchesne-Guille-min 1984, 18
23 Duchesne-Guillemin 1984, 17; Jacobs 2012b, 103, but cf Versluys 2017, 178–182, questioning the chronological evidence
24 For a related idea cf Kropp 2013, 315, who remarked that “to the native Aramaic-speaking popula-tion […] one set of gods was as alien […] as the other” But cf the contribupopula-tion of Jacobs in this volume correctly cautioning against Kropp’s direct correlation of language and ethnicity which is the basis for his suggestion
25 This does not necessarily imply that these specific syncretisms were easily comprehended by con-temporaries and accepted outside their Commagenian context
especially Oromazdes-Zeus, whose place in the middle of the line-up of statues on the Nemrud Dağ terraces was certainly not accidental 26
b) ‘Parthian Art’
For other scholars, the images themselves and art historical arguments took prece-dence over religious aspects in the connection between Antiochos I’s sculptural pro-gram and Iranian or Persian heritage Von der Osten’s estimate of a mixture of cultures was entirely shared by Roman Ghirshman in his monumental handbook Iran Parther und Sasaniden, but the direction of the arguments differed 27 Aside from the Zoroastri-an pZoroastri-antheon, he stressed the IrZoroastri-aniZoroastri-an attire of the former kings, their tiara, Zoroastri-and the bar-som of the gods, as well as the “taste for the colossal, which follows a tradition that had been created in the past and was resumed by Achaemenid artists” He concluded: “But they also prove the infiltration of new currents, the influence of the Parthian world, which extended fast in these frontier zones of the empire ”28 Still, Ghirshman refrained from calling the sculpture from Nemrud Dağ ‘Parthian art’
The question of ‘Parthian art’ was originally posed by Gerhard Rodenwaldt, who, following Riegl’s idea of ‘Kunstwollen’, argued in the 1920s that Roman art was more than just (poor) copies of the Greek ideal In 1931 he wrote: “The problem of Parthian art or rather the Art of the Parthian Empire is one of the most acute, but also one of the most difficult in archaeology What do we understand as Parthian culture? Did it exist at all? Rostovtzeff answered this question already by calling the culture of Pal-myra nearly completely Parthian From him, as the foremost expert on these frontier areas, we could expect [can hope for] the decisive advancement of this problem ”29 Being nudged that vigorously, Rostovtzeff complied In his seminal study Dura and
26 His central position in turn led some scholars to claim that the whole hierothesion was strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism, e g Sommer 2005, 60 Facella 2006, 291–293, convincingly argues that there was nothing Zoroastrian (or Persian) to the cult than the added names Neither in Nem-rud Dağ nor in any other place in Commagene exists any evidence for Magoi or sacred fires On Zoroastrianism in the Arsacid period cf de Jong 2015 and in this volume
27 Ghirshman’s book was published in several languages in 1962 My translations from the German version sometimes differ slightly from those provided by Versluys 2017, who translated from the Italian version, both in turn mirror the different translations from the original French into Italian and German
28 Ghirshman 1962, 67–68
29 Rodenwaldt 1931, 291: “Das Problem der parthischen Kunst oder richtiger der Kunst des Parther-reiches ist eins der akutesten, aber auch schwierigsten der Archäologie Was verstehen wir unter parthischer Kultur? Hat es überhaupt eine solche gegeben? Rostovtzeff hat die Frage schon beant-wortet, indem er die Kultur Palmyras als fast vollständig parthisch bezeichnet Von ihm als dem berufensten Kenner dieser Grenzgebiete dürfen wir die entscheidende Förderung dieses Prob-lems erhoffen, [dessen Lösung für die Geschichte der spätantiken Kunst von größter Wichtigkeit wäre] ” On the problem of ‘Parthian art’ see Hauser 2014a; Jacobs 2014, 77–82; Dirven 2016
the Problem of Parthian Art (1935), he defined ‘Parthian art’ as an art characterized by a strict frontal representation and by an inherent spirituality expressed in “the large piercing eyes, full of religious fervor and enthusiasm” 30 Rostovtzeff argued that this art was furthermore characterized by linearity and increasingly schematic rendering of figural contours and drapery – in contrast to the more natural Greek rendering of bod-ies – and ethnographic realism/verism with love for detail in dress or weaponry 31 The result seemed “no longer almost Greek, with a slight Achaemenid touch”, but “much more Iranized, much more Parthian ”32
For Rostovtzeff this was not “merely a barbarized and degenerate version of the Graeco-Mesopotamian art of the Hellenistic period”33, but the essence of a particu-lar material culture, ‘Parthian art’ in its own right, which he saw as an expression of neo-Iranian identity “The discussion of the material culture thus served to support
For Rostovtzeff this was not “merely a barbarized and degenerate version of the Graeco-Mesopotamian art of the Hellenistic period”33, but the essence of a particu-lar material culture, ‘Parthian art’ in its own right, which he saw as an expression of neo-Iranian identity “The discussion of the material culture thus served to support