Karakuş (Commagene)
The Karakuş burial mound (Turkish for black bird i. E. Imperial eagle ) is located about ten kilometers north of Kâhta in the Turkish province of Adıyaman , on the road leading to Nemrut Dağı . It represents a hierothesion for female members of the royal family of Kommagene .
Coordinates: 37 ° 52 ′ 10 ″ N , 38 ° 35 ′ 17 ″ E
Burial mound
The burial mound was laid out by Mithridates II (r. 38-20 BC), the son of Antiochus I, for his mother Isias, his sisters Laodike and Antiochis and their daughter Aka. It is an artificially heaped tumulus made of gravel stones about 35 m high and about 110 meters in diameter. It contains the only burial chamber previously found in the Commagenic Hierothesia, which Friedrich Karl Dörner was able to detect through drilling in 1967 . However, the rooms had already been looted in ancient times. In the course of the drilling, Dörner discovered that large quantities of the valuable dolomitic blocks had been removed. They had been used by Roman legionaries in the second century AD to build the nearby Chabinas Bridge .
columns
The hill was originally flanked by three pairs of Ionic columns to the south, northwest and northeast. They stand on 0.60 meter high plinths , are over 7 meters high and have a diameter of 1.70 meters. In the north-east both columns are still preserved, one of which carries a bull, while the other has an inscription through which three of the buried could be identified. In the northwest there is a column with a dexiosis relief , which probably shows Laodike and Mithridates. It is the only known dexiosis from Kommagene that depicts a woman. On the abacus of the column, eight meters high, there is another inscription, which Jörg Wagner could only decipher in 1979. It mentions Laodike, the second daughter of Antiochus, who was married to Orodes II, king of the Parthians . This enabled the complex to be assigned to Mithridates II, after Dörner had initially assigned it to Mithridates Kallinikos , the father of Antiochus I. The second, destroyed column in the northwest bore an image of a lion, the head of which is still nearby. Finally, the southern column bears an eagle sculpture that gives the entire burial mound its name.
A burial chamber was also uncovered in the burial mound of Sesönk , about 60 kilometers southwest near the Euphrates . There is, however, disputed whether it is a commagenic hierothesion or a Roman grave monument.
Research history
The hill was first mentioned by Helmuth von Moltke in his letters from Turkey . According to his reports, Heinrich Kiepert had already marked “two pillars” in his map of Asia Minor in 1842. Next, the German archaeologist Otto Puchstein and the engineer Karl Sester visited the Karakuş during their first exploration of the Kingdom of Kommagene in 1882 , and Puchstein again a year later, this time accompanied by the classical archaeologist Karl Humann . The inscription on the northeast pillar was discovered and recorded here. Finally, FK Dörner first examined the hierothesion on his Nemrut-Dağ expedition in 1938 and later in the 1960s, whereby the second inscription could be found but not yet read. He had mining engineers drive a shaft in the hill with a drill and discovered a collapsed chamber. Today, however, it is doubted whether this was actually the burial chamber sought or whether it was, as with other tumuli in northern Syria, under the heaped up hill.
Burial mounds from the south
Eagle sculpture
Bull sculpture on a pair of pillars in the northeast
Dexiosis on north-west column, probably Laodike and Mithridates
literature
- Friedrich Karl Dörner : The throne of the gods on the Nemrud Dağ. Kommagene - the great archaeological adventure in eastern Turkey. 2nd, expanded edition. Gustav Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1987, ISBN 3-7857-0277-9 .
- Michael Blömer, Engelbert Winter : Commagene. The Land of Gods Between the Taurus and the Euphrates. An Archaeological Guide (= Homer Archaeological Guides. Volume 11). Homer Kitabevi, Istanbul 2011, ISBN 978-9944-483-35-3 , pp. 96-99.
