Lennart Kruijer, özellikle Kommagene Krallığı’na (modern Adıyaman bölgesi) odaklanarak, Helenistik ve Erken Roma dönemlerinde (yaklaşık MÖ 3. yy-MS 2. yy) Kuzey-Suriye’deki küreselleşme süreçlerinin ve imparatorluk dinamiklerinin etkisiyle ilgilenen bir arkeologdur. Tezinde, krallığın başkenti Samosata’daki sosyo-kültürel değişimi anlamak için Yeni Materyalist bir yaklaşım geliştirerek, ısrarcı “Doğu’da Helenizm” kavramına yeni ve daha temsili bir “topluluk perspektifi” sağlamıştır. Şu anki projesi, MÖ 1. yüzyıl mezar-kutsal alanı “Arsameia-on-the-Nymphaios” ile kuzey Kommagene’deki Kahta Çayı vadisini çevreleyen bölge arasındaki ilişkileri incelemektedir. Çalışmanın ana amacı, son derece yenilikçi Kommagene hükümdar kültünün yerleşikliğini daha iyi anlamak, çevredeki peyzajın bu ‘kozmopolit’ kült alanını nasıl barındırdığını ve karşılığında ondan nasıl etkilendiğini araştırmaktır. Bunu, F.K. Dörner’in mezar-kutsal alan ve çevresinde yürüttüğü kazılar ve saha araştırmalarından elde edilen ve şimdiye kadar yayımlanmamış verilerden oluşan Dörner Arşivi’ndeki (Forschungsstelle Asia Minor) malzemelerin eleştirel bir analizini yaparak gerçekleştiriyor. Bu paha biçilmez kültürel miras verisi kaynağının ortaya çıkarılmasıyla, MÖ 3. yy ile MS 2. yy arasında kutsal alan çevresindeki kırsal peyzajın bölgeler arası entegrasyon derecesine ilişkin sorular ilk kez araştırılabilecektir. Bunu yaparken, bu araştırma benzersiz bir şekilde Kommagene hükümdar kültünü, geleneksel olarak ele alındığı büyük ölçüde kraliyet ve elit merceklerinden daha geniş bir sosyal bağlama yerleştirmeye çalışmaktadır. Bu sayede proje, Helenistik dönem küreselleşme süreçlerinin ve bunların genellikle kozmopolit sonuçlarının Anadolu ve ötesindeki hanedan (kült) alanları ile çevreleri arasındaki dinamikleri nasıl etkilediğinin daha iyi anlaşılmasına katkıda bulunacaktır.
Cosmopolitan Islands? Investigating the Local Embeddedness of Dynastic and Cultic Innovation in Late-Hellenistic Commagene
Lennart Kruijer
During my stay at ANAMED, I examined the local and regional embeddedness of royal cult sites in Late Hellenistic Commagene through the lens of their sculptural reliefs and palatial architecture. Scholarship on the Late Hellenistic kingdom of Commagene (modern southeastern Turkey) has long been fascinated by the culturally complex character of its royal cult sites, most famously that of Nemrut Dağı. The monumental (tomb-)sanctuaries (hierothesia and temene), commissioned by king Antiochos I (ca. 69–36 BCE), bring together a wide range of styles, iconographies, and concepts usually associated with, among others, “Greek” and “Persian” cultural traditions. In some cases, this cultural eclecticism was clearly consciously intended, with the colossal statues of the gods and the king, depicted, as the accompanying Great Cult Inscription explicates, “according to the ancient logos of the Persians and Hellenes.”[1]
Whereas earlier research characterized this stylistic complexity as sprouting from the mind of a marginal, isolated, and megalomaniac king or the curious continuity of a neo-Hittite cultural cell, recent scholarship presents Antiochos I as intentionally adopting and combining cultural elements from across Afro-Eurasia.[2] This new perspective overcomes the problematic dualistic conceptualizations of Commagene as a “bridge between East and West” and directs attention to the local agency and trans-regional, even global, context of Commagene’s cultural formation, demonstrating that the cultural strategies of its kings can be compared to those of other (royal) Afro-Eurasian agents.[3] Although this recent global turn has had a stimulating effect on our understanding of the kingdom and its trans-regional relations, the project I conducted at ANAMED has attempted to integrate this perspective more fully with the now somewhat neglected embeddedness of the region and its past. Were these (tomb-)sanctuaries really entirely cosmopolitan islands, lonely beacons of global, uprooted culture? Instead of solely emphasizing Commagene’s contemporary, “globalized” connections and treating its royal visual program as a culturally rootless phenomenon, this project has drawn attention to the ways that the kingdom’s regional connections and deeper history added to its cultural emergence. As such, it offers a valuable case study and conceptual shift for our understanding of cultural formation in first century BCE western Asia, a period and place that is still dominated by the problematically Eurocentric notion of “hellenization.”
The project has focused particularly on the sculptural and architectural evidence for the local embeddedness of dynastic and cultic innovation, drawing on three datasets: the first one is the so-called Dörner Archive (Forschungsstelle Asia Minor, Münster University), pertaining to archaeological explorations by Friedrich Karl Dörner in northern Commagene in the 1960s, especially in and around the hierothesion of Arsameia on the Nymphaios (see Fig. 1). The other corpus of legacy data is the Özgüç Archive, held at Middle East Technical University in Ankara and the result of explorations by Nimet Özgüc in the Samsat area (ancient Samosata) in the 1980s.[4] The latter in particular is also connected to finds currently stored in the depot of the Adıyaman Archaeological Museum, some of which I have already studied in previous years.[5] These corpora provide largely unpublished documentation (pictures, descriptions, maps, slides) and material from excavations and surveys that add significantly to the pre-existing archaeological record. In the remainder of this short report, I would like to highlight some examples of what these datasets have to offer in terms of the questions raised above.
The available evidence for figurative stelai and rock-cut reliefs from Commagene sheds an interesting light on the issue of local embeddedness in Commagene. This find category falls into two distinctive groups: reliefs produced in the Hellenistic period and earlier reliefs, which broadly date to the Iron Age but, importantly, show evidence for reuse or endurance into the first century BCE. Starting with the latter, there is a substantial corpus available for earlier, pre-Hellenistic stelai and rock-cut reliefs that survived into the Late Hellenistic period and subsequently became integrated into Antiochan dynastic contexts.[6] Several of the Antiochan temene and hierothesia were in fact erected in or in close relation to pre-existent Iron Age cult sites, for instance at Doliche, Boybeypinari, Palaş on the Euphrates, Samosata, Ancoz, and Arsameia on the Euphrates. This suggests that local religious topographies were to some extent integrated into the Late Hellenistic ruler cult. These contexts, moreover, often provide evidence for a very conscious engagement with such earlier cult sites and associated rock-cut reliefs or stelai. A Greek inscription at Arsameia on the Euphrates, for instance, explicitly mentions (G 50) an older sacred precinct of an Iron Age goddess called Argandene, while at the temenos of Ancoz, a so-called dexiosis relief for Antiochos I was found in relation to Luwian inscriptions referring to an Iron Age shrine dedicated to the gods Kubaba and Runtiyas.[7] Whereas in many of these instances it remains unclear whether these early Iron Age, Syro-Hittite sanctuaries were actually still in use when Antiochos I commissioned his temene, this can in fact be largely confirmed in the case of the Antiochan temenos at the large Iron Age sanctuary of Dülük Baba Tepesi in southern Commagene, near the modern city of Gaziantep.[8]
By integrating this corpus with the available evidence for Late Hellenistic stelai and reliefs related to the Antiochan cult, significant connections become apparent. The latter group of stelai and reliefs contain several iconographic and stylistic elements that seem to draw their inspiration from earlier Iron Age models. A good example of this cultural strategy is a relief depicting the second century BCE Commagenian king Samos II, located on a very visible rock facing at the hierothesion of Arsameia on the Euphrates (see Fig. 2). It was carved in the mid-first century BCE under king Antiochos I yet executed in a style and iconography reminiscent of several of the enduring Iron Age reliefs that, by the first century BCE, scattered the Commagenian landscape in still-visible locations (e.g. Karasu in central Commagene). A comparable case is offered by the ancestral reliefs, found in multiple hierothesia, depicting the (partially imagined) maternal and paternal ancestries of king Antiochos I in long rows of basalt stelai. In these cases, we seem to be dealing with a conscious iconographic and stylistic engagement with a long-lasting local tradition of relief sculpture that was further enhanced by a specific compositional practice of setting up long uninterrupted rows of stelai. The procession-like effect that ensued from this is, for instance, also encountered in the Iron Age site of Arslan Tash just southeast of Commagene.[9]
The embedding of cultural elements with deep local and regional genealogies into the highly innovative cultural assemblage of king Antiochos I is not solely encountered in its sculptural reliefs. Several of the hierothesia contained larger palatial structures, which were most likely partially used as royal residences but also seem to have been employed as cultic spaces, hosting the large-scale sacred banquets which we know formed an important part of the Commagenean ruler cult. These palaces, where the power, prestige, and royal ideologies of the Commagenean dynasty were manifested, contained local elements amidst their highly innovative and trans-regional “objectscapes.”[10] The palatial structures in the hierothesion of Arsameia on the Nymphaios and in Samosata—perhaps connected to an Antiochan temenos—form the most well-documented examples. These elaborately decorated structures consist of many object types that are entirely novel to the region, such as tessellated mosaic floors and polychrome wall painting in so-called Masonry style (Fig. 3). Here too, however, we can discern active attempts to integrate architectural and decorative elements that did not at all have a widespread character.
In both Samosata and Arsameia on the Nymphaios, there is, for instance, evidence for so-called peripheral corridors, which ran along the edges of these structures and seemed to have had very limited accessibility. This architectural element is not seen in the Hellenistic palaces of the Macedonian dynasties but also cannot be considered a standard element in Persian or satrapal counterparts. Only on a more regional level, especially in the neighboring kingdom of Sophene, do we see this particular spatial constellation employed in several cultic structures. A second, telling example is offered by so-called chequerboard mosaics (see also Fig. 3), which are typically located in the narrow corridors of these palaces. Surprisingly, this mosaic iconography is not found in the Mediterranean at this time and instead seems to be rather restricted to a local and regional genealogy, with Iron Age comparanda, for instance, encountered in the courtyard pebble mosaic of nearby Tille Höyük.[11] Contrary to the sculptural evidence, then, in these palatial contexts, the adoption of local elements appears to be restricted to places of movement and relatively marginal spaces.
Taken together, these corpora allow for a novel reading of socio-cultural transformations happening in first century BCE Commagene and also shed light on the character of cultural strategies taken by the western Asian minor kings more broadly. Although there has been a strong historiographic tradition in seeing the kings and queens of these “client kingdoms” as “hellenizers” (and later “romanizers”), it seems that more complex cultural processes and strategies were at play. Rather than adopting and imposing clear-cut cultural packages such as “Hellenism” or “Persianism,” what we appear to witness instead is a more unpredictable, contingent selection of an ever-expanding material repertoire, resulting in the emergence of unique yet thoroughly relational assemblages that were local and trans-local at the very same time. The coming together of objects with very diverse local, regional, and trans-regional genealogies likely afforded the Commagenean kings with the possibility to negotiate the wildly different social, cultural, and political groups whose support (or submission) were essential for the survival of the kingdom in the political whirlwind that was first century BCE western Asia. Rather than a simple case of continued tradition, then, the occurrence of local forms in first c. BCE Commagene appears to have emerged from profound changes happening on a trans-local scale, as well.
[1] See Herman Brijder, Nemrud Dağı. Recent Archaeological Research and Conservation Activities in the Tomb Sanctuary on Mount Nemrud (Boston: De Gruyter, 2014), n. 71.
[2] E.g. Miguel John Versluys, Visual Style and Constructing Identity in the Hellenistic World. Nemrud Dağ and Commagene under Antiochos I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Michael Blömer, Miguel John Versluys, Stefan Riedel, and Engelbert Winter, Common Dwelling Place of All the Gods. Commagene in its Local, Regional and Global Hellenistic Context (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2021).
[3] E.g. Andreas Kropp, Images and Monuments of Near Eastern Dynasts, 100 BC–AD 100 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[4] I thank Prof. Dr. Aliye Öztan and Prof. Dr. Tayfun Yıldırım for allowing me to study and publish the documentation of Nimet Özgüç’s archive.
[5] I thank the director of the museum, Mehmet Alkan, for allowing me to study the Özgüç materials in the museum depot.
[6] See Michael Blömer, “Religious Life of Commagene in the Late Hellenistic and Early Roman Period,” in:The Letter of Mara Bar Sarapion in Context. Proceedings of the Symposium Held at Utrecht University, 10–12 December 2009, eds. A. Merz and T. Tieleman (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 103–9.
[7] Anke Schütte-Maischatz, “Götter und Kulte Kommagenes. Religionsgeographische Aspekte einer antiken Landschaft,” in Religion und Region. Götter und Kulte aus dem östlichen Mittelmeerraum, eds. Elmar Schwertheim and Engelbert Winter (Bonn: Habelt Verlag, 2003), 111–12.
[8] Excavations by the Forschungsstelle Asia Minor (Münster University) have provided archaeological evidence for uninterrupted cultic activity at this sanctuary from the early Iron Age (ninth century BCE) deep into the late Roman period. See Michael Blömer and Engelbert Winter, Commagene. An Archaeological Guide (Istanbul: Homer Kitabevi, 2011).
[9] F. Thureau-Dangin, A. Barrois, G. Dossin, and M. Dunand, Arslan-Tash (Paris: Guethner, 1931).
[10] This is an argument I developed in a forthcoming article that I finalized during my stay at the ANAMED, cf. Lennart Kruijer, “Disjunctive Globalization and Regional Genealogies in the Palaces of Commagene: ‘Court Life à la Grecque’?,” in Trans-Regional Encounters. Kingdoms and Principalities of the Taurus, Zagros, and Caucasus Regions between 300 BCE and 200 CE, eds. M. Blömer, M. Marciak, and T. Schreiber (Wiesbaden: Classica et Orientalia). In a forthcoming monograph on the palace of Samosata, I provide an objectscape-analysis of the palace of Samosata, cf. Lennart Kruijer, The Late-HellenisticPpalace of Samosata. Objectscapes, Ancient Globalization and Cultural Transformation in Commagene (4th c. BCE–1st c. CE) (Bonn: Habelt Verlag, 2023).
[11] Stuart Blaylock, Tille Höyük 3. The Iron Age: Introduction, Stratification and Architecture (London: British Institute at Ankara, 2009), 134, 136–38, fig. 7.6.