On the summit of Nemrut Dağ, at a little over two thousand metres in the Taurus mountains of south-eastern Turkey, a king ordered his own sanctuary to be built, and the result is one of the strangest sights in the world. Antiochus I, ruler of the small kingdom of Commagene in the first century BC, wanted to be remembered among the gods. He had an artificial mound of crushed stone raised over his tomb, about fifty metres high, and in terraces on its east and west sides he set colossal seated statues, some eight to nine metres tall, of himself, of Greek and Persian gods, of a lion and an eagle. Over the centuries earthquakes and frost brought the heads tumbling off, and they now sit on the ground in rows, staring out across the terrace with calm stone faces.
The mix of gods reflects Commagene's position at the meeting of empires: Zeus is merged with the Persian Ahura Mazda, Apollo with Mithras, and Heracles with Ares, and the king claims descent from both Persian and Macedonian dynasties. The kingdom was swallowed by Rome in the following century, and the mountain was forgotten until a German engineer found it in 1881. The site is a World Heritage property, and people climb at sunrise and sunset, when the light turns the stone gold and the plains below fill with shadow.
Roads up the mountain wind through bare, rounded hills and small villages, and the last section to the car park is steep, with tight bends and a narrower surface, so it needs care. The road is generally open from about April or May to October, and snow can block it well into spring. Nights are cold even in summer, and the wind on the summit is sharp. Allow time for a short walk from the car park up the final slope, over loose stones.
Fuel is not available on the mountain. The larger towns are Kâhta, about thirty kilometres away, and Adıyaman, and Sincik has basic shops. Fill up before you start. On the way, the Roman Cendere Bridge, built for the emperor Septimius Severus, spans a gorge with three of its original four columns, and it is worth a stop.