Cappadocia: "Land of the Beautiful Horses"

Cappadocia, like Polynesia, “Africa”, Sahara, is such a famous land to be synonym with a stereotype.

The very name makes us thinking of strange looking geological formations, with hot air balloons flying among them. How to tell the story of a voyage in such a well-known place?

Maybe, beginning with its name:  “Land of the beautiful horses”, was called by Persians, and the etymology never fails to inspire a delighted giggle among tourist carried on hack-pulled carts.

The ancient region called Cappadocia, in fact, was much larger than what is now the mere province of Nevsehir. It was rightly famous for horse breeding, and in those times, sparing from the Hittites to the Crusades, it was not a tourist curiosity: when, at the Battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine Emperors lost this region forever, they lost forever the chance to field a cavalry force, until then the core of their military power. Not the battle itself, not the loss of land, but the loss of a strategic asset.

So this region, the very heart of Anatolia, rich with gorgeous agriculture, water, and strategic passes, was the key for dominating Asia Minor. So the anthill looking castles carved inside of imposing rocks, the famed “underground cities”, the valleys dotted with fortifications, had a very different importance in the past centuries…

To “tell” about Cappadocia, it should be seen as a place where people did live in, and where people fought, and died, for.

Landscapes are so peculiar to look unearthly, to the point that they have been often chosen as extra-terrestrial location set for sci-fi movies.

It’s not the vegetation or the human activities to dominate the region, but the earth, in shapes making it to look alive and colors contrasting with the sky. The famed Cappadocian wines seem to sprout directly from the heart of the land, and to taste like its very essence.

Nemrut Dağı : the mountain of dreams.

The mountain is steep, and the stones on the path have been smoothed by visitors feet.

It's still dark, but the billions of stars visible at 2000 meters a.s.l. make the sky so clear that the impression is to climb under a white ceiling. The air is so thin that even at a slow pace, panting is the only noise. It is so dry and cold to make nostrils burn. But right below the top of the mountain, while East is tenuously lighted by the incoming dawn, dark, headless stone giants are waiting. The Gods of the mountain, on their thrones.

Mount Nemrut is unreal.

It must have been such even on that 7th of July, in the year 62 BCE, when the fabulous dream of a sovereign came true. The date is carved on a stone, in the most universal calendar: the position of stars and the crescent moon, and planets Mars, Jupiter and Mercury, in the Lion constellation, on that unique day.

The East Terrace at dawn

The king of Commagene, Anthiocus I Theos, wanted a temple, more, twin temples on the top of this mountain, and he had them built. On a large terrace facing East, stone lions and eagles flank five enormous statues of gods: Anthiocus himself, and Zeus, Tyche, Apollo and Heracle, each represented as the syncretistic version worshipped in that crossroad of ancient cultures. The Lion and the Eagle were the symbol of Commagene, a realm enclosed between the Persian Lion and the Roman Eagle. But all the statues have been beheaded, in time, by lightings and earthquakes.

The East Terrace was the place where common people were summoned for celebrations. No grumpy attitude was allowed in those days, only joy and happiness had to accompany the "fabulous sacrifices" offered to the Gods. Those Gods, like Commagene people, were of mixed heritage: the Greek Zeus has attributes of the Armenian god Orosmasdes, the Persian Ahura-Mazda. Apollo is also Mithra, and has Hermes and Helios attributes, and Heracles is depicted as Ares, the Greek god of Warfare,  and Artagnes, his Armenian counterpart.

The West Terrace

When the sun rises over the ragged edge of the lower mountains at the horizon, its light flows to the statues from below, with all the clearness of pure air. The Gods' heads seems to come to life, with the background of the very strange mountain top.

Walking around that tumulus shaped top to the West Terrace, we meet other heads of the same Gods, also beheaded by earthquakes. Here the limestone of the sculptures is of much better quality: the West Terrace shrine was reserved to aristocrats, and probably to initiated ones. Anthiocus, conscious of its achievement, left detailed instructions carved in rock to be buried here, in the place where everybody had to feel happy, among his Gods, his peers. That explains the unusual shape of the mountain top: it is not only shaped like a tumulus, it is a real one, obtained breaking the rock of the whole peak into fragments. It hides forever the grave of the king who dreamed of all this, and made it true.

The tunnel at Arsameia

Not far from the mountain, other remains from the kingdom of Commagene tell the rest of the story.

At Arsameia, his capital, Anthiocus dedicated a monument to his late father, Mithridates I, depicting him shaking hand with Heracles: just below the bas-relief, a ponderous inscription in Greek alphabet frames the entrance to a mysterious tunnel. It is said that it leads down to the basis of the rock, but after less than 100 meters, we had to turn back, defeated by hanging rocks and sudden holes in the ground.

The kingdom of Commagene did not last long after the death of king Anthiocus. Less than a century later, it was annexed to the Roman Empire for good, and the shrine on top of the mountain fell into neglect. Romans had no attitude for dreaming of  temples among the clouds: the remarkable remain of their domination is a solid stone bridge, still in use, dedicated to Emperor Septimius Severus by the Legio XVI Flavia Firma, sent here to confront the Parthians.

The bridge of Septimius Severus

The time for syncretism and mixed heritage was over, the place was a border again. And later, zealous Byzantine or Islamic iconoclasts took the trouble to deface all the statues, a hard job at this altitude.

Only in 1881 the shrine was rediscovered, to be excavated in 1953 by an American team of archeologists lead by Theresa Goell. Then, in 1987, UNESCO included the mountain among the World Heritage sites: people from at least fifteen countries were there when the sun lighted the East terrace that morning.

Maybe the time to enjoy common heritage has come again.

King Anthiocus, that declared he built the site for ages and generations after him, and wanted only happy people on his mountain, would be pleased.