Antiochus I Theos of Commagene

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Antiochus I of Commagene, shaking hands with Herakles. 69-31 BCE. British Museum.

Antiochus I Theos Dikaios Epiphanes Philorhomaios Philhellen (69–40 BC), was the most important king of the small Hellenistic kingdom of Commagene, which was situated in a region that is now in south-eastern Turkey and currently inhabited largely by ethnic Kurds.

Antiochus was the son of king Mithridates I Callinicus and the Seleucid princess Laodice, daughter of the Syrian King Antiochus VIII. This marriage had been arranged as part of a settlement by Mithradates' father Samos II to ensure peace between the Kingdom of Commagene and the Seleucid Empire.

Antiochus tried to balance the interests of his kingdom with the reality of the world power of the Roman Empire and preserve as much as possible Commagene's independence. Despite his efforts, his reign ended with the Commagene submitting to Rome, becoming a client-state under Emperor Augustus.

Anthiochus was a king who took his religion, a Hellenized form of Zoroastrianism, very seriously. He left behind a large number of Greek inscriptions, revealing many aspects of the royal cult he promoted. The kings of Commagene claimed descent from both the Persian and Selucid royal houses, therefore the gods they worshipped were a syncretism of Greek and Persian deities, some of them were personifications of the Sun, Moon and planets. He is said to have practised astrology of a very esoteric kind, and laid the basis for a calendrical reform, by linking the Commagene year, which till then had been based on the movements of the Moon, to the Sothic (Star of Sirius) cycle used by the Egyptians as the basis of their calendar. This would suggest that Antiochus was knowledgeable about, if not fully initiated into the Hermetic tradition.

Today Antiochus is most famous for founding the impressive sanctuary of Nemrud Dagi, which is close to the city of Kahta on a road leading to Mount Nimrod. Its most important monument is his so-called Hierothesion, where his remains were buried. It was constructed not to be a simple tomb but as a place where he would gather his people for religious festivities connected with either his birthday or coronation. Forgotten for centuries, it was excavated in 1883 by a German team of archeologists.

Kahta, the gateway to the lost kingdom of Commagene, is situated north of the modern Turkish civil engineering project Ataturk Baraji (Dam), which distributes the waters of the Euphrates River. Unfortunately, the lake it formed drowned Commagene's original capital of Samosata, built by Samos I in the early 3rd century B.C.