Karakuş (“Black Bird”) — a hierothesion of the Orontid dynasty in the Nymphaios valley
In south-eastern Turkey, in the Kâhta district of Adıyaman Province, on the territory of historical Commagene, stands the Karakuş tumulus. According to the English Wikipedia, it is a funerary monument of the hierothesis type, which King Mithridates II of Commagene built around 30–20 BCE near the modern village of Çukurtaş. The Turkish name means “black bird”: the monument is named after a column crowned with an eagle statue.
Karakuş is often called the “women’s tomb” of the royal house of Commagene. In style and idea it is close to the famous sanctuary on Mount Nemrut, built by Mithridates II’s father, Antiochus I. Below we look at who is buried here, what the inscriptions say, and where the sources diverge.
According to the description on Turkish Archaeo News, the mound was surrounded by three groups of three Doric columns, to the north-east, north-west and south. The tumulus is about 25 m high and the columns about 9 m (source); they were topped with steles, reliefs and sculptures of a bull, a lion and an eagle. The southern column with the eagle survives to this day: it consists of seven drums, and the eagle is 2.54 m tall (description).
The north-western column carries a handshake relief (dexiosis): King Mithridates II and his sister Laodice. Laodice is shown in a Greek chiton with her head veiled; Mithridates is in eastern dress, with a tiara. After the 2023 earthquake this column, according to Wikipedia, citing the Turkish press, collapsed.
The burial chamber inside the mound was later plundered; according to one version, some of the stone blocks were reused in building the first Cendere Bridge. Wikipedia links the looting to the period after Vespasian annexed Commagene in 72 CE.
The main source is the Greek inscription on the central column, commissioned by Mithridates II himself. It names three women: the king’s mother, his sister and his niece. The same follows from the article on Antiochis and from the article on the tumulus itself.
Isias was a Cappadocian princess by birth, the daughter of King Ariobarzanes I and Queen Athenais Philostorgos I. The epithet Philostorgos means “loving”. By marrying Antiochus I Theos she became queen of Commagene. Very little is known about her: mostly what the inscription and the memorial inscriptions to her children tell us. She died, by estimate, between the late 30s and early 20s BCE.
According to genealogical compilations, Isias and Antiochus I had five children: Mithridates II (the future king), Laodice, Antiochus II, Antiochis, and one more daughter who married a ruler of Atropatene (in the sources she is called Athenais or, hypothetically, Isias II).
Antiochis of Commagene was the second daughter of Antiochus I and Isias. Her husband’s identity is unknown, and almost nothing of her life has survived. The inscription on the tumulus, as English Wikipedia renders it, calls her the most beautiful of women, whose life was short but whose honours were long-lasting. She died, apparently, in the 30s or early 20s BCE and was buried together with her mother and daughter.
Aka was the daughter of Antiochis and therefore the granddaughter of Isias and Antiochus I. The inscription mentions her as a “daughter’s daughter” of the royal family; there is practically no independent information about her life. The fact that the king placed next to his mother and grandmother a girl who never became a ruler shows how important the female line was for the dynasty.
Some lists give Laodice, the sister of Mithridates II, as a fourth woman. Here we have to be precise, because the sources differ.
What is firmly known. Laodice was the eldest daughter of Antiochus I and Isias, the wife of the Parthian king Orodes II and thus queen of Parthia. The handshake column carries a dedication: Mithridates II dedicated the image to the memory of Laodice, “the king’s sister and the wife of Orodes, king of kings”. The inscription is so worn that it was noticed only in 1938 and read in 1979.
What is disputed. English Wikipedia states that Mithridates II brought his sister’s body back to Commagene and buried her next to her mother, sister and niece. In the Turkish Archaeo News survey, Laodice’s presence on the relief is likewise read as evidence of her burial in this tumulus, but the same page notes that some researchers, including T. A. Sinclair, believe the figure beside Laodice is not Mithridates but their mother Isias. Other authors, for example in Y. Margaryan’s article (2026), speak directly of Karakuş as a tumulus raised “over the remains” of Laodice. The central inscription, however, which lists the dead, gives only three names, and the dedication to Laodice may also point to a cenotaph (a symbolic tomb), an idea found in English-language retellings.
Note for publication. The most careful wording is: the inscription names three people buried here — Isias, Antiochis and Aka; Laodice is commemorated on the same monument by a relief and an inscription, and a substantial part of the literature considers her buried here too, but direct evidence comparable to the central inscription is lacking.
Laodice ended up at the centre of high politics. Her husband Orodes II is the Parthian king under whom the Romans suffered defeat at Carrhae (53 BCE). In the version given in English Wikipedia, in 38 BCE Laodice died in a dynastic massacre at the court of Phraates IV. The marriage of a Commagenian princess to a Parthian king reflects Antiochus I’s cautious policy: preserving independence between Rome and Parthia.
Nemrut is the hierothesion of Antiochus I himself: a mound about 50 m high at an altitude of over 2,150 m, with terraces and colossal statues of the gods and of the king himself; according to UNESCO, it was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1987. Karakuş is the “female” variant of the same idea: an artificial mound surrounded by groups of columns, Greek inscriptions, a blend of Greek and Iranian traditions. The term hierothesion (“sacred seat”), as World History Encyclopedia notes, was apparently coined by Antiochus I himself for his royal sanctuaries.
What distinguishes Karakuş is that it is dedicated to women and names them one by one in its central inscription. For the Hellenistic world this is a remarkable case: a ruler publicly emphasises the importance of his mother, sister and niece for the dynasty.
Commagene (also Kummukh, Kammuhu, Kamakh) was an Armenian kingdom of the Hellenistic era on the western bank of the Euphrates. According to World History Encyclopedia, it separated from the Seleucid realm around 163 BCE under Ptolemaeus, who came from the Armenian Orontid (Yervandid) dynasty, which also ruled in neighbouring Sophene. Antiochus I, according to the description on Wikipedia, belonged to the Orontids on his father’s side, and through his mother, Laodice VII Thea, was a descendant of the Seleucids. Karakuş is therefore a monument of an Armenian royal dynasty living in a Greco-Iranian cultural world: Orontids and Achaemenids in the genealogy, Greek inscriptions and Greek Doric columns.
Source of illustrations: Խաժակ Սիրեկանյան
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