Commagene, the All-Nourishing Fatherland

Commagene royal syncretic cult · deity · hellenistic commagene royal cult · deity

Commagene is the deified personification of the kingdom itself, named in Antiochus I's inscriptions as his 'all-nourishing fatherland' (patris). She is the only female among the five colossal enthroned figures at Nemrud Dağı, seated to the left of Zeus-Oromasdes and rendered in the iconography of a Hellenistic city Tyche: clad in a himation and high sandals, holding a cornucopia brimming with the fruit and flowers of the fertile land between the Taurus mountains and the Euphrates. She receives the dexiosis handshake of the king as the embodiment of the prosperity, fertility and good fortune of his realm, integrating the territory itself into the dynastic pantheon.

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