Commagene royal syncretic cult · deity · hellenistic commagene royal cult · deity
Mithridates I Kallinikos was king of Commagene in the early first century BCE and the father of Antiochos I Theos. Married to the Seleucid princess Laodice VII Thea, he consolidated the small Euphrates kingdom's independence and began the deliberate blending of Greek and Iranian religion that his son would raise to full monumental expression at Nemrud Dağı. After his death he was worshipped as a deified ancestor: Antiochos I built for him the hierothesion at Arsameia on the Nymphaios, a rock-cut sanctuary combining reliefs, a monumental tunnel, and the longest surviving Greek inscription from Commagene, which fixed the offerings and priesthood devoted to his cult. On the dexiosis reliefs there the Commagenian king is shown clasping hands with the gods as their peer, proclaiming the divine standing of the royal house. He is honoured under the epithet Kallinikos, 'gloriously victorious.'
Helmut Waldmann, Die kommagenischen Kultreformen unter König Mithradates I. Kallinikos und seinem Sohne Antiochos I. (EPRO 34), Leiden: Brill, 1973.
Friedrich Karl Dörner and Theresa Goell, Arsameia am Nymphaios: Die Ausgrabungen im Hierothesion des Mithradates Kallinikos von 1953–1956 (Istanbuler Forschungen 23), Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1963.
Miguel John Versluys, Visual Style and Constructing Identity in the Hellenistic World: Nemrud Dağ and Commagene under Antiochos I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Richard D. Sullivan, 'The Dynasty of Commagene,' in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.8, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1977, pp. 732–798.