GIVEN THEIR OBSCURITY AND REMOTENESS, the Divrigi Mosque and Nemrut Dag probably aren’t worth a visit. Most visitors to Turkey will never even hear of them. The Divrigi Mosque and Hospital “coulda been a contendah,” as a young Marlon Brando might have said. The mosque began life as a Christian church, giving us the hope that it might be a small and forgotten version of Hagia Sofia. But there the similarity ends. Part of the mosque was converted to a hospital which now houses and art gallery. Oh, well. That’s the way it often goes with World Heritage Sites.
Divrigi Mosque and Hospital
It’s a long and winding road to Nemrut Dag — one totally unknown to “Sir Clive,” our SatNav — 90 kilometers from Malatya, 7000 feethigh into the mountains of southeast Turkey. We had to revert to old fashioned, tried and true navigation — following the brown roadsigns, down-shifting between third- and second-gear on the switchbacks. The last two kilometers were strictly first gear territory.
Without a clue
Why Antiochos selected this particular site for his tombs is beyond us. Several kingdoms filled the dynastic vacuum left when Alexander the Great’s Hellenistic empire broke up after his death. Antiochos I, one of Alexander’s trusted generals headed the kingdom of Commagene in the 2nd Century BC, left behind the funerary sanctuary of Nemrut Dag. It wasn’t discovered until 1881 and excavation didn’t begin until 1956.
Nemrut Dag
It is only recently that the site is being restored to its original splendor, much to Connie’s disappointment. On the upper level, a row of five colossal seated figures 20 feet high, representing deities and two pairs of equally immense statues, each pair comprising a lion and an eagle. The heads of these decapitated statues tumbled willy-nilly to the lower terrace, the photo Connie saw online and hoped to see today. Now they have been righted awaiting reunification with their bodies: two eagles, a lion and humans, one guy who looks like a garden gnome. We would rather have seen the au natural “before” or final “after” version with WHS signage, not so much the work in progress. Still, it was a great drive and an interesting site that few outsiders make the effort to visit.
On the road to Nemrut Dag
