"The Heroic Company of my Forebears": The Ancestor Galleries of Antiochos I of Kommagene at Nemrut Dağı and the Role of Royal Women in the Transmission of Hellenistic Kingship

Abstract

From the conquests of Seleukos Nikator, Seleukid rulers presented themselves as heirs to the age-old Near Eastern ideal of universal monarchy. But since their power had started to decline in the 2nd century BC, new claims to ‘Great Kingship’ were made by the Parthian Arsakids, the Mithradatids of Pontos, the Ptolemies, and conspicuously by Antiochos I of Kommagene, whose house had been bound to the imperial centre by intermarriage and kinship ties. The same Antiochos famously displayed his royal ancestors in the sanctuary on Nemrut Dağı. While such dynastic expressions are predominantly viewed as fictitious Persian revivalism, it will be argued that the idea of universal monarchy had always been pivotal to Seleukid rule and that with the demise of the Seleukid patriline new claims to empire were based on matrilineal descent. This was possible due to the importance of Seleucid women as transmitters of inheritance and royalty.