These very remote 2,150m high monuments to a megalomaniac was one of the eastern Turkey’s most popular sights. At the mountaintop the views are unsurpassable comparing similar sites during at the dawns or the dusks.

 

What we see there are the 10 meters tall limestone statues of classical gods commissioned by one Antiochus I, ruler of the pint-sized kingdom of Commagene in the first century BC. Their colossal heads have been detached from their seated bodies by earthquakes and storms. Vainglorious Antiochus appears among them; his tomb is thought to lie within the vast tumulus of apple-sized stones topping the mountain.