The Lion Horoscope of Mount Nemrud

I already talked in detail about the unique location of Mount Nemrud in Mount Nemrud, as close as you can come to the gods, and referred to the Lion Horoscope in my discussion, Alexandria was born under a regal star.

Mount Nemrud is a colossal funeral monument built for Antiochus I Commagene at 7,000 feet in eastern Turkey. It must already have been an extraordinary place in the first century BC. The two terraces of this tomb are directed towards the summer and winter solstices. It has been recently figured out that the colossal (now beheaded) statues on the eastern side faced the Regulus Star on the 23rd of July, i.e., the date of Antiochus' ascent to the throne, as mentioned in the inscriptions on the monument. Additionally, Antiochus explicitly refers to Alexander the Great as his ancestor in the abovementioned inscriptions. 

 

The Lion Horoscope that once adorned the west terrace is absolutely unique. From what I understand, it is now locked inside a grave chamber that has not yet been excavated. Meanwhile, the wildest stories go around about the significance of this relief.

 [Picture from Nemrud Tourist Information]

The conclusions published on the site of Learning Sites are open for discussion. This is what they say:

• The site possesses the earliest extant Greek Horoscope in the form of a striding lion -   a reading of its date firmly fixes the site in time, a rarity in archaeological research. 
• The inscriptions on the back of the ancestor stela provide conclusive evidence, available nowhere else in the ancient world, for the sequence of Seleucid, Macedonian, and Persian rulers back to Alexander the Great and Darius I, making the steles on Nemrud Dagi crucial historical documents.
• Evidence exists here to demonstrate for the first time that Alexander was called "the Great" already in antiquity.
• The fusion of Greek and Persian deities and religious rituals at Nemrud Dagi, evident in the sculptural iconography and the inscriptions, provides stunning evidence of the extent to which the Mithraic religion had moved from the Near East toward Europe, marking here in Commagene the crucial crossing from East to West of this popular counterthrust to the emergence of Christianity.
• The attention Antiochus' craftsmen paid to precise historical details of regalia on the figures depicting rulers hundreds of years earlier than the Hellenistic age is unprecedented. [Read the complete story at the Learning Sites]. 

The relief, measuring 1.7 x 2.4 meters, is in itself rather intriguing. It shows a majestic-looking male lion covered with nineteen stars (in the shape of eight-pointed rays) set in such a way that they closely resemble the constellation of Leo. Above his back, three stars are depicted with sixteen points instead of eight. These are recognized as planets, i.e., Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter, labeled by their Greek names, Pyroeis Herakleos, Silboon Apollonos, and Phaeton Dios, respectively. An upturned moon crescent is under the lion's neck, symbolizing the New Moon. The star above this moon disk is Regulus, always associated with royalty throughout history, from Babylonian and Persian to Greek and Ptolemaic kings. ,

 

It is clear that in many antique cultures, the lion was commonly used to symbolize power, magnificence, and dominance. It was first popular in the Near East, where we find lions on the walls of many palaces (Babylon, Susa, etc.) and on border stones. The lion definitely represented royalty at the times of the Commagene rulers. Also, many lions were found in Macedonia and Greece as symbols of royal power, later adopted by the Romans. 

The labeling of Lion Horoscope may be a far searched one. What we actually have here are three elements: the lion or the constellation Leo (representing royalty, military and political power), an inscription identifying the three planets (Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter), and the crescent symbolizing the moon goddess (source of fertility known as Tyche/Commagene). According to one theory, the Lion Horoscope was meant to contribute to the self-divination of King Antiochus I, placed at the center of this relief and depicted as a conquering lion. But then, there are thousand and one other theories losing themselves between astronomy and astrology, although with interesting retro-active calculations placing the constellations in the skies of two thousand years ago. 

More details but not necessarily convincing elements can be found in this article by A. Öncü Güney, "An Iconological Study on the Lion Horoscope Relief of Nemrut Dag Hierothesion and on the site of Learning Sites mentioned above.