Nemrut (volcano) of the earliest trade routes. Two eruptions of Nemrut were probably witnessed by people of Urartu, an ancient state located in the eastern Turkey. These eruptions occurred c. 787 BC (period of King Menua) and c. 657 BC (period of King Rusa II), and the latter eruption might cause the sudden disappearance of the city Uaiais located 30 km east of Süphan. In the 1980s, Japanese volcanologists studied the evolution of gases inside the caldera of Nemrut. They found that the ratio of helium isotopes He/He is 1.06, which indicates volcanic activity (most of the measured helium evolved from the
20936 Nemrut Dagi has a rather spheroidal shape. The results supersede previous observations made by Warner and by Brian A. Skiff, which gave similar results (). According to the surveys carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, the asteroid has an exceptionally high albedo of 0.46 and a diameter of 3.6 kilometers, while the "Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link" assumed a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20, and correspondingly, calculates a much larger diameter of 5.3 kilometers based on an absolute magnitude of 13.8. This minor planet was named after the a dormant volcano Nemrut (Nemrut Dağı)