German engineer Karl Human came to Turkey at the invitation of the Sultan to build bridges and roads. Human hired forty diggers, climbed the mountain with them and struck the first with a spade into the dry, cracked ground … So, during construction work, ancient Pergamum and the greatest monument of Hellenistic art, the Altar of Zeus, were opened.
Pergamum was considered the third largest city in the ancient world (after Rome and Alexandria). It became famous for its magnificent architecture, a library that rivaled Alexandria, a museum of sculpture, scientific schools and the largest center of theatrical art.
This magnificent city was born as a result of a banal betrayal. After the death of Alexander the Great, one of his associates, Lysimachus, seized almost the entire treasury of the former conqueror of the world, which consisted of countless treasures that had once been plundered in Persepolis, India and Babylon. To store the treasury, the insidious Lysimachus chose the dungeons of the small, impregnable fortress of Pergamum on the top of the cliff. To this day, corridors carved into solid stone have been preserved there, where the jewels of the Macedonian king were laid.
Lysimachus entrusted the guarding of the treasures to his servant, the eunuch Fileter. But the servant, in turn, appropriated the treasury and, in order to keep it, went over to the side of Seleucus I, the enemy of Lysimachus. All these events took place in 287 BC.
Under King Attalus I, a descendant of Seleucus, in 240, Pergamum dared to proclaim independence, but for loyalty it entered into an alliance with Rome and later showed itself to be its loyal ally.
The Pergamon kingdom became the most powerful in Asia Minor, but the greatness of the state and its kings, the Attalids, was short-lived. In 133 BC. Attalus died childless, having bequeathed the kingdom to the Romans. The king's strange decision caused a storm of emotions, but what could be expected from a misanthrope and a cruel tyrant, who in his free time was engaged in the cultivation of poisonous plants.
The capital of the Attalids was located 30 km from the Mediterranean coast and was located on a three-hundred-meter cliff separating two tributaries of the Kaik River - Selinunt and Ketiy. Over time, the rock ledges were transformed into spacious terraces. In fact, Greek architects built three cities one above the other, connecting them with staircases with belvederes and terraces, carrying two-story porticoes that successfully fit into the landscape.
In the upper city, the administrative quarter, there was a double agora - a square with the Temple of Dionysus. On its upper platform there was a large altar of Zeus and Athena - a building remarkable both for its size and for the beauty of its sculptural decoration, as well as the sanctuary of Pallas Athena, bordered on both sides by porticoes. On the same site there was also a library, and at the very top - a palace and an extensive arsenal. A little lower, under the terrace, was a theater.
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In the middle town there was a magnificent gymnasium, an educational and educational institution for noble youth, built on different levels, connected by wide staircases and underground passages, as well as the temples of Demeter and Hera. The lower city, with a vast area surrounded by a two-story colonnade, was a trade center and home for most of the 120,000 population.
Pergamum owed its wealth, success and fame not only to trade, but mainly to the presence of the richest lands, where they grew bread, olives, grapes, and were also engaged in selective animal husbandry. Pergamon itself produced fragrant oils, thin linen and gold brocade, as well as "paper" of their own invention - parchment. The people lived richly, and free citizens daily thanked the gods for this.
The inhabitants of Pergamum were generous and erected the richest altar in the Greek world, dedicated to Zeus. It was a square in plan made of snow-white marble. A marble strip of relief ran along three walls, and from the fourth a staircase led to a platform surrounded by a colonnade. There was a marble altar on the site. The relief frieze of the Pergamon altar depicts the battle of the gods with giants. The sculptors of Pergamum created a magnificent frieze that adorned the altar and reproduced the battle between the gods and the giants who rebelled against them. The figure of Zeus surpasses the rest in size and strength. Armed with lightning, the supreme god is fighting three giants at once. The Thunderer crushes his enemies, and they perish in terrible agony. The altar has already been recognized as an outstanding work of art.
The famous library also brought glory to the city. In the cool rooms, niches lined with cedar were arranged in the marble walls. They kept 200 thousand scrolls with the creations of Greek philosophers and poets, the works of geographers, the sacred books of Persian, Egyptian and Jewish priests.
The head of the Pergamon Library, the scientist Krates Malossky, was the first in the world to put forward a hypothesis 6 of the location on the surface of the spherical Earth of four land masses, separated by strips of oceans. About 168-165 BC. he made a large globe, on which he depicted four masses of land, symmetrically located in relation to each other: in the Northern Hemisphere, he placed the Oycumene (inhabited earth) known to the Greeks in the form of an unfolded cloak and the land of Perieks ("living next to") - the prototype of North America; on the other side of the equatorial ocean, which occupied a wide strip between the tropics, was placed the land of the Antecs, the prototype of Australia, and next to It, the land of the antipodes, the prototype of South America.
Until the beginning of the XX century. residents of the Turkish city of Bergama did not even suspect that they were living on the ruins of the great city of the Ancient World, they were simply not interested in them. Moreover, pieces of marble with traces of sculptural images, which were dug up by Turkish peasants, were burned by them on lime.
The Pergamon Altar is one of the treasures of the great city of the Ancient World. Many manuscripts on medicine were kept in the library, because Pergamum was considered the center of medical science and healing. The townspeople built a hospital outside the city walls and decorated it with a meaningful inscription: “In the name of the gods, death, entrance; prohibited. Patients took baths in bronze-trimmed pools, drank healing waters, and the hands of skilled masseurs and fragrant rubbing restored strength to weakened muscles. In the health resort one could relax in the shade of the galleries, sitting on stone benches or leaning against a column. Special horns were hidden under the arches, and through them the voices of invisible psychotherapists were heard. They urged the sick to forget their ailments, not to think about sorrows and physical suffering, to suppress the disease with the strength of their own spirit.
In 133, Pergamum became the capital of the Roman province of Asia, and the Roman rulers also spared no expense in decorating the city. On the Acropolis, a gigantic temple of Emperor Trajan was built Each of its columns was twice the height of the temple of Athena, which stood nearby.
In the 3rd century. on the terrace of the theater a temple arose in honor of the emperor Caracalla, who came to be treated by the famous Pergamon doctors. This temple was not large, but it was decorated with precious colored marble.
The Romans built two more theaters in Pergamum for 25 and 35 thousand spectators, so that the city had more theater seats than spectators.
But in 713 the wonderful Asia Minor city was destroyed by the Arabs. Pergamum, which, according to the historian Pliny the Elder, was "the teacher of Rome", has gone into oblivion forever.
From the book: "One Hundred Great Secrets of the Ancient World." Nikolai Nikolaevich Nepomniachtchi