27 Facts About Pergamon

Pergamon or Pergamum, referred to by its modern Greek form Pergamos (), was a rich and powerful ancient Greek city in Mysia.

Pergamon was the northernmost of the seven churches of Asia cited in the New Testament Book of Revelation.

Pergamon was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014.

Caicus valley is mostly composed of volcanic rock, particularly andesite and the Pergamon massif is an intrusive stock of andesite.

Settlement of Pergamon can be detected as far back as the Archaic period, thanks to modest archaeological finds, especially fragments of pottery imported from the west, particularly eastern Greece and Corinth, which date to the late 8th century BC.

Related searches

At this time Pergamon was in the possession of the family of Gongylos from Eretria, a Greek favourable to the Achaemenid Empire who had taken refuge in Asia Minor and obtained the territory of Pergamon from Xerxes I, and Xenophon was hosted by his widow Hellas.

In 238 his successor Attalus I defeated the Galatians, to whom Pergamon had paid tribute under Eumenes I Attalus thereafter declared himself leader of an entirely independent Pergamene kingdom, which went on to reach its greatest power and territorial extent in 188 BC.

Nevertheless, under the brothers Eumenes II and Attalus II, Pergamon reached its apex and was rebuilt on a monumental scale.

The Library of Pergamon was renowned as second only to the Library of Alexandria.

Pergamon was a flourishing center for the production of parchment, which had been used in Asia Minor long before the rise of the city.

The kingdom of Pergamon was divided between Rome, Pontus, and Cappadocia, with the bulk of its territory becoming the new Roman province of Asia.

Pergamon still remained a famous city and the noteworthy luxuries of Lucullus included imported wares from the city, which continued to be the site of a conventus.

In 716, Pergamon was sacked again by the armies of Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik.

The Ottoman Sultan Murad III had two large alabaster urns transported from the ruins of Pergamon and placed on two sides of the nave in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

Pergamon, which traced its founding back to Telephus, the son of Heracles, is not mentioned in Greek myth or epic of the archaic or classical periods.

Pergamon comes there following an oracle in search of his mother, and becomes Teuthras' son-in-law or foster-son and inherits his kingdom of Teuthrania, which encompassed the area between Pergamon and the mouth of the Caicus.

The inhabitants of Pergamon enthusiastically followed their lead and took to calling themselves Telephidai and referring to Pergamon itself in poetic registers as the 'Telephian city'.

Pergamon was followed by the architectural historian Wilhelm Dorpfeld from 1900 to 1911, who was responsible for the most important discoveries.

Pergamon concentrated on further excavation of the upper city, the Asklepieion, and the Red Hall.

Pergamon carried out conservation projects which were of vital importance for maintaining the material remains of Pergamon.

Pergamon is a good example of a city that expanded in a planned and controlled manner.

Generally, most of the Hellenistic houses at Pergamon were laid out with a small, centrally-located and roughly square courtyard, with rooms on one or two sides of it.

At Pergamon, Dionysus had the epithet Kathegemon, 'the guide', and was already worshiped in the last third of the 3rd century BC, when the Attalids made him the chief god of their dynasty.

Pergamon's oldest temple is a sanctuary of Athena from the 4th century BC.

Library of Pergamon was the second largest in the ancient Greek world after the Library of Alexandria, containing at least 200, 000 scrolls.

Related searches

Pergamon's martyrdom is one of the first recorded in Christian history, highlighted by the Christian Scripture itself through the message sent to the Pergamon Church in the Book of Revelation.

Greek inscriptions discovered at Pergamon include the rules of the town clerks, the so-called Astynomoi inscription, which has added to understanding of Greek municipal laws and regulations, including how roads were kept in repair, regulations regarding the public and private water supply and lavatories.