LANDS AND PLACES
One of the seven cities listed in Revelation 1:11, Pergamum had long before served as the capital of the Attalid kingdom in what is now modern Turkey until it was bequeathed to Rome by Attalus III in 133 BC. The citybegan as a fortress atop an isolated hill overlookingthe Caicus River and the Bay of Lesbos 15 miles away. The Roman author Pliny the Elder credits the city with inventing the use of leather as parchment after jealous Ptolemaic rulers banned the export of papyrus to Pergamum because of a fear its royal library would exceed in size and prestige of their own in Alexandria. According to one account, the Roman leader MarkAntony gave the library collection to Cleopatra in 43 BC, apparently to restock the damaged library in Alexandria, but after his death, Augustus returned some of the collection back to Pergamum.
Religious traditions from Anatolia, Greece, and Asia had long mingled in the city. The rock sanctuaries dedicated to Meter-Cybele and Dionysus, a massive sanctuary to Asclepius, a magnificent temple to the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis (known as the Red Basilica), the giant altar to Zeus the Savior (now reconstructed at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin), and countless streetsanctuaries indicate the religious character of the city. As long as Christians tolerated the dominant political order withits associated religious system, they could practice their faith, though probably not without some compromise. Nevertheless,theyfaced violent persecutions during the second and third centuries AD when Rome enforced allegiance to the imperial cult.
The upper acropolis contains the ruins of the Great Altar that marked Pergamum’s victory over the Gauls, a Hellenistic theater with a seating capacity of 10,000, sanctuaries for Trajan, and Athena, the library, royal palaces, a temple of Dionysus, Roman baths, and military arsenals. The lower acropolis had three gymnasia, temples to Demeter and Hera, the house of Attalus, and the Gate of Eumenes. At the foot of the acropolis, a Sacred Way led from a popylon to a Roman theater with a library, the north and south stoa, a temple, a healing sanctuary, and a sacred spring that flowed from an underground passageway.
Scholars often identify John’s reference to“Satan’s throne”being in Pergamum (Rev. 2:13) with a monumental structure dedicated to Zeus on one of the terraces of the acropolis. Nearly 36 meters wide, 33 meters deep, and 12 meters high, the thronelike structure had a base decorated with a frieze in high relief, showing the battle between a race of snake-tailed giants and the Olympian gods. A second frieze depicts events from the life of the legendary Telephus, son of the hero Heracles.
Recent excavations have brought to light the long-lost royal burial site of the Attalid Dynasty dating to the second century BC.
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, “Pergamon.”