Der Altar von Pergamon/The Altar of Pergamon [antikvár]

The landscape and history of Pergamon In the wide reaches of the western coastal areas of Asia Minor, about 28 kilometres from the Aegean Sea, and facing the Island of Lesbos, the acropolis of Pergamon (Figs. 1-2) rises up, ascending from the south to the north. The 300-metre-high hill is washed by a narrow river on the west and by another on the east, the Selinus and the Ketios, which wind through the valley southwards and flow into the Caicus River. The once blossoming Hellenistic residence of Pergamon, the huge buildings of which, erected on broad terraces, rose up from the slopes and the peak of the hill, are recalled here only by the remains of foundations, ruins, and the scattered sections of architecture which, overgrown by bushes and grass, nevertheless, seen in the radiating light of the sun, fill the friend and the investigator of antique culture with a reverent mood. The later Román city installations which stretch along the foot of the hill in the southwest are today part of the Turkish city of Bergama, which lies about 110 kilometres north of Izmir, the old Smyrna. In the 7 th century B. C., as finds of pottery indicate, there were already settlements on the Pergamon hill. Nevertheless, we know very little about the early period of Pergamon, and in the centuries during which the Greek homeland went through the great classical period, Pergamon still remained in the darkness of prehistory, a darkness which received very little light even from a preserved reference by the Athenian writer