Pergamon Altar (c. 170 BC): Masterpiece of the Attalid Kingdom

The Pergamon Altar is a monumental marble altar built around 180–160 BC in Pergamon, capital of the Attalid kingdom in western Asia Minor. Its great frieze, about 113 metres long, shows the gods battling the giants in some of the most dramatic sculpture of the ancient world. Excavated by German archaeologists in the 1870s and 1880s, the altar was reassembled in Berlin, where it gave the Pergamon Museum its name.

The Attalid kingdom

Pergamon was a hilltop fortress above the Caicus valley, about 25 km from the Aegean coast. During the wars of Alexander’s successors, it was held for his successor Lysimachus by an officer named Philetaerus, who guarded a treasure said to amount to 9,000 talents. Around 282 BC Philetaerus switched his loyalty to the Seleucid king Seleucus I and, using the treasure, gradually built up an independent power.

His heirs formed the Attalid dynasty. Attalus I (r. 241–197 BC) defeated the Galatians, Celtic invaders who had settled in central Anatolia, and took the title of king. He allied himself with Rome against Philip V of Macedon.

The kingdom reached its height under Eumenes II (r. 197–159 BC). As Rome’s ally he helped defeat the Seleucid king Antiochus III at the Battle of Magnesia, and under the Peace of Apamea in 188 BC he received much of western and central Asia Minor.

A city of culture

The Attalids used their wealth to make Pergamon a centre of Greek culture to rival Alexandria. Eumenes II built a great library, which ancient writers say held around 200,000 scrolls, though this figure may be exaggerated. Pliny the Elder tells a story that the Ptolemies of Egypt, jealous of the rival library, banned the export of papyrus, so Pergamon developed parchment, writing material made from animal skin. Parchment was in fact older, but the Latin word pergamena comes from the city’s name.

The acropolis was rebuilt as a terraced showpiece, with a steep theatre for around 10,000 spectators, temples, palaces and the library. The Attalids were also generous patrons outside their kingdom. They funded buildings and festivals in Athens, Delphi and Delos, partly to present themselves as defenders of Greek culture against “barbarians”, much as Athens had done after the Persian Wars.

Victory monuments celebrated the wins over the Galatians; marble Roman copies of their bronze figures include the famous Dying Gaul in Rome.

Building the altar

The altar stood on its own terrace below the sanctuary of Athena. Its date is debated: most scholars place its construction under Eumenes II, beginning around 180 BC or a little later, and some think it was never fully finished. It was probably dedicated to Zeus and Athena, but no dedicatory inscription survives complete.

The structure was a nearly square platform about 36 by 34 metres, with a broad flight of steps cut into its west side leading up to a colonnaded court where sacrifices took place. The base was wrapped in the great frieze, carved in high relief on marble panels about 2.3 metres high.

The Gigantomachy frieze

The outer frieze shows the Gigantomachy, the war between the Olympian gods and the giants, sons of the Earth goddess Gaia. Around 100 figures are packed into the scenes. Zeus hurls thunderbolts, Athena drags a winged giant by the hair while Gaia rises from the ground pleading for her son, and many other gods, monsters and animals join the struggle.

The names of the gods and giants were carved above and below the figures so that viewers could identify them, and inscriptions on the base preserve parts of the names of sculptors from several Greek cities.

The style, often called “Pergamene baroque”, uses deep carving, twisting bodies, windswept drapery and intense facial expressions. Many scholars read the battle of order against chaos as a reference to the Attalids’ victories over the Galatians.

A smaller inner frieze in the courtyard tells the story of Telephus, son of Heracles, whom the Attalids claimed as the mythical founder of Pergamon. It is one of the earliest known continuous narrative friezes in Greek art, telling the hero’s life in a sequence of scenes from his birth onwards.

The end of the kingdom

Attalus II (r. 159–138 BC) continued his brother’s building programme and gave Athens the Stoa of Attalos, rebuilt in the 1950s. The last king, Attalus III, died in 133 BC and left his kingdom to Rome in his will. A claimant named Aristonicus led a revolt that lasted until about 129 BC, after which Rome created the province of Asia.

Pergamon remained an important city under Roman rule. The physician Galen was born there in AD 129. Some modern writers link the reference to “Satan’s throne” at Pergamum in the Book of Revelation to the altar, but this identification is uncertain.

Rediscovery and Berlin

By the Middle Ages the altar had been dismantled, and many frieze slabs were built into a Byzantine defensive wall. The German engineer Carl Humann, working on roads in the Ottoman Empire, recognised their importance. Excavations by Humann and Alexander Conze began in 1878, and under an agreement with the Ottoman government the frieze slabs were shipped to Berlin.

The altar’s west front was reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum, which opened in 1930. After the Second World War the Soviet army took the frieze to Leningrad; it was returned to East Berlin in 1958. The hall containing the altar closed in 2014 for a long renovation of the museum.

Visitors to the site in Turkey today can still see the altar’s stepped foundations on the acropolis, alongside the theatre, the remains of the library and the Roman Temple of Trajan. Ancient Pergamon was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014.

Key people

Philetaerus (c. 343–263 BC) founded the dynasty’s power. Ancient writers describe him as a eunuch; he ruled as a local dynast rather than a king and passed power to his nephew Eumenes I.

Attalus I (r. 241–197 BC) was the first Attalid to call himself king. In 205–204 BC he helped Rome bring the sacred stone of the goddess Cybele from Asia Minor to Rome, a sign of his close ties with the Republic.

Eumenes II (r. 197–159 BC) built the altar and the library and made Pergamon a major power. His relations with Rome later cooled, and in 166 BC the Senate refused to receive him.

Carl Humann (1839–1896), a German road engineer turned archaeologist, recognised the importance of the frieze fragments and led the first excavations.

Timeline

• c. 282 BC: Philetaerus breaks with Lysimachus and begins Attalid rule at Pergamon.
• 241–197 BC: Reign of Attalus I, victor over the Galatians.
• 188 BC: The Peace of Apamea greatly enlarges the kingdom of Eumenes II.
• c. 180–160 BC: The Great Altar is built.
• 133 BC: Attalus III leaves the kingdom to Rome.
• 1878: Carl Humann begins excavating the altar.
• 1930: The Pergamon Museum opens in Berlin.
• 1958: The frieze returns to East Berlin from the Soviet Union.

Why it matters

The Pergamon Altar is the greatest surviving monument of Hellenistic sculpture and a vivid symbol of how a small kingdom used art to proclaim its power. Its history, from royal showpiece to Byzantine building material to museum centrepiece, also reflects changing ideas about who owns the past.