The front of the Pergamon Altar, as it is reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

The Pergamon Altar is a magnificent structure originally built in the 2nd century BC in the Ancient Greek city of Pergamon (also known as Pergamum; modern day Bergama in Turkey) in northwestern Anatolia, 25.74 kilometers (16 miles) from the Aegean Sea. The temple was dedicated to Zeus. Download high resolution version (1024x630, 227 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (1024x630, 227 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The Pergamon Museum The Pergamon Museum (in German, Pergamonmuseum) is one of the museums on the Museum Island in Berlin. ... (3rd century BC - 2nd century BC - 1st century BC - other centuries) (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium AD) // Events 175 BCE - Antiochus IV Epiphanes, took possession of the Syrian throne, at the murder of his brother Seleucus IV Philopator, which rightly belonged to his nephew Demetrius I Soter. ... Ancient Greece is the term used to describe the Greek-speaking world in ancient times. ... Pergamon or Pergamum (modern day Bergama in Turkey) was a Greek city, in northwestern Anatolia, 16 miles from the Aegean Sea, located on a promontory on the north side of the river Caicus (modern day Bakir), that became an important kingdom during the Hellenistic period, under the Attalid dynasty, 282... Bergama, Turkey is the modern-day city that was known two millennia ago as Pergamum or Pergamon, home to the great world library. ... Asia Minor lies east of the Bosporus, between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. ... A kilometer (Commonwealth spelling: kilometre), symbol: km is a unit of length in the metric system equal to 1,000 metres (from the Greek words χίλια (khilia) = thousand and μέτρο (metro) = count/measure). ... A mile is a unit of distance (or, in physics terminology, length) currently defined as 5,280 feet, 1,760 yards, or 63,360 inches. ... The Aegean Sea. ... Statue of Zeus Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving. ...

The Pergamon Altar was shipped out of the Ottoman Empire from the original excavation site by the German archeological team lead by Carl Humann, and reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin in the 19th century, where it can be seen alongside other monumental structures such as the Market Gate of Miletus and the Ishtar Gate from Babylon. Excavation is the best-known and most commonly used technique within the science of archaeology. ... Carl Humann (born January 4, 1839 in Steele, part of today’s Essen - Germany; † April 12, 1896 in Smyrna, today İzmir - Turkey) was a German Engineer, Architect and Archaeologist. ... The Pergamon Museum The Pergamon Museum (in German, Pergamonmuseum) is one of the museums on the Museum Island in Berlin. ... (help· info), IPA: , is the capital city as well as a state of Germany, and also the countrys largest city. ... The reconstructed Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin A detail from the reconstructed gate. ... For other uses, see Babylon (disambiguation). ...

The Altar has a 113 metre (371 feet) long sculptural frieze depicting the gigantomachy, or struggle of the gods and the giants. It is rumoured that the architect of Lenin's Tomb in Red Square designed the mausoleum after the Pergamon Altar. The metre (Commonwealth English) or meter (American English) (symbol: m) is the SI base unit of length. ... A foot (plural: feet) is a non-SI unit of distance or length, measuring around a third of a meter. ... Frieze of the Tower of the Winds. ... Dionysos attacking a Giant during the Gigantomachia, Attic red-figure pelike, ca. ... Lenins Tomb, with wall of the Kremlin and Russian parliament behind Lenins Mausoleum, also known as Lenins Tomb, situated in Red Square, Moscow, Russia, is the resting place of Vladimir Lenin. ... Saint Basils Cathedral and Spasskaya Tower of Moscow Kremlin at Red Square in Moscow. ... St. ...

Gigantomachy Frieze

Due to the heavily scholastic nature of Hellenistic art, it has been theorized that the program of the external frieze of the Great Altar, which only partially survives, was deeply intellectual. The library at Pergamon was second only to Alexandria in the ancient world, and scholars such as Pergamon's own Krates of Mallos were probably commissioned to collaborate on its design. The original interpretation of Carl Robert and Otto Puchstein divided the four sides of the great altar's frieze into the realms of the Olympians (east), water and earth gods (west), celestial/light gods (south) and gods of night and constellations (north). Robert and Puchstein drew on three sources for their interpretation: Theogony, by Hesiod; Bibilotheke, by Appolodoros, and, for the North Frieze, Phainomena, by Aratos. Pergamon or Pergamum (modern day Bergama in Turkey) was a Greek city, in northwestern Anatolia, 16 miles from the Aegean Sea, located on a promontory on the north side of the river Caicus (modern day Bakir), that became an important kingdom during the Hellenistic period, under the Attalid dynasty, 282... This article needs to be updated. ... Olympians can refer to any of the following: The Twelve Olympians of Ancient Greek mythology. ... Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins of the gods of Greek mythology. ... This article discusses the ancient Greek poet Hesiod. ...

The interpretation that is currently most accepted is from Erika Simon's 1975 Pergamon und Hesiod, which draws exclusively on Hesiod's Theogony for a reading of the Great Altar. According to Simon, the frieze is arranged geneologically, with the descendants of Ouranos and Ge, the Titans and Olympians, on the South and East friezes, respectively. On the left portion of the West frieze begin the descendants of Pontos, dieties associated with water who curl around to the right portion of the North frieze. Lastly are the descendants of Nyx, associated with darkness, mortality, and fate, who occupy the central portion of the North Frieze. Ge or GE may stand for: Ge, a letter of Cyrillic alphabet Gaia, (Ge) short form Ge is also an American Indian tribe from Eastern and Southern Amazon General Electric (GE). ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion, because: it is patent nonsense. ... Olympians can refer to any of the following: The Twelve Olympians of Ancient Greek mythology. ... Pontus was a name applied in ancient times to extensive tracts of country in the northeast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) bordering on the Euxine (Black Sea), which was often called simply Pontos (the Main), by the Greeks. ... This article is about the comic book series. ...

There are some inconsistencies with Simon's interpretation, such as the presence of Dione, mother of Aphrodite, who did not exist in Hesiod's Theogony but was instead a Homeric character. A more recent yet less respected interpretation by Michael Pfanner asserts that Nyx is in fact Persephone, as shown by the nearby presence of a pomegranate flower. In any event, of the near-hundred figures on the frieze surrounding the Great Altar, only fourteen have both name and position confirmed by surviving inscriptions; these include Athena and Ge (east), Aphrodite and Dione (north), Triton and a host of satyrs (west), and Themis and Asteria (south). Figures whose inscriptions have not been preserved but who may iconographically be identified beyond a doubt include Artemis, Zeus and Nike (east). Dione (pronounced in three syllables) may refer to several things: In Greek mythology, Dione (divine queen), in three syllables, was the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus. ... Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love and beauty,and the patroness of physical love. ... For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation). ... This article is about the comic book series. ... Persephone, the Maiden: the late Archaic Kore of Antenor from the Acropolis, Athens In Greek mythology, Persephone (Greek Περσεφόνη, Classical Greek PersephónÄ“, Modern Greek Persefóni) was the queen of the Underworld, the Kore or young maiden, and the daughter of Demeter. ... Species  L.  Balf. ... Drawing from a sculpture of Athena at the Louvre. ... Ge or GE may stand for: Ge, a letter of Cyrillic alphabet Gaia, (Ge) short form Ge is also an American Indian tribe from Eastern and Southern Amazon General Electric (GE). ... Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love and beauty,and the patroness of physical love. ... Dione (pronounced in three syllables) may refer to several things: In Greek mythology, Dione (divine queen), in three syllables, was the mother of Aphrodite by Zeus. ... Triton, the name of a Greek god, may also refer to many other things: Mythology and fiction Triton, a Greek god; his name and image have come to be associated with a class of mythological beings called Tritons. ... Satyrs (Satyri) in Greek mythology are half-man half-beast nature spirits that haunted the woods and mountains, companions of Pan and Dionysus. ... In Greek mythology, Hesiod mentions Themis among the six sons and six daughters—of whom Cronos was one—of Gaia and Ouranos, that is, of Earth with Sky. ... Asteria can refer to: In Greek mythology, Asteria was the sixth killed by Heracles when he came for Hippolytes girdle. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Statue of Zeus Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving. ... Look up nike in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Political Use

The Great Altar was probably constructed sometime around 180 BCE, in the wake of Eumenes II's military victories over his opponents in the eastern Mediterranean and the mainland of Asia Minor. Pergamon sought to cultivate an image of itself as the inheritor of Athen's cultural and political hegemony over the Greek-speaking world -- Athens had fallen from primacy in the fifth century BCE, and no city-state had ever risen to replace it, though many had tried. Pergamene building projects aimed at this goal were extensive and included the sponsorship of monuments on the distant Athenian acropolis and other Greek city-states in Asia Minor. The gigantomachy frieze on the Great Altar bolsters these claims by making direct reference both to the Parthenon at Athens and Attalid naval victories over Hannibal of Carthage -- most notably, however, the entire motif of Greek gods defending a natural order paralleled the Attalid conception of the Pergamene dynasty as defenders of Greek culture. Categories: Stub ... The Mediterranean Sea is an intercontinental sea positioned between Europe to the north, Africa to the south and Asia to the east, covering an approximate area of 2. ... Anatolia (Greek: ανατολη anatole, rising of the sun or East; compare Orient and Levant, by popular etymology Turkish Anadolu to ana mother and dolu filled), also called by the Latin name of Asia Minor, is a region of Southwest Asia which corresponds today to the Asian portion of Turkey. ... The Parthenon seen from the hill of the Pnyx to the west The Parthenon (Greek: Παρθενώνας) is the best-known surviving building of Ancient Greece and is regarded as one of the worlds greatest cultural monuments. ... Athens (Greek: Αθήνα Athína IPA ) is the capital of Greece and one of the most famous cities in the world. ... Hannibals feat in crossing the Alps with war elephants passed into European legend: a fresco detail, 1510, Capitoline Museum, Rome Hannibal (from Punic, literally Baal is merciful to me, 247 BC – 182 BC) was a politician, statesman and military commander of ancient Carthage, best known for his achievements in...

On the interior of the great altar is a separate frieze depicting the life of Telephos, son of Herakles, whom the ruling Attalid dynasty associated with their city and utilized to claim descendance from the Olympians. Pergamon, having entered the Greek world much later than their counterparts to the west, couldn't boast the same divine heritage as older city-states and had to retroactively cultivate their place in Greek mythos. A Greek mythological figure, Telephus referred to two different people. ... For the son of Alexander the Great, see Heracles (Macedon). ... The Attalid dynasty was a Greek dynasty that ruled the city of Pergamon after the death of Lysimachus, a general of Alexander the Great. ...