Many people who travel return with small mementoes, souvenirs that remind them of their memorable time away from home. From 1878 to 1886, Carl Humann, a German archeologist, did just that after excavating the ruins of a 2nd-century Hellenistic town on a hillside high above the Aegean Sea in the city of Pergamon (now called Bergama) in western Turkey. When he returned to Berlin, he brought back not just a few trinkets but thousands of marble fragments that were painstakingly reconstructed over the next 20 years through the restorative skills of museum artisans and archaeologists. Today, the colossal Pergamon Altar (180-160 B.C.), dedicated to Zeus and Athena, is considered to be one of the most magnificent marble masterpieces of the ancient Hellenistic world.
It was considered such a prize that a structure was expressly designed and built in 1930 in the middle of Berlin to house the altar along with some of the most spectacular ancient artifacts to be found in any museum anywhere in the world. The Pergamon Museum, named after its stellar attraction, is just one of four museums located on the northern half of an island in the River Spree in a complex known as Museumsinsel (Museum Island). But the jewel in the crown is the Pergamon Museum that has on display other equally impressive classical antiquities and Islamic art from Greece, Rome, Babylon, Egypt and other areas in the Middle East and Far East.
The sprawling U-shaped museum is huge, and the altar itself is so massive – at 40 feet high–that it has a room all to itself. Twenty-seven steps lead from the museum floor to the colonnade level. Quite fascinating is the richly decorated, almost 400-foot-long frieze that wraps around the base and spills out onto the stairway. Strikingly alive, it has about 100 life-size figures in high relief, with some projecting as much as a foot from the background. It vividly depicts a furious mythological battle between Greek gods and goddesses and a horde of Titans. There are goddesses–Athena, Aphrodite and Artemis–clad in flowing robes, subduing giants; Eros is entangled with a snake, and Zeus, accompanied by an eagle, tackles three giants.
If you explore more of this astonishing museum, you’ll be overwhelmed by the rich splendors from other ancient civilizations unearthed by German archeologists at the turn of the century while in a fierce competition with representatives from Britain’s British Museum and France’s Louvre. From the sands of time they uncovered fragments of what were once flourishing empires, crated them and shipped them all home. They turned into the Pergamon’s other blockbusters.
To name just a few, from ancient Babylon, is the brilliantly colored 32-foot-wide Ishtar Gate, named for the goddess of fertility; the Processional Way with its winged lions, and the facade of the throne room of King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (604-562 B.C.), a city that was surrounded by thick defensive walls pierced by eight gates, each devoted to a different deity. The most imposing one, the Ishtar Gate, was the ceremonial entrance to the city and the starting point for religious and ceremonial processions. This arched gate with a crenellated top was meticulously reconstructed from fragments found in the sands of Iraq in 1899. It now stands at 47 feet high, but was originally thought to be 75 feet. It’s made of brick, covered with a bright blue glaze, alternating with brick covered with gold leaf, and adorned with tiers of life-size brown and yellow long-horned bulls, lions and composite dragon-like figures, which represent the major gods of Babylon. To the right is another panel from the throne room of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, where majestic lions stride in a frieze below a row of stylized palms.
Once people passed through the Ishtar Gate, they walked along the Processional Way, surrounded by walls decorated with 120 enameled friezes, each depicting a golden lion. This, too, has been partially reconstructed, though the original road, which extended for more than half a mile, was 80 feet wide and paved with slabs of limestone and pink marble.
Another showpiece is the two-story gate discovered in Miletus, a prosperous port on the west coast of Asia Minor. Standing more than 50 feet high in the museum’s cavernous hall, this marble gate was built by the Romans in A.D. 120 and lay buried by an earthquake until uncovered by German archaeologists.
Many other treasures are on display: sculptures, mosaics, miniatures, carpets, woodcarvings, vases, bronzes, jewelry, clay tablets and seals. But you might also want to check out the 9th-century caliph’s palace from M’schatta (present-day Jordan) as well as the extraordinary Aleppo Room, a 17th-century Christian merchant’s reception room from Syria. Every inch of the wooden walls is covered in intricate patterns of red, blue, green and yellow garlands, birds and other designs of great beauty.
