Top Highlights

• Pergamon (also Pergamum) was a major intellectual and cultural center in Mysia (northwest Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey) which flourished under the Attalid Dynasty (281-133 BCE) during the Hellenistic Period. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Pergamon and remained an important city for the Romans, Byzantines, and Ottoman Turks until its abandonm...
• The last of the Attalid Dynasty, Attalus III (r. 138-133 BCE) died without an heir and bequeathed Pergamon to Rome. It began to decline under the Byzantine Empire and suffered severe damage in the conquest of the Ottoman Turks in the 12th century. By the 14th century, the city was in ruin and lay forgotten until the 17th century when European explo...
• Historical & Mythic Origins
• Archaeological evidence dates the origin of the settlement to the Archaic Period in Greece (c. 800-480 BCE), although finds have strongly suggested habitation by the Hittites in the 14th century BCE and human activity in the region even earlier. The site of the early settlement was high on a cliff to the north of the River Caicus and so was both ea...
• Persia & Lysimachus Cyrus II (also known as Cyrus the Great, r. c. 550-530 BCE) took the region by 539 BCE as part of the Achaemenid Empire. Cyrus II was succeeded by Cambyses II (r. 530-522 BCE) who ignored the city as did his successor Darius I (also known as Darius the Great, r. 522-486 BCE), and, under his son, Xerxes I (r. 486-465 BCE), Pergam...

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