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Izmir - Pergamon
Pergamon had a significant place of its own in all Asia. Historically the city was the capital of the greatest kingdom that existed in this region. The city is situated at 100 kms north of Izmir. The Roman historian Pliny called it: "By far the most famous city in all Asia". The cause for this importance was this: When John wrote his letter, Pergamon had been a capital city for almost four hundred years. After the mythical times, Pergamon had been the scene of several cultures, ranging from those of the Stone and Bronze Ages until the Archaic and Classical Periods.
Among the temples, palaces and agoras, the Asclepion, which were constructed in the course of one century, belonged the big Zeus Altar and the Parchment Library. They stand as the most brilliant works of art of the fourth and third century B.C. in Anatolia. The Parchment Library housed the most famous collection of books of that time, writ¬ten on a type of processed lamb and goat skins. This was a process invented in Pergamum, when the rulers of Ptolemean Egypt embargoed the export of Egyptian papyrus sheets to Pergamon. Other magnificent buildings of this period are the Temple of Athena and those of Demeter and Dyonisos.
From this time onward the town now known as Bergama has been Muslim.
In the ancient world the city was famous for two important shrines:
a) The Altar dedicated to the Supreme God Zeus, dominating the Acropolis of the city.
b) The workship of Asclepios and its medical cult.
Asclepios was known under the name of "The Pergamon God of Health".
In ancient times there were in this part of the world three favorite religious shrines and holy places. They were: the Artemision of Ephesus, the Apollo cult of Delphi and that of Asklepios Pergamon. Asclepios the deity health and medicine served the people for several hundred years; thus making Pergamon a medical center of very great importance. Famous medical scholars, like Hippocrates and Galenus, were born in Pergamon and worked there. Pergamon had, and Bergama still has, several healing mineral springs; the waters of it were used for medical treatment There were also mud bath treatments. And the priests and medical doctors of the Asklepion applied also some psychology by having their patients run down through dark tunnels, in which the patients listened to what they believed were encouraging messages from the gods, but which were in fact shouted by the priests themselves through holes perforated in the ceilings of the tunnel.
