Pergamon

Topography and History

Pergamon — known today as Bergama in the Izmir province of western Turkey — was one of the great cities of the ancient world, and its topography is among the most dramatic of any site from classical antiquity. The city occupied a steep, conical hill rising to approximately 330 m above the alluvial plain of the Kaikos River (modern Bakırçay), with the Aegean coast lying roughly 25 km to the west. This commanding natural elevation shaped every aspect of the city's planning and gave it an imposing presence over the surrounding landscape.

The acropolis at the summit served as the political, religious, and dynastic core of the city, particularly during the Hellenistic period under the Attalid dynasty. Rather than following a conventional flat-ground grid, the architects of Pergamon engineered an elaborate system of artificial terraces cut into the hillside, each accommodating a major public structure — the royal palace and arsenal in the northern reaches, the great altar and library below them, and the sanctuary of Athena Nikephoros on a prominent mid-level terrace. The theatre, one of the steepest in the ancient world, was carved directly into the western slope and could seat some ten thousand spectators. Buildings and façades were oriented westward, ensuring their visibility from far across the plain — a deliberate assertion of Attalid power.

The lower city spread down the slopes and across the valley floor, expanding considerably under Roman rule after 133 BC, when Attalus III bequeathed the kingdom to Rome and Pergamon became capital of the new province of Asia. At a distance of roughly three kilometres to the southwest, across the Selinus valley, stood the Asklepieion — one of the most celebrated healing sanctuaries of antiquity. A separate rocky outcrop to the northwest housed a sanctuary of Kybele. Water supply, always a challenge at such an elevation, was solved by a remarkable pressurised pipeline system drawing from sources some 40 km away in the Madra mountains, supplemented under the Romans by long-distance aqueducts from the Kozak range.

Pergamon was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014 as an outstanding example of Hellenistic and Roman urban planning integrated into natural terrain.

Minting System and Typology

The coinage of Pergamon mirrors the city's political history closely, passing through several well-defined phases that track the rise and transformation of Attalid power.

The mint's origins lie with Lysimachus who controlled the region in the early 3rd century BC and stored a vast treasury at Pergamon's citadel. When his treasurer, the eunuch Philetairos, transferred his allegiance to the rival dynast Seleucus around 282 BC, he eventually began striking silver tetradrachms in his own name on the Attic weight standard. These coins, known as Philetairoi, became the defining type of the early Attalid mint: the obverse bore the portrait of Philetairos himself while the reverse showed Athena enthroned, crowning the dynastic name. Significantly, this portrait continued to appear on Pergamene tetradrachms long after Philetairos's death, under the reigns of Eumenes I and Attalus I, lending the coinage a quality of dynastic continuity and propaganda. Attalus I, who first adopted the title of king around 241 BC following his victory over the Galatians, did not, however, place that royal title on his coins.

The most consequential development in Pergamene numismatics came under Eumenes II (197-159 BC), who introduced the cistophoric tetradrachm, a coin that would dominate the monetary landscape of western Asia Minor for the next three centuries. Weighing roughly 12.6 gr, some 25% lighter than the traditional Attic tetradrachm, the cistophoros bore on its obverse a cista mystica and on its reverse a bow-case flanked by two coiling snakes. Lacking the ruler's portrait and bearing civic rather than royal markings, the design projected an impression of shared regional authority across the Attalid kingdom. The coin was deliberately struck at a lower weight to function as a closed currency, discouraging export and keeping foreign silver out of the kingdom's monetary system. Cistophori were produced at multiple mints across Attalid territory and continued well into the Roman imperial period; the emperor Hadrian issued them as late as the 2nd century AD.

The reverse imagery of the cistophoros — serpents, bow-case, and the cista — drew on associations with Dionysus and Heracles, divinities from whom the Attalids claimed descent, the latter as father of Telephus, the city's legendary founder. These mythological references were a constant thread in Pergamene iconography.

After Rome inherited the kingdom in 133 BC, Pergamon participated in the Roman provincial coinage system, producing bronze issues that combined imperial imagery with local religious and mythological types, including continued references to Athena and the city's founding legends.