The Pergamon Altar: A Struggle Between Gods and Giants

Hello again, and welcome back to An Aesthetic Education In the heart of what was once East Berlin, lies an island of museums. These museums, created to house objects of art, history, and culture, were built mostly in the 19th and early 20th centuries when Germany was reaching out across the globe and establishing itself in ways that it previously thought impossible. With the world at their fingertips, Germany felt the need to expand and show the world its intellectual might as a reflection of their new unified country and empire. Archaeology and the owning of antiquities became an obsession within the German speaking world. Out from Germany came some of the greatest archaeologists ever known and their excavations brought discoveries and prizes that became the envy of many other countries at the time. The burgeoning capital of Berlin was deemed to be the new home of these archaeological wonders and one museum in particular became its cultural epicenter. The Pergamon Museum houses three distinct collections: the collection of classical antiquities (Antikensammlung), the museum of the Ancient Near East (Vorderasiatisches Museum) and the museum of Islamic Art (Museum für Islamische Kunst). Within this vast and impressive collection there is one singular piece of monumental archaeological importance, which naturally was the piece that gave the museum its name. The Pergamon Altar – a monument created to highlight the success and wealth of the Kingdom of Pergamon (281 -133 BC) during the Hellenist period. Let’s take a moment and imagine that we are walking through the halls of the Pergamon museum. As we walk together, we see rooms filled with artifacts from the ancient world – sculptures, cuneiform tablets, and coins. A narrowing of the hallway leads to a room filled with the blue and gold surroundings of the Ishtar Gate seemingly inviting us back to world of Ancient Babylon. But finally, we make our way to the room containing the Pergamon altar and this is what we see…  

Ishtar Gate, Pergamon Museum, Berlin

Pergamon Altar, Pergamon Museum, Berlin

Read excerpt of the description of the Pergamon Altar from Peter Weiss’s The Aesthetics of Resistance. Seeking the blurred traces of the incised script…

 These words from Peter Weiss in his illuminating and challenging work called The Aesthetics of Resistance capture in a most singular and impressive way the grandeur and the impact of seeing the Pergamon Altar. From Weiss’s descriptions we gain a sense of one of the most important characteristics of Hellenist art – the focus and inclusion of emotional expressiveness. For the expression of the emotions of battle is at the heart of the Pergamon altar with its most famous feature, a monumental frieze depicting the Gigantomachy, the prehistoric battle between the gods and the giants for supremacy of the world. Upon first inspection the frieze clearly portrays ideological overtones that were common in Greek art at the time – the need for power and control over disruptive forces. Pergamon was the capital of the Attalid Kings and for much of its history the Attalids paid tribute to the Galatians (tribes of Gaul). In the year 241 BC, Attalos the first refused to pay the tribute and in response fought a battle and conquered one of the Galatian tribes. This marked a turning point as the Attalids were no longer subservient rulers, but masters of their own fate. Naturally, this new status and belief in their own importance and superiority impacted the patronage and public works that the Attalids made in Pergamon. Since Pergamon had adopted Greek civic organization the Attalids were able to maintain control of the city through their right to appoint the chief magistrates. The political organization and structure of Pergamon is important to understand as the machinations of power and money dictated the creation of art. As Richard Whitaker notes in his article on the Pergamon Altar saying “Attalos, by inserting his own victory into this series of famous triumphs over the mythological and historical ‘other’, quite clearly sought to represent Pergamon as a second Athens, as a bastion of civilization against the barbarian onslaught. The monument also clearly shows us the historical and political meaning that the Attalids attached to the subject of Gigantomachy – obviously a vital clue to the interpretation of the frieze on the Altar.” The Pergamon treatment of Gigantomachy is by far the most extensive example that has survived the intervening centuries. The overlapping figures of the Gods subduing the Giants is placed perfectly to impress and overwhelm the viewers. The giants, placed in a dramatic full frontal or rear view, create a more natural perspective with the purpose of placing the viewer front and center to the conflict. The gods occupying a higher position on the frieze, display their superiority to the barbaric giants heightening, the tension between civilization and barbarism. This lower position cements the vision of the giants as being decisively defeated by the gods, whittling away any sense of grandeur of their place within the universe and providing an absolute a sense of inferiority in comparison to the victorious gods. The Pergamon Altar is filled with minute and purposeful symbols all relating to that sense of purpose around a time of power and victory. One could spend hours marking every god, animal, giant, and other creature, or symbol on the frieze itself and trying to decipher the significance of its placement. These details would show the complex and stirring narrative created by the Attalids in the name of their vision for Pergamon. Yet, it can also be striking to see this vast and expressive creation as a kind of obsession with self-reflection. For how else could the constant retelling of the Gigantomachy, the overt drawing of equivalency between the achievements of the gods in battle against the giants and the success of the Pergamon’s against the tribes of Gaul be seen in any other way?

Gigantomachy Frieze, Pergamon Museum, Berlin

The Pergamon altar stands at a unique cross point, as it is both a vital piece of archaeological preservation and a work of art that can speak to us through the millennia. Joining our present day with the ideas, skills, and beauty that meant something to the people of the past. You see all art that contains an element of aesthetic beauty, no matter the dogma, no matter the politics of the time, speaks to some sort of truth. The Pergamon altar highlights this dichotomy that exists between art and the era in which we live. Yes, it is a reflection on royal power, how the Attalids wanted to be seen and most importantly remembered. How at the height of their power and in the spring of their youth they reached out across time and compared themselves to Gods. To Gods who fought back against the barbarism of their age in the name of order and civilization. Yet, this altar of Pergamon, this altar of Zeus, which praises the battle, the conquest, and the subjugation of the disorder of the universe. Those praises are hollow for they belong to an era long since passed and praise a God who does not reflect the value of the work of art, the skill, the craftsmanship that went into the creation of this beautiful piece. You see we don’t feel the politics of this creation. We can’t they are not the issues of our time. We can find similarities of experience, of ideas, and understanding. But it will never be a like to like appreciation or recognition. Which is why art that is made in the name of politics or ideology never retains its beauty or truth as the political dogma intended. Instead, we are left with a simple truth found within the ruins and relics of a time long passed. That the God who is praised today when we look upon that altar of beauty, is the only God that is recognized when it comes to the arts, the God of memory. Here at the end of journey around the Pergamon let me leave with the words of Peter Weiss who summarizes this understanding far better than any other individual possibly could.

Excerpt of the description of the Pergamon Altar from Peter Weiss’s The Aesthetics of Resistance.

Work Cited

Perkins, Charles C. “The Pergamon Marbles. I. Pergamon: Its History and Its Buildings.” The American Art Review 2, no. 4 (1881): 145–50. https://doi.org/10.2307/20559785.

Perkins, Charles C. “The Pergamon Marbles. II. The Gigantomachia and Other Sculptures Found at Pergamon.” The American Art Review 2, no. 5 (1881): 185–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/20559802.

Whitaker, Richard. “ART AND IDEOLOGY: THE CASE OF THE PERGAMON GIGANTOMACHY.” Acta Classica 48 (2005): 163–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24595401.

Gossman, Lionel. “Imperial Icon: The Pergamon Altar in Wilhelminian Germany.” The Journal of Modern History 78, no. 3 (2006): 551–87. https://doi.org/10.1086/509148.

Hoffmann, Herbert. “Antecedents of the Great Altar at Pergamon.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 11, no. 3 (1952): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.2307/987607.  

Thimme, Diether. “The Masters of the Pergamon Gigantomachy.” American Journal of Archaeology 50, no. 3 (1946): 345–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/499454.

Weiss, Peter, Burkhardt Lindner, and Christian Rogowski. “Between Pergamon and Plötzensee: Another Way of Depicting the Course of Events an Interview with Peter Weiss.” New German Critique, no. 30 (1983): 107–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/487835.

Lulli, Laura, and Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi. “The Fight of Telephus: Poetic Visions behind the Pergamon Frieze.” In The Look of Lyric: Greek Song and the Visual: Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song, Vol. 1, edited by Vanessa Cazzato and André Lardinois, 50–68. Brill, 2016. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w8h2ct.8.