STONE IS HEAVY IN ITS PLACE-153. LET US NOT FORGET, LET US NOT LET BE FORGOTTEN.
Do cities have an identity?
How could they not?
Just as the "Eiffel Tower" belongs to Paris, the "Brandenburg Gate" to Berlin, "Big Ben" to London, the "Statue of Liberty" to New York, the "Maiden's Tower" to Istanbul, and historical artifacts produced in Anatolia belong to Anatolia, the "Altar of Zeus" in Bergama belongs to Bergama.
Because these structures are the symbols and inseparable parts of those cities.
They explain the traces of the civilizations that existed in those cities and the identity of the cities themselves.
Another one of these is the Temple of Dionysus, which once adorned the Acropolis of Pergamon/Bergama.
(The original state of the Temple of Dionysus in Pergamon/Bergama-Reconstruction)
The smuggling network disguised as archaeologists and statesmen, supported by the German State under the leadership of Carl Humann, knew that while taking the Bergama sculptures and the Altar of Zeus to Berlin at the end of the 19th century, they were not only magnificent works of the ancient era but also inseparable parts of the city of Pergamon/Bergama.
However, they did not tell or inform the Ottoman authorities how unique and valuable these works were.
With sleight of hand; they smuggled them and spirited them away to Germany with dubious permits.
What they did was pure deceit and fraud!
How greedy is this Imperialism!
It even attempts to claim the high culture of lands that do not belong to it!
It thinks it will cover up its own barbaric past this way!
In addition to the pieces of the Altar of Zeus and many other works, one of the most significant pieces taken from Bergama by the Prussian/German smuggling network is the western corner of the magnificent Temple of Dionysus.
Now, it is in the Prison they call a Museum, which is a rough and ugly pile of stones, where the ground is sinking on the island in the Spree River in Berlin, and countless historical artifacts are rotting due to the humidity coming from the river.
After smuggling it, they reassembled it there and hid it in a nook.
Pergamon's Temple of Dionysus is on the terrace to the west of the stage, on the flat area in front of the seating rows of the 15,000-capacity Acropolis Theater, which is considered one of the steepest theaters in the world.
(A corner of the smuggled Pergamon-Dionysus Temple in the Berlin Museum/Prison)
It was built by the art-loving King Eumenes II of Pergamon (197-159 BC), who also had the Altar of Zeus built. About 2,700 years ago.
How old!
Dionysus, who was accepted as the god of art, wine, and viticulture in the ancient era, was referred to as "Karthegemon=Leader" in Pergamon.
In modern philosophy, he is a kind of representative of "nature" against the "rational" agency in human consciousness!
There was another, older Temple of Dionysus to the east of the city's Acropolis, but when it was destroyed in an enemy attack earlier, Eumenes II had the thin-columned temple of Dionysus Karthegemon, whom he considered a "leader" and associated with art, built right next to the Acropolis Theater.
"It" was not a place where offerings were made or wishes were conveyed, not an "Altar," but a "Temple," a sacred structure that continued the teachings of the gods believed in during the ancient era and was protected by the priests and priestesses attached to it.
It looked out over the Bakırçay Plain with all its glory from the western direction of the high hill where the city was located.
The temple, 13.17 meters wide and 21.6 meters long, was accessed by 25 marble steps 4.5 meters long.
The marble columns of the delicate structure, located on the corner overlooking the valley of the Selinos Stream flowing at the foot of the Acropolis and the road leading to the Kozak Plateau, were 11 meters high.
Almost the height of a four-story apartment building.
Although it did not look very large, the porch in front of the temple, called a "peristyle" (columned courtyard), was the most ostentatious of the Hellenistic world of that time.
King Eumenes II of Pergamon had this temple built by Hermogenes, son of Harpalos, from Priene (near Aydın-Söke), the most famous architect of those days.
Hermogenes, who was also the architect of the great Temple of Dionysus in Teos (Seferihisar-İzmir) and the Temple of Artemis Leukophryene in Magnesia on the Meander (Germencik/Ortaklar-Aydın), had designed the temple in Pergamon in an "innovative" style in the Ionian order.
The Temple of Dionysus Karthegemon on the Pergamon Acropolis could not be fully completed at that time due to the intense work the artists and craftsmen were doing on the Altar of Zeus at the same time.
The temple burned down during the Roman period and was repaired by the Roman Emperor Caracalla (198-217 AD), who came to Pergamon to be treated at the Asklepion, one of the most famous hospitals of that time.
It is thought that this delicate columned Temple of Dionysus, like the Altar of Zeus and other monumental structures of Pergamon, was destroyed as a result of fanatical Christian, Arab-Umayyad attacks, or earthquakes.
The Byzantines placed most of the columns of the historical structures that were broken on the Acropolis into the city walls. They used them as building stones.
The thief disguised as an engineer named Carl Humann, who came to Bergama in 1864 under the guise of building a road, did not overlook the parts of the Temple of Dionysus below the Acropolis Theater, in addition to the parts of the Altar of Zeus and the sculptures, with the support of the Prussian/German State.
(While the Pergamon/Bergama Temple of Dionysus was being excavated)
It is clear that the organized smuggling network led by C. Humann, which illegitimately took Bergama artifacts abroad, took a corner of the Temple of Dionysus to Germany and reassembled it there.
This corner of Bergama's Temple of Dionysus is now a prisoner in the Prison they call a Museum in Berlin.
Of course, it never occurred to them to return or send the columns and capitals back to Bergama while reassembling it in Berlin or afterwards!
Nor to the German authorities who have been conducting excavations and restorations in Bergama for 150 years!
Without caring that the Pergamenes built it for Bergama and that the city's identity was formed with such works!
The fact that a huge part of this city, a work that was once a witness to how much art and urban design were exalted in Pergamon/Bergama, is in Berlin is beyond protection; it is very ridiculous, it is absurd.
While listening to the magnificent music of Beethovens, Mozarts, and Wagners; do the current European officials not feel any pangs of conscience for the state of Bergama's Temple of Dionysus, which is crammed into a section of the damp and collapsing Berlin Museum/Prison?
How strange!
Conclusion: Dionysus, the god of nature, art, and wine, has also been kidnapped from Bergama! Like the others!
Are the hearts of those whose minds are hard also hard?
THE ALTAR OF ZEUS AND BERGAMA ARTIFACTS DO NOT BELONG TO COLD and FOGGY BERLIN, BUT TO BEAUTIFUL BERGAMA. THEY MUST DEFINITELY COME BACK, THEY MUST RETURN HOME!
https://www.arkeoloji.biz/2012/02/hermogenes-kimdir-helenistik-mimarlar.html ///
www.instagram.com/p/C7_XovVqHNN/)
Sefa Taşkın
12.01.2025
Karşıyaka/İzmir
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