Pergamum: Throne of Satan

Just when you think you've seen it all, something new, something you could not even have imagined, pops up. Monday we drove up past sprawling Izmir (formerly Smyrna) to Bergama, and its ancient city of Pergamum. Among Pergamum's great variety of ancient sites is something called the Red Hall. It is an immense red brick structure, the size of a European cathedral, a large one, flanked by two sizeable, tall rotunda-like structures. Brick construction is very unusual for monuments and temples in this part of the ancient world; indeed it is the first we have seen. The size is, well, immense. Best of all, it was a 2nd century temple to the Egyptian gods, Harpocrates, Isis, and Serapis. The ancients were really into hedging their bets. When the Christians built a church in Pergamum, it is said, they simply built a basilica (now gone) inside the Red Hall.

Pergamum, if you know your Book of Revelation, and your seven cities/churches of the Apocalypse, was the city of the Throne of Satan. (Revelation 2:13: "I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my faithful witness, who was killed among you, where Satan dwells.") The Christians and Satan are now long gone, but you can hear the muezzin very clearly, echoing about the valley, five times a day.

Red Hall; way too large to get in one frame

View of the Red Hall, taken from Pergamum hill (note tour bus for scale)

One of the two flanking structures: one is a
sort of exhibit area, the other is a mosque

Interior artsy-fartsy view

This is a huge podium at the center of the temple, on which a 10 meter statue of 
one of the gods stood; a priest would go down the hole there and make the god 
"speak" to the faithful; "pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"

Among many remnants laying around: looks Egyptian to me

Restoration work goes on, the old-fashioned

way, too