Ancient Pergamum

Pergamun or modern Bergama was the third church to which Jesus Christ directed his personal letters.
About seventy miles north of Smyrna and fifteen miles inland lay the magnificent city of Pergamum, with a citadel nearly thirteen hundred feet above the plain of the Caicus River and a major city at its base. It became an important city in the third century B.C.
Pergamum was a center of

• Learning and education. Along with Athens and Alexandria it became a major intellectual center. Eumenes II was directly responsible for popularizing writing sheets made from animal skins that became known as περγαμηνή (pergamenē), known today as “parchment” (tradition says it was invented there, but that has been disproven).
• Art and culture
• Political capital
• Commercial
• Religious. 
• Medical/healing.
• Emperor worship.

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