Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... reconstruction; the measurements give the correct size and proportion. Since the Museum in which the Altar was set up, serves as an exhibition place for other Pergamene examples, it was necessary to make a few deviations from the original. They are as follows: a broad stairway, two thirds of the width of the structure, is here cut out in the middle where new columns now support the platform and colonnade of the antique structure; the blank wall which here in the Museum stands immediately back of the row of columns at the top of the platform must, in fancy, be pushed back a meter and a half and be cut through with a number of doors. The frontispiece gives Richard Bohn's restoration of the altar. A great part of the foundation is all of the structure that is left on the original site. The plan of the altar is given above. The sacrificial altar proper, stood on the platform of a quadrangular substructure about 30 meters square, through which the broad stair-way cut and led to the sacred level. The frieze or high relief of the great altar ran around this substructure and along the wings of the stairway at a comparatively low altitude (the basis is 2,5 meters high). At the top of the frieze a bold cornice with wide mouldings projected from the platform. Above this quadrangular structure ran a colonnade of delicate Ionic columns, open like a portico on the outside and closed at the back. The court or room formed by its enclosing wall contained the sacrificial altar and was ornamented on the inside by a smaller frieze. The extant fragments of this second frieze representing scenes from the life of Telephos, the mythical founder of Pergamon, are set up in the Museum on the wall opposite the west side of the Great Altar. The colonnade which...