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View looking down into one of the four rooms of the "Library." The Library is located above the northeast corner of the large courtyard (temenos) of the Temple of Athena—the corner of which can be seen on the right side of the image.
On the far wall of the library notice the "holes" in the wall. The excavators believe that these held dowels that in turn supported shelves on which the scrolls were kept. In this room, a large statue of the Athena was discovered.
The library at Pergamum was established by Eumenes II (r. 197–160 B.C.) and was the second-largest one in the Roman world—second only to the one in Alexandria Egypt. It is said to have housed over 200,000 volumes (scrolls and codices). It seems that the use of parchment was common at Pergamum, and some have suggested that the term "parchment" is related to the name "Pergamum." There is a legend that Mark Antony gave Cleopatra many volumes from the Library at Pergamum (41 B.C.) after the library at Alexandria had been damaged by Julius Caesar in 48 B.C.
