Is it possible there exists an ancient mystery that lies behind the events of the modern world, an object connected to everything from the rise of Adolf Hitler to the spread of Marxism, socialism and communism, the two world wars, nuclear destruction, the Cold War, and even the future of the world?

Could a mystery that began in the last book of the Bible be a key to some of the greatest evils and calamities ever to fall upon our world? It sounds like something out of a movie, a science-fiction novel, or a Hollywood fantasy — but it’s real.

Thus Hitler addressed the enormous Nazi rallies at Nuremberg from a structure deliberately modeled on the ancient monument some have identified with the 'throne of Satan.'

For more than a decade, the Pergamon Altar — a massive monument built more than 2,000 years ago in what is now Turkey — has been inaccessible to visitors as Berlin's Pergamon Museum undergoes a vast renovation. When the museum partially reopens next year, the altar will once again be revealed.

'Satan's throne'

To most visitors, it will be an archaeological treasure, admired for what it reveals about a long-gone civilization. But the altar has another history — one that begins in the last book of the Bible and, I believe, runs through some of the darkest events of the modern world.

The ancient city of Pergamon was one of the great centers of the Hellenistic world. In the second century B.C., its rulers constructed a monumental altar on its acropolis, on a foundation roughly 35 meters square. A huge staircase led upward through a colonnaded structure, while a marble frieze depicted a violent cosmic struggle: the Olympian gods crushing the rebellious giants.

Centuries later, Pergamon would appear in the book of Revelation.

In a message to the Christians living there, Christ declares: “I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is.”

What exactly was “Satan's throne”?

Scholars have proposed several possibilities. Pergamon was a center of pagan worship and of the Roman imperial cult. But one interpretation has long identified the phrase with the city's enormous altar, whose architecture itself resembled a giant throne.

I believe that identification is significant.

Sinister discovery

With the advent of Christianity and the passing of the ancient world, the altar fell into ruin. Eventually parts of it were incorporated into later structures, and for centuries it disappeared from history.

Enter a German engineer named Karl Humann. Humann first encountered the ruins in the 1860s while working in the Ottoman Empire. He saw ancient marble sculptures being broken up and burned for lime and alerted the museums in Berlin. With permission from Ottoman authorities, German archaeologists began excavating Pergamon in 1878.

They soon uncovered the remains of the great altar.

Thousands of fragments emerged from the earth, including much of its enormous sculpted frieze. Under arrangements with the Ottoman government, the finds were transported on the backs of animals, then by ship and train, until pieces of the ancient altar began arriving in Berlin in 1879.

What would we expect to happen with the return of “Satan’s throne” to the world?

Germany had now become its new home. And as the ancient altar was being pieced together there, an old evil was taking a new and ominous form as well: anti-Semitism. In 1879, as pieces of the altar began arriving in Berlin, political agitator Wilhelm Marr popularized the term Antisemitismus and founded the League of Antisemites, helping transform a centuries-old hatred into a modern racial and political movement.

Altar of anti-Semitism

A decade later, in 1889, Adolf Hitler was born. The coincidence alone proves nothing. But the two threads — the ancient altar taking shape again in Germany and the country's increasingly racialized anti-Semitism — would converge with remarkable literalness after Hitler came to power.

After coming to power in 1933, Hitler commissioned his chief architect, Albert Speer, to transform the Nazi Party rally grounds at Nuremberg. Between 1935 and 1937, Speer constructed the massive grandstand at Zeppelin Field. His architectural model was the Pergamon Altar.

Thus Hitler addressed the enormous Nazi rallies at Nuremberg from a structure deliberately modeled on the ancient monument some have identified with the “throne of Satan.”

From that stage, Hitler raged before the world as his regime plunged Europe into war and carried out the Holocaust and the murder of millions.

And this was not the end of the altar’s strange journey.

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Andrew Jones/Anadolu/Getty Images

Stalin's prize

As the Third Reich collapsed in 1945, the Red Army entered Berlin and took possession of the altar’s friezes. Along with enormous quantities of German cultural property, they were carried east into the Soviet Union, where they remained for more than a decade. The ancient sculptures that had traveled from Pergamon to imperial Germany and witnessed the rise and fall of Nazi Germany had now passed into Stalin’s Soviet Union.

In 1958 and 1959, the Soviet Union returned approximately 1.5 million cultural objects to communist East Germany, among them the frieze panels of the Pergamon Altar. By 1959, they were once again on display in Berlin — this time behind the Iron Curtain.

Pergamon. Imperial Germany. Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union. Communist East Germany.

And this is only part of the mystery. In my book "The Altar of Pergamon: The Mystery of the Dark Angel and the Future of the World," I explore what I believe are further connections between the altar and the forces and events that shaped the modern age — Marxism and communism, the Holocaust, the Cold War, the Atomic Age, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even events that may yet shape the future of our world.

Pergamon's return

When I wrote it, I had no idea that the altar itself would soon be revealed to the world again. But I believe that timing is itself part of the mystery.

It can be hard for our modern sensibilities to grasp the possibility of such a thing as a “throne of Satan” altering the course of history. But the connections are grounded in concrete facts and remarkable historical convergences — more than 200 of them.

Though we like to imagine that we are in control of the world’s destiny and that we can solve our problems through our own resources, powers, and technologies, the Bible tells us something else: There is more to the world and to our lives than what we can see with our eyes. There is another realm, a spiritual realm, that can shape the course of our lives and our world.

What will happen when the altar is once more revealed to the world? We cannot say. But the ancient object connected to some of the greatest evils and cataclysms of the modern age may not be finished with history yet.