Temple of Artemis

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color view of reconstructed model of Temple of Artemis, at Miniatürk Park, Istanbul, Turkey

The Temple of Artemis or Artemision (Greek: Ἀρτεμίσιον, Turkish: Artemis Tapınağı), also known less precisely as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis. It was located in Ephesus (near the modern town of Selçuk in present-day Turkey). One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it was completely rebuilt three times before its eventual destruction in 401 AD.[1] Only foundations and sculptural fragments of the latest of the temples at the site remain.

The first sanctuary (temenos) antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, and dates to the Bronze Age. Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis, attributed it to the Amazons. In the 7th century BC, the old temple was destroyed by a flood. Its reconstruction began around 550 BC, under the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, at the expense of Croesus of Lydia: the project took 10 years to complete. The temple was destroyed in 356 BC by an act of arson and was again rebuilt, this time as the Wonder.



Location and history

imaginary Temple of Artemis 16th-century hand-colored engraving by Martin Heemskerck

The Temple of Artemis was located near the ancient city of Ephesus, about 75 km south from the modern port city of İzmir, in Turkey. Today the site lies on the edge of the modern town of Selçuk.

The sacred site (temenos) at Ephesus was far older than the Artemision itself. Pausanias was certain that it antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine of Apollo at Didyma.[3] He said that the pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydians. Callimachus, in his Hymn to Artemis attributed the earliest temenos at Ephesus to the Amazons, whose worship he imagined already centered upon an image (bretas) of Artemis, their matron goddess. Pausanias says that Pindar believed the temple's founding Amazons to have been involved with the siege at Athens. Tacitus also believed in the Amazon foundation, however Pausanias believed the temple predated the Amazons.[4]

Modern archaeology cannot confirm Callimachus's Amazons, but Pausanias's account of the site's antiquity seems well-founded. Before World War I, site excavations by David George Hogarth identified three successive temple buildings.[5] Re-excavations in 1987–88[6] confirmed that the site was occupied as early as the Bronze Age, with a sequence of pottery finds that extend forward to Middle Geometric times, when a peripteral temple with a floor of hard-packed clay was constructed in the second half of the 8th century BC.[7] The peripteral temple at Ephesus offers the earliest example of a peripteral type on the coast of Asia Minor, and perhaps the earliest Greek temple surrounded by colonnades anywhere.

In the 7th century BC, a flood[8] destroyed the temple, depositing over half a meter of sand and flotsam over the original clay floor. Among the flood debris were the remains of a carved ivory plaque of a griffin and the Tree of Life, apparently North Syrian, and some drilled tear-shaped amber drops of elliptical cross-section. These probably once dressed a wooden effigy (xoanon) of the Lady of Ephesus, which must have been destroyed or recovered from the flood. Bammer notes that though the site was prone to flooding, and raised by silt deposits about two meters between the 8th and 6th centuries, and a further 2.4 m between the sixth and the fourth, its continued use "indicates that maintaining the identity of the actual location played an important role in the sacred organization".[9]

Second phase

The new temple was sponsored at least in part by Croesus, who founded Lydia's empire and was overlord of Ephesus,[10] and was designed and constructed from around 550 BC by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes. It was 115 m (377 ft) long and 46 m (151 ft) wide, supposedly the first Greek temple built of marble. Its peripteral columns stood some 13 m (40 ft) high, in double rows that formed a wide ceremonial passage around the cella that housed the goddess's cult image. Thirty-six of these columns were, according to Pliny, decorated by carvings in relief. A new ebony or blackened grapewood cult statue was sculpted by Endoios,[11] and a naiskos to house it was erected east of the open-air altar.

A rich foundation deposit from this era yielded more than a thousand items, including what may be the earliest coins made from the silver-gold alloy electrum. Fragments of bas-relief on the lowest drums of the temple, preserved in the British Museum, show that the enriched columns of the later temple, of which a few survive (illustration below) were versions of this earlier feature. Pliny the Elder, seemingly unaware of the ancient continuity of the sacred site, claims that the new temple's architects chose to build it on marshy ground as a precaution against earthquakes.

The temple became an important attraction, visited by merchants, kings, and sightseers, many of whom paid homage to Artemis in the form of jewelry and various goods. It also offered sanctuary to those fleeing persecution or punishment, a tradition linked in myth to the Amazons who twice fled there seeking the goddess' protection from punishment, firstly by Dionysus and later, by Heracles.


In 356 BC, the temple was destroyed in a vainglorious act of arson by a man, Herostratus, who set fire to the wooden roof-beams, seeking fame at any cost; thus the term herostratic fame.[12] For this outrage, the Ephesians sentenced the perpetrator to death and forbade anyone from mentioning his name; but Theopompus later noted it.[13] In Greek and Roman historical tradition, the temple's destruction coincided with the birth of Alexander the Great (around 20/21 July 356 BC). Plutarch remarked that Artemis was too preoccupied with Alexander's delivery to save her burning temple.[14]

Third phase

Alexander offered to pay for the temple's rebuilding; the Ephesians tactfully refused, and eventually rebuilt it after his death, at their own expense. Work started in 323 BC and continued for many years. The third temple was larger than the second; 137 m (450 ft) long by 69 m (225 ft) wide and 18 m (60 ft) high, with more than 127 columns. Athenagoras of Athens names Endoeus, a pupil of Daedalus, as sculptor of Artemis' main cult image.[15]

A drum from the base of a column from the 4th-century rebuilding at Ephesus in the British Museum
A drum from the base of a column from the 4th-century rebuilding (British Museum).

Pausanias (c. 2nd century AD) reports another image and altar in the Temple, dedicated to Artemis Protothronia (Artemis "of the first seat") and a gallery of images above this altar, including an ancient figure of Nyx (the primordial goddess of Night) by the sculptor Rhoecus (6th century BC). Pliny describes images of Amazons, the legendary founders of Ephesus and Ephesian Artemis' original protégés, carved by Scopas. Literary sources describe the temple's adornment by paintings, columns gilded with gold and silver, and religious works of renowned Greek sculptors Polyclitus, Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon.[15]

This reconstruction survived for 600 years, and appears multiple times in early Christian accounts of Ephesus. According to the New Testament, the appearance of the first Christian missionary in Ephesus caused locals to fear for the temple's dishonor.[16] The 2nd-century Acts of John includes an apocryphal tale of the temple's destruction: the apostle John prayed publicly in the Temple of Artemis, exorcising its demons and "of a sudden the altar of Artemis split in many pieces... and half the temple fell down," instantly converting the Ephesians, who wept, prayed or took flight.[17]

Against this, a Roman edict of 162 AD acknowledges the importance of Artemesion, the annual Ephesian festival to Artemis, and officially extends it from a few holy days over March–April to a whole month, "one of the largest and most magnificent religious festivals in Ephesus' liturgical calendar".[18]

In 268 AD, the Temple was destroyed or damaged in a raid by the Goths, an East Germanic tribe;[19] in the time of emperor Gallienus: "Respa, Veduc and Thuruar,[20] leaders of the Goths, took ship and sailed across the strait of the Hellespont to Asia. There they laid waste many populous cities and set fire to the renowned temple of Diana at Ephesus," reported Jordanes in Getica.[21]

Thereafter it may have been rebuilt, or repaired but this is uncertain, as its later history is highly unclear and the torching of the temple by the Goths may have brought it to a final end. At least some of the stones from the temple were used in construction of other buildings.[22] Some of the columns in Hagia Sophia originally belonged to the temple of Artemis,[23] and the Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai records the re-use of several statues and other decorative elements from the temple, throughout Constantinople.


Rediscovery of the temple

columns in field at the site of the temple today.
The site of the temple today.

After six years of searching, the site of the temple was rediscovered in 1869 by an expedition led by John Turtle Wood and sponsored by the British Museum. These excavations continued until 1874.[24] A few further fragments of sculpture were found during the 1904–1906 excavations directed by David George Hogarth. The recovered sculptured fragments of the 4th-century rebuilding and a few from the earlier temple, which had been used in the rubble fill for the rebuilding, were assembled and displayed in the "Ephesus Room" of the British Museum.[25] In addition, the museum has part of possibly the oldest pot-hoard of coins in the world (600 BC) that had been buried in the foundations of the Archaic temple.[26]


Cult and influence

The archaic temeton beneath the later temples clearly housed some form of "Great Goddess" but nothing is known of her cult. The literary accounts that describe it as "Amazonian" refer to the later founder-myths of Greek emigres who developed the cult and temple of Artemis Ephesia. The wealth and splendor of temple and city were taken as evidence of Artemis Ephesia's power, and were the basis for her local and international prestige: despite the successive traumas of Temple destruction, each rebuilding – a gift and honor to the goddess – brought further prosperity.[27]

Artemis' shrines, temples and festivals (Artemisia) could be found throughout the Greek world, but Ephesian Artemis was unique. The Ephesians considered her theirs, and resented any foreign claims to her protection. Once Persia ousted and replaced their Lydian overlord Croesus, the Ephesians played down his contribution to the Temple's restoration. On the whole, the Persians dealt fairly with Ephesus, but removed some religious artifacts from Artemis' Temple to Sardis and brought Persian priests into her Ephesian cult; this was not forgiven.[28] When Alexander conquered the Persians, his offer to finance the Temple's second rebuilding was politely but firmly refused.[29] Ephesian Artemis lent her city's diplomacy a powerful religious edge.

Under Hellenic rule, and later, under Roman rule, the Ephesian Artemisia festival was increasingly promoted as a key element in the pan-Hellenic festival circuit. It was part of a definitively Greek political and cultural identity, essential to the economic life of the region, and an excellent opportunity for young, unmarried Greeks of both sexes to seek out marriage partners. Games, contests and theatrical performances were held in the goddess's name, and Pliny describes her procession as a magnificent crowd-puller; it was shown in one of Apelles' best paintings, which depicted the goddess's image carried through the streets and surrounded by maidens.[30] In the Roman Imperial era, the emperor Commodus lent his name to the festival games, and might have sponsored them.[31]

Ephesian Artemis

From the Greek point of view Ephesian Artemis is a distinctive form of their goddess Artemis. In Greek cult and myth, Artemis is the twin of Apollo, a virgin huntress who supplanted the Titan Selene as goddess of the Moon. At Ephesus, a goddess whom the Greeks associated with Artemis was venerated in an archaic, certainly pre-Hellenic cult image[32] that was carved of wood and kept decorated with jewelry.

The Lady of Ephesus, 1st century AD, Ephesus Archaeological Museum

Robert Fleischer identified as decorations of the primitive xoanon the changeable features that since Minucius Felix and Jerome's Christian attacks on pagan popular religion had been read as many breasts or "eggs" — denoting her fertility (others interpret the objects to represent the testicles of sacrificed bulls that would have been strung on the image, with similar meaning). Most similar to Near-Eastern and Egyptian deities, and least similar to Greek ones, her body and legs are enclosed within a tapering pillar-like term, from which her feet protrude. On the coins minted at Ephesus, the apparently many-breasted goddess wears a mural crown (like a city's walls), an attribute of Cybele (see polos).[32]

On the coins she rests either arm on a staff formed of entwined serpents or of a stack of ouroboroi, the eternal serpent with its tail in its mouth. Something the Lady of Ephesus had in common with Cybele was that each was served by temple holy, sacred women, or hierodules (hiero "holy, sacred ", doule "female assistant"), under the direction of a priestess who inherited her role, attended by a college of eunuch priests called "Megabyzoi"[33] and also by young virgins (korai).[34]

The "eggs" or "breasts" of the Lady of Ephesus, it now appears, must be the iconographic descendants of the amber gourd-shaped drops, elliptical in cross-section and drilled for hanging, that were rediscovered in the excavations of 1987-88; they remained in situ where the ancient wooden cult figure of the Lady of Ephesus had been caught by an 8th-century flood (see History above). This form of breast-jewelry, then, had already been developed by the Geometric Period. A hypothesis offered by Gerard Seiterle, that the objects in Classical representations represented bulls' scrotal sacs[35] cannot be maintained.[36][37]

16th-century fountain of Diana Efesina, at Villa d'Este, Tivoli, Lazio, Italy
Traditional many-breasted interpretation in a 16th-century fountain of Diana Efesina, Villa d'Este, Tivoli, Italy

A votive inscription mentioned by Florence Mary Bennett,[38] which dates probably from about the 3rd century BC, associates Ephesian Artemis with Crete: "To the Healer of diseases, to Apollo, Giver of Light to mortals, Eutyches has set up in votive offering [a statue of] the Cretan Lady of Ephesus, the Light-Bearer."

The Greek habits of syncretism assimilated all foreign gods under some form of the Olympian pantheon familiar to them— in interpretatio graeca— and it is clear that at Ephesus, the identification with Artemis that the Ionian settlers made of the "Lady of Ephesus" was slender. The Christian approach was at variance with the tolerant syncretistic approach of pagans to gods who were not theirs. A Christian inscription at Ephesus[39] suggests why so little remains at the site:


The assertion that the Ephesians thought that their cult image had fallen from the sky, though it was a familiar origin-myth at other sites, is only known at Ephesus from Acts 19:35:


Lynn LiDonnici observes that modern scholars are likely to be more concerned with origins of the Lady of Ephesus and her iconology than her adherents were at any point in time, and are prone to creating a synthetic account of the Lady of Ephesus by drawing together documentation that ranges over more than a millennium in its origins, creating a falsified, unitary picture, as of an unchanging icon.[40]


A view of a landscape rising to a hilltop covered with small trees. There are many small hollows, ridges and tracks. The landscape is littered with the remains of marble buildings, including a single column standing to the left.
A 360 degree panoramic view of the site of the temple

See also


  1. John Freely, The Western Shores of Turkey: Discovering the Aegean and Mediterranean Coasts 2004, p. 148; Clive Foss, Ephesus after antiquity: a late antique, Byzantine, and Turkish city, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 86 - 89 & footnote 83.
  2. Antipater, Greek Anthology IX.58.
  3. Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.7 - 8.
  4. Steinem, Gloria; Chesler, Phyllis; Feitler, Bea (1972). Wonder Woman. Hole, Rinehart and Winston and Warner Books. ISBN 0-03-005376-5.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  5. D.G. Hogarth, editor, 1908. Excavations at Ephesus.
  6. Bammer 1990, pp. 137–160
  7. Bammer 1990, p. 142 noted some still earlier placements of stones, Mycenaean pottery and crude clay animal figurines, but warned "it is still to early to come to conclusions about a cult sequence."
  8. The flood is dated by fragmentary ceramics: Bammer 1990, p. 141.
  9. Bammer 1990, p. 144.
  10. Herodotus' statement to this effect is confirmed by the conjectural reading of a fragmentary dedicatory inscription, conserved in the British Museum (A Guide to the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum 84).
  11. Pliny's Natural History, 16.79.213-16; Pliny's source was the Roman Mucianus, who thought that the cult image by an "Endoios" was extremely ancient, however. Endoios' name appears in late sixth-century Attic inscriptions, and Pausanias notes works attributed to him. Most importantly, the Ephesians of Mucianus' time maintained the tradition that a particular sculptor had created the remade image (LiDonnici 1992, p. 398).
  12. Valerius Maximus, Memorable deeds and sayings, 8. 14. 5: "A man was found to plan the burning of the temple of Ephesian Diana so that through the destruction of this most beautiful building his name might be spread through the whole world."Valerius Maximus, VIII.14.ext.5
  13. Smith, William (1849). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. p. 439. Retrieved July 21, 2009.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  14. Plutarch, Life of Alexander.
  15. 15.0 15.1 Pausanias, 10.38.6, trans Jones and Ormerod, 1918, from perseus.org. For Artemis Protothronia as a separate aspect of Ephesian cult to Artemis, see Strelan, R., Paul, Artemis, and the Jews in Ephesus, de Gruyter, 1996, p. 157.
  16. Acts 19:27
  17. Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D. 100-400 1984, p 26.
  18. Rick Strelan, Paul, Artemis, and the Jews in Ephesus, 1996, 57 - 58 and footnote 83. The edict was made as a form of official apology and compensation; a senior Roman official had unwittingly offended the goddess by conducting business during one or more of her holy days. The political, economic and religious importance of Ephesian Artemis was undiminished, more than one hundred years after Paul's visit.
  19. 268: Herwig Wolfram, Thomas J. Dunlap, tr., History of the Goths (1979) 1988 p.52f, correlating multiple sources, corrects the date of the Gothic advance into the Aegean against the Origo Gothica, which scrambles the events of several years, giving 267 for this event.
  20. Respa, Veduco, Thurar: these names are otherwise unknown (Wolfram 1988, p.52 and note 84).
  21. Jordanes, Getica xx.107.
  23. "Explore Turkey :: St. Sophia :: Construction for the Third Time". exploreturkey.com.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  24. "Ephesos - An Ancient Metropolis: Exploration and History". Austrian Archaeological Institute. October 2008. Retrieved 2009-11-01.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  25. The sculptures were published in the British Museum Catalogue of Sculpture, vol. II, part VI.
  26. British Museum Highlights
  27. Stevenson, Gregory (2001). Power and place: Temple and identity in the Book of Revelation. de Gruyter. p. 77, citing Aelius Aristides, Concerning Concord, 25.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles> For an exposition of the mechanisms involved in these social, religious and economic advantages, see Stevenson, 2001, pp. 70–80 ff.
  28. LiDonnici 1992, p. 401.
  29. The intended offering might have included a divine statue of Alexander himself, or simply an inscription commemorating his subsidy as a gift to the Goddess, with himself as her particular protege. The Ephesians protested with great diplomacy, it being "inappropriate for a god to dedicate offerings to a god". See Strabo, Geography, 14.1.22, variously interpreted in Strelan, p. 80, and Gregory Stevenson, Power and place: Temple and identity in the Book of Revelation, de Gruyter, 2001, p. 79.
  30. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 35 - 93.
  31. Arnold 1972, p. 18, citing Xenophon for marriage-broking at the Ephesian Artemesia.
  32. 32.0 32.1 The iconic images have been most thoroughly assembled by Robert Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos und der erwandte Kultstatue von Anatolien und Syrien EPRO 35 (Leiden:Brill) 1973.
  33. Strabo, Geographica, 14.1.23<; sometimes the existence of a college is disputed and rather, a succession of priests given the title of "Megabyzos" is preferred.
  34. Xenophon, Anabasis, v.3.7.
  35. Seiterle (1979). "Artemis: die Grosse Göttin von Ephesos". Antike Welt. 10: 3–16.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles> accepted in the 1980s by Walter Burkert and Brita Alroth, among others, criticised and rejected by Robert Fleischer, but widely popularized.
  36. Fleischer (1983). "Neues zur kleinasiatischen Kultstatue". Archäologischer Anzeiger. 98: 81–93.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
  37. Bammer 1990, p. 153.
  38. Florence Mary Bennett, Religious Cults Associated with the Amazons (1912): Chapter III: Ephesian Artemis (on-line text).
  39. Quoted in Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire AD 100-400 1984, ch. III "Christianity as presented" p. 18.
  40. LiDonnici 1992.

Further reading


External links