Temple of Artemis (Ephesus)

The Temple of Artemis was a temple located in the city of Ephesus, Turkey, dedicated to the goddess Artemis, called Diana by the Romans. Its construction was started by King Croesus of Lydia and lasted about 120 years.

Large in size and with a beautiful and delicate architecture, it is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as described by Antipater of Sidon, who drew up the famous list:

I have set my eyes on the wall of sweet Babylon, which is a road for carriages, and the statue of Zeus of the Alphaeus, and the hanging gardens, and the Colossus of the Sun, and the enormous work of the high Pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolo; but when I saw the house of Artemisa, there bent in the clouds, those other marbles never lost their brightness, and

Sidon antipath Greek anthology (IX.58)

The temple was made up of numerous buildings, which archaeologists named with successive letters. The oldest and most important building was D. The Temple of Artemis was destroyed by a fire, caused by a man named Erostrato, in the year 356 B.C. c.

Location

Current picture of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus: There are hardly any ruins of the original temple.

The temple of Artemisa, as envisioned in this colorful engraving Martin Heemskerck (1498 - 1574).

The Synthesis of Ephesus Artemis: a century engravingXVII of a Roman copy in marble of an original Greek (lost) of a xoanon of the geometric period.

The temple of Artemis was located in the ancient city of Ephesus, about 50 km south of the modern port city of Izmir, in Turkey, in the valley at the foot of Ayasoluk.

Artemis, sister of Apollo, was rendered a somewhat pre-Hellenistic cult in Ephesus, representing fertility more than the virginity that it meant for the Greeks. The goddess is represented with a walled crown, a symbol of Cybele, and, like her, Artemis of Ephesus was served by slaves called megabyzae.

A votive inscription mentioned by Bennet (see link below), probably dating to the 3rd century BCE. C., associates the Artemis of Ephesus with Crete:

To the healer of disasters, to Apollo, the giver of Light to mortals, Eutiques has made him an offering [a statue of] the Cretan Lady of Ephesus, the Carrier of Light.

The Greek custom of syncretism assimilated all foreign deities under some form of Olympian divinities, and it is clear that in Ephesus, the Ionian colonists' identification with Artemis was not very appropriate.

Wild, independent and of superior strength and beauty. This is how Artemis, the goddess of fertility, hunting and war, appeared in Greek mythology. Daughter of Zeus and twin sister of Apollo, she is one of the twelve great Olympian divinities. Artemis was an indomitable goddess, who not only gave life, but also took it away. In her honor, and to appease her, King Croesus of Lydia ordered the erection of the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Inside this sanctuary was the statue of Artemis, a work of two meters high in vine wood covered with silver and gold.

History

The holy site of Ephesus was much older than the temple. The geographer Pausanias claimed that it existed many years before Ionian immigration and that it was even older than the cult of the Oracle of Apollo at Didyma. The previous inhabitants of the city were leleges and lydians.

The place where the sanctuary of Artemis was founded had already been the object of veneration by the local populations who practiced there the cult of the Mother Goddess or Cybele, a cult to which that of Artemis was later assimilated.

The excavations of the British School allow us to follow the main phases of the architectural evolution of the complex.

The great abundance of ex-votos, from the VIII century B.C. C., shows a place of worship. The oldest building that corresponds to the first phase, it is an altar, which was followed by the construction of some small temples (naískois). Of these, the one that precedes the archaic temple was built around 600 BC. C. It measured 14 x 28 m and was surrounded by a closing wall.

The construction of the building took a lot of time. Pliny the Elder and Marcus Vitruvius affirm that the works continued for 120 years and that several architects directed them. The first construction of the temple dates from the 8th century BC. C., and was destroyed by the Cimmerians.

The temple was designed by the Greek architect Quersifro, from the Cretan city of Knossos and built around 550 B.C. C. at the expense of Croesus, the powerful king of Lydia. It was finished by Metagenes, son of Quersifrón, with the help of Theodore, the architect of the Hereo of Samos. Rocky terrain was chosen as a precaution against earthquakes, according to Pliny the Elder. The temple became a tourist attraction, visited by merchants, kings, and travelers, who paid tribute to Artemis in the form of jewelry and other goods. Her splendor also attracted worshipers who formed the cult of Artemis.

The temple was respected as a place of refuge, a tradition that was transferred to myth with the Amazons who took refuge there from both Hercules and Dionysus.

Recorded of the temple.

The temple of Ephesus was destroyed by a fire caused by Erostratos on July 21, 356 B.C. C., the night that, it is said, Alexander the Great was born. According to the story, his only goal was to achieve fame at any cost.

It was discovered that a man had planned to burn the temple of Diana in Ephesus, so that by the destruction of the most beautiful of the buildings, his name would be known throughout the world

Valerio Máximo

The outraged Ephesians tried to have his name never remembered, forbidding, on pain of death, mentioning him. However, this has come through Strabo.

Alexander the Great was born the night the temple burned. Plutarch ruled that Artemis was too concerned about this fact to save her own temple from burning. Later, Alexander would offer the Ephesians to pay for its reconstruction, which they refused, arguing that it was not convenient for a god to build a temple for another divinity. However, the temple was restored after his death, in the year 323 a. C. The reconstruction of the temple is attributed by some authors to the rhodian (or according to others, Macedonian) Dinócrates, who made the measurements for the foundation of the city of Alexandria, in Egypt.

However, this reconstruction would be destroyed by the Goths in the year 262, in the time of Emperor Gallienus.

"Respa, Veduc and Thuruar, leaders of the godos, embarked and sailed through the Helesponte to Asia. There they destroyed several populous cities and set fire to the renovated temple of Diana in Ephesus

Jordans in Getica (xx.107)

Over the next two centuries most of the Ephesians converted to Christianity and the ancient temple lost its religious interest. The Christians demolished the remains of the building and reused the materials for other constructions, currently you can see some Hellenistic columns from the Temple of Artemis as part of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

The temple site was rediscovered in 1869 by a British Museum expedition. Various sculptures and artifacts can still be seen, although only one column remains standing of the seventh wonder of the world.

There is a reference in the New Testament to the temple of Diana of the Ephesians, which helps us to perceive that figurines of this temple were made (possibly to scale) for sale, and the fervor that the Ephesians of that time had for your building.

Then there was an unsmall commotion about the Way. For a silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver linings of Diana, gave not little gain to the craftsmen; to whom, gathered together with the officers of such an office, said, Men, know that of this office we have gain; and you see and hear that this Paul, not only in Ephesus, but to many nations of almost all Asia, has separated with persuasion, saying that they are not the gods. And there is not only danger that this business will become rebuked, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana will be estimated at nothing, and its majesty will begin to be destroyed, which honors all Asia and the world. They heard these things, filled with anger, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians!

Book of the Acts of the Apostles 19:24-28

Art and architecture

Other works

Amazon type Mattei

Amazon type Sciarra

Amazon type Capitolino

There are several types of representations of Roman times that copy the wound amazons that were represented in Ephesus. The Amazon type Mattei is considered to copy that of Fidias but there is controversy about which of the other two types (Sciarra or Capitolino) copy the Amazon of Policleto and which copy that of Cresilas.

Most of the physical descriptions of the temple come from Pliny the Elder, although there is disagreement about its size. Pliny describes the temple as 377 feet long (115 m) by 180 feet wide (55 m), made primarily of marble, it is the largest in the entire Greek world. It consisted of 127 columns, each 60 feet high (18 m), equal to 12 times the diameter of the base.

It had three rows of columns on the western façade (with a total of 36), divided into three rows of eight columns, two columns on the sides of the antae and a double row that divided the great pronaos into three naves.

The cella was long and narrow, as in archaic temples, and in the background there was a canopy, in which the cult statue was found, on the remains of the altar of the century VII a. c.

On the rear façade there were 9 columns, and 21 on the sides.

After the arson of 356 B.C. C., the reconstruction work must have lasted a long time.

The plan and proportions of the new building remained grosso modo the same as the previous one, except for the addition of a crepidoma (the platform on which the temple rises) staggered (12 steps) 2.68 m high. It had sculpted columns at the bottom (only the 16 of the first two rows of the western façade), while some twenty sculpted dice supported the columns in antis. The columns, according to Pliny, were 60 feet tall (17.65 m), about 10 times the diameter of the base. It has been thought that the architect of the new temple was Dinocrates, who was influenced by Piteo, the author of the temple of Athena of Priene.

With the Austrian excavations of 1965, the altar, made of marble and 22 x 32 m, was brought to light.

The temple housed several works of art: sculptures by the renowned Polykleitos, Phidias, Cresilas and Fradmon, paintings, and columns lined with gold and silver. Several of those sculptures referred to Amazons that, according to legend, had been found in that region.

Pliny comments that he worked sculpting reliefs and decorating the Escopas de Paros columns, that he had also intervened in the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.

Worship and influence

Source of Diana Efesina.
Villa de Este, Tívoli.

The temple of Artemis was located in a prosperous region, crossed by travelers and merchants from all over Asia Minor. He was influenced by various beliefs, and was a symbol of faith for many people. The Ephesians worshiped Cybele, and incorporated much of their beliefs into the cult of Artemis. The Artemis-Cybele duo was a far cry from their Roman equivalent Diana.

The cult of Artemis drew thousands of worshipers from all over the known world. Many prominent historical figures made offerings, including Xenophon, who was in Ephesus when he joined Agesilaus II on his march from Asia to Boeotia and there gave money as a deposit to the temple keeper to be returned to him if he returned and if he did not. gave it as an offering to Artemis, or Alexander the Great, who when he arrived in Ephesus made sacrifices and decreed that the taxes formerly paid to the Persians should henceforth be deposited in the temple of Artemis.

Xenophon of Ephesus in his novel Ephesiaca, from the II century, describes the procession that it was celebrated during the festival in honor of Artemis, which ran between the city and the temple, at a distance of seven furlongs. In the procession paraded all the girls of the city with elegant ornaments and the ephebes. They carried in the first place the sacred objects, the torches, the baskets with offerings and incense; then horses, dogs and other hunting elements.

Reconstruction

The Selçuk Artemis Culture, Arts and Education Foundation plans to build the Artemision for the third time in history. The new temple, which will maintain the same size as its predecessor, will be built in an area called Kurutepe, 1,500 meters from the original location of the temple and has a budget of 150 million dollars.