Wonder of the world
A huge marble temple to Artemis outside Ephesus, ringed by rows of tall columns. Herostratus burned it in 356 BCE to make his name live on, and the Ephesians rebuilt it larger. Goths damaged it in 262; it was later closed and quarried, and only foundations remain.
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The Temple of Artemis or Artemision, also known as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to a localised form of the goddess Artemis (equated with the Roman goddess Diana). It was located in Ephesus, near modern-day Selçuk in Turkey and is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The temple was destroyed and rebuilt many times in antiquity; the last incarnation of the temple was destroyed in 262 AD, although Artemis continued to be worshipped at the site until around 401 AD. Only foundations and fragments of the last temple remain in the present day; some aspects of its appearance must be inferred by comparing archaeological evidence with ancient accounts.
The beginning of the history of the temple is unclear. It is known, however, that the earliest version of the temple was destroyed by a flood in the 7th century BC. A more elaborate reconstruction of the temple began around 550 BC under the leadership of the Greek architect from Crete Chersiphron, funded by Croesus of Lydia. This version of the temple lasted until 356 BC, when it was burned down by an arsonist, popularly identified as Herostratus.
The final form of the temple was funded by the people of Ephesus. The temple was central to Ephesian life, as it had great political and social value to its citizens. The Ephesian Artemis, which was considered as separate from the Hellenic version of the god, had unique features and artifacts associated with her and was seen as a protector of the city.
The Temple of Artemis (artemisia) was located near the ancient city of Ephesus, about 75 kilometres (47 mi) 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 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. 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, legendary warrior-women whose religious practise he imagined already centered upon an image (bretas) of Artemis, their matron goddess. Pausanias believed that the temple pre-dated the Amazons.
Pausanias's estimation of the site's antiquity seems well-founded. Before World War I, site excavations by David George Hogarth seemed to identify three successive temple buildings. Re-excavations in 1987–1988 and re-appraisal of Hogarth's account 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. 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 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 metres 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".
The new temple was sponsored at least in part by Croesus, who founded Lydia's empire and was overlord of Ephesus. It was designed and constructed from around 550 BC by the Greek 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 the Elder, decorated by carvings in relief. A new ebony or blackened grapewood cult statue was sculpted by Endoios, and a naiskos to house it was erected east of the open-air altar.
A rich foundation deposit from this era, also called the "Artemision deposit", yielded more than a thousand items, including what may be the earliest coins made from the silver-gold alloy electrum. The deposit contains some of the earliest inscribed coins, those of Phanes, dated to 625–600 BC from Ephesus, with the legend ΦΑΕΝΟΣ ΕΜΙ ΣΗΜΑ (or similar) ("I am the badge of Phanes"), or just bearing the name ΦΑΝΕΟΣ ("of Phanes").
Fragments of bas-relief on the lowest drums of the temple columns, 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, with lower foundation layers of fleeces and pounded charcoal.
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's protection from punishment, firstly by Dionysus and later, by Heracles. Diogenes Laertius claims that the misanthropic philosopher Heraclitus, thoroughly disapproving of civil life at Ephesus, played knucklebones in the temple with the boys, and later deposited his writings there.
In 356 BC, the temple burned down. Various sources describe this as an act of arson by Herostratus, who set fire to the wooden roof-beams, seeking fame at any cost – thus the term herostratic fame. For this outrage, the Ephesians sentenced the perpetrator to death and forbade anyone from mentioning his name, although Theopompus later noted it. Aristotle describes the temple's conflagration, but not its cause. 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 remarks that Artemis was too preoccupied with Alexander's delivery to save her burning temple.
Herostratus' part in the temple's destruction has been questioned in modern scholarship. Stefan Karweise notes that any arsonist would have needed access to the wooden roof framing; Knibbe (1998) writes of an "entire corps" of attested temple guards and custodians. The fire might even have been deliberately and covertly set by the temple's administrators, who were aware that the temple's foundation was sinking but were prevented from re-siting it elsewhere by religious constraints; Bammer has noted the conservation of the original sacred location throughout successive rebuildings, despite continued problems with flooding and foundations. Karwiese questions the motive of Herostratus since he only divulged his purpose under torture, which does not fit a man seeking fame. Knibbe (1998) considers Herostratus a "useful idiot in the service of the priesthood".
Alexander offered to pay for the temple's rebuilding; the Ephesians tactfully refused, saying "it would be improper for one god to build a temple to another", 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.
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.
This reconstruction survived for 600 years and appears multiple times in early Christian accounts of Ephesus. 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.
Against this, a Roman edict of 162 AD acknowledges the importance of Artemesion, the annual Ephesian festival to Artemis, and officially extended 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".
In 268 AD, according to Jordanes, a raid by the Goths, under their leaders "Respa, Veduc, and Thurar", "laid waste many populous cities and set fire to the renowned temple of Diana at Ephesus." The extent and severity of the damage are unknown; the temple may have been repaired and open to use again, or it may have lain derelict until its official closure during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire. There are signs that it may have been of use after 268, since Christian authors refers to its closure in the 5th-century. Ammonius of Alexandria comments on its closure, perhaps as early as 407 CE, or no later than the mid-5th century. After the city had been made Christian and the temple had been closed, the name of Artemis appears to have been erased from inscriptions throughout Ephesus.
Cyril of Alexandria credited Archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom with destroying the temple, referring to him as "the destroyer of the demons and overthrower of the temple of Diana". A later Archbishop of Constantinople, Proclus, noted the doings of John, saying "In Ephesus, he despoiled the art of Midas," but there is little evidence to support this claim.
At least some of the stone from the abandoned temple was used in construction of other buildings. A legend of the Late Middle Ages claims that some of the columns in the Hagia Sophia were taken from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, but there is no truth to this story.
The main primary sources for the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus are Pliny the Elder's Natural History,, writings by Pomponius Mela,and Plutarch's Life of Alexander. The final form of the temple is described in Antipater of Sidon's list of the world's Seven Wonders:
I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the hanging gardens, and the colossus of the Sun, and the huge labour of the high pyramids, and the vast tomb of Mausolus; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, "Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand".
The site of the temple was rediscovered in 1869, after six years of searching by an expedition led by John Turtle Wood and sponsored by the British Museum. These excavations continued until 1874. As the temple was rediscovered, many artifacts were recovered along with it. Sculpted columns that were part of the temple depict different female religious figures, such as Artemis herself among the Amazons. 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. In addition, the museum has part of possibly the oldest cache of coins in the world (600 BC) that had been buried in the foundations of the Archaic temple.
Today the site of the temple, which lies just outside Selçuk, is marked by a single column constructed of miscellaneous fragments discovered at the site.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Temple of Artemis”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.