Temple of Artemis

This model of the Temple of Artemis, at MiniatürkPark, Istanbul, Turkey, attempts to recreate
the probable appearance of the first temple.
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 an
ancient, local form of the goddess Artemis. It was located in Ephesus (near the modern
town of Selçuk in present-day Turkey). It was completely rebuilt three times, and in its
final form was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. By 401 AD it had been
ruined or destroyed.[1] Only foundations and fragments of the last temple remain at the
site.
The earliest version of the temple (a 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, it was destroyed by a flood. Its reconstruction, in
more grandiose form, began around 550 BC, under the
Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes. The project was funded
by Croesus of Lydia, and took 10 years to complete. This version of the temple was
destroyed in 356 BC by Herostratus in an act of arson. The next, greatest and last form
of the temple, funded by the Ephesians themselves, 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".[2]
Location and history[edit]

The fame of the Temple of Artemis was known in the Renaissance, as demonstrated in this
imagined portrayal of the temple in a 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 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".[9] Second phase[edit]

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.

Destruction[edit]
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[edit]
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, now in the 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] It is, however, unknown to what
extent the temple was damaged.
Whatever the extent of the injuries to the building, it appears to have been rebuilt or
repaired, as the temple is noted to have been in use for worship during the rise of
Christianity, and closed as a consequence of the Persecution of pagans in the late
Roman Empire.[22] However, the history of the temple between 268 and its closure by the
Christian persecutions is not well known, and it is unconfirmed how big the damage of
268 was, and exactly which year it was closed by the Christians. Ammonius of
Alexandria comments on the closure of the temple in his commentary of the Acts of the
Apostles in the mid 5th-century, in which he gives the impression that the closure of the
temple had occurred in his living memory.[22] The closure of the Temple of Artemis is
assumed to have occurred sometime during the course of the early to mid 5th-century,
with the year of 407 as an early date.[22] The closure of the temple was followed by the
erasing of the name of Artemis from inscriptions around the city of Ephesus. [22]

Final destruction[edit]
It is unknown how long the building stood after the closure of the temple by the
Christians. At least some of the stones from the temple were eventually used in
construction of other buildings.[23] Some of the columns in Hagia Sophia originally
belonged to the temple of Artemis,[24] and the Parastaseis syntomoi chronikairecords the
re-use of several statues and other decorative elements from the temple,
throughout Constantinople.
The main primary sources for the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus are Pliny the
Elder's Natural History,[25] Pomponius Mela i:17, and Plutarch's Life
of Alexander [26] (referencing the burning of the Artemiseum).