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EspañolTEMPLE_OF_ARTEMIS
(Redirected from Artemision)
The 'Temple of Artemis' (Greek: 'Ἀρτεμίσιον' ''Artemision'', Latin: 'Artemisium'), also known less precisely as 'Temple of Diana', was a temple dedicated to Artemis completed, in its most famous phase, around 550 BC at Ephesus (in present-day Turkey) under the Achaemenid dynasty of the Persian Empire. Nothing remains of the temple—not the first on its site and with evidence dating as early as the Bronze Age—which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The temple was a 120-year project started by Croesus of Lydia. It was described by Antipater of Sidon, who compiled a list of the Seven Wonders:
The Temple of Artemis was located near the ancient city of Ephesus, about 50 km south from the modern port city of İzmir, in Turkey.
The sacred site at Ephesus was far older than the ''Artemision''. Pausanias[1] understood the shrine of Artemis there to be very ancient. He states with certainty 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 origin of the ''temenos'' at Ephesus to the Amazons, whose worship he imagines already centered upon an image {''bretas'').
Pre-World War I excavations by D.G. Hogarth,[2] who identified three successive temples overlying one another on the site, and corrective re-excavations in 1987-88[3] have confirmed Pausanias' report.
Test holes have confirmed the site was occupied as early as the Bronze Age, with a sequence of pottery finds that extend forward to Middle Geometric times, when the clay-floored peripteral temple was constructed, in the second half of the eighth century BCE.[4] The periptral temple at Ephesus was the earliest example of a peripteral type on the coast of Asia Minor, and perhaps the earliest Greek temple surrounded by colonnades.
In the seventh century, a flood[5] destroyed the temple, depositing over half a meter of sand and scattering flotsam over the former floor of hard-packed clay. In the flood debris were the remains of a carved ivory plaque of a griffon and the Tree of Life, apparently North Syrian. More importantly, flood deposits buried in place a hoard against the north wall that included drilled amber tear-shaped drops with elliptical cross-sections, which had once dressed the wooden effigy of the Lady of Ephesus; the ''xoanon'' must have been destroyed in the flood. Bammer notes that though the flood-prone site was raised about two metres between the eighth and sixth centuries, and a further 2.4 m between the sixth and the fourth, the site was retained: "this indicates that maintaining the identity of the actual location played an important role in the sacred organization" (Bammer 1990:144).
The new temple, now built of marble, with its peripteral columns doubled to make a wide ceremonial passage round the cella, was designed and constructed around 550 BC by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes. A new ebony or grapewood cult statue was sculpted by 'Endoios',[6] and a ''naiskos'' to house it was erected east of the open-air altar.
This enriched reconstruction was built at the expense of Croesus, the wealthy king of Lydia. The rich foundation deposit of more than a thousand items has been recovered: it includes what may be the earliest coins of the silver-gold alloy, electrum. Marshy ground was selected for the building site as a precaution against future earthquakes, according to Pliny the Elder.[7] The temple became a tourist attraction, visited by merchants, kings, and sightseers, many of whom paid homage to Artemis in the form of jewelry and various goods. Its splendor also attracted many worshipers, many of whom formed the cult of Artemis.
Croesus' temple was a widely respected place of refuge, a tradition that was linked in myth with the Amazons who took refuge there, both from Heracles and from Dionysus.
In the New Testament, Acts chapter 19, Paul visited Ephesus, where a riot began when a silversmith named Demetrius told the people that Artemis and her temple would be discredited. They became furious and shouted in unison, "Great is Artemis of Ephesus!", for about two hours.
The temple of Artemis at Ephesus was destroyed on July 21, 356 BC in an act of arson committed by Herostratus. According to the story, his motivation was fame at any cost, thus the term ''herostratic fame''.
The Ephesians, outraged, announced that Herostratus' name never be recorded. Strabo later noted the name, which is how we know today.
That very same night, Alexander the Great was born. Plutarch remarked that Artemis was too preoccupied with Alexander's delivery to save her burning temple. Alexander later offered to pay for the Temple's rebuilding, but the Ephesians refused. Eventually, the temple was restored after Alexander's death, in 323 BC.
This reconstruction was itself destroyed during a raid by the Goths in 262, in the time of emperor Gallienus: "Respa, Veduc and Thuruar, 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'' (xx.107).
The Ephesians rebuilt the temple again. At Ephesus, according to the second-century ''Acts of John'', Paul of Tarsus prayed publicly in the very Temple of Artemis, exorcizing 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.[8] Over the course of the fourth century, perhaps the majority of Ephesians did convert to Christianity; the temples were declared closed by Theodosius I in 391.
In 401, the temple was finally destroyed by a mob led by St. John Chrysostom,[9] and the stones were used in construction of other buildings. Some of the columns in Hagia Sophia originally belonged to the temple of Artemis.[10]
The main primary sources for the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus are Pliny the Elder's ''Natural History'' ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>.html#95 XXXVI.xxi.95, Pomponius Mela i:17, and Plutarch's ''Life of Alexander'' ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>/3.html#3.5 III.5 (referencing the burning of the ''Artemisium'').
The site of the temple was rediscovered in 1869 by an expedition sponsored by the British Museum led by John Turtle Wood,[11] and while several artifacts and sculptures from the reconstructed temple can be seen there today, as for the original site, only a single column remains from the temple itself.
Most of the physical description and art within the Temple of Artemis comes from Pliny, though there are different accounts and the actual size varies.
Pliny describes the temple as 377 feet (115 meters) long and 180 feet (55 meters) wide, made almost entirely of marble, making it about three times as big as the Parthenon by area. The Temple consists of 127 Ionic-styled columns, each 60 feet (18 meters) in height.
The Temple of Artemis housed many fine artworks. Sculptures by renowned Greek sculptors Polyclitus, Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon adorned the temple, as well as paintings and gilded columns of gold and silver. The sculptors often competed at creating the finest sculpture. Many of these sculptures were of Amazons, who are said to have founded the city of Ephesus.
Pliny tells us that Scopas, who also worked on the Mausoleum of Mausollos, worked carved reliefs into the temple's columns.
Athenagoras of Athens names Endoeus, a pupil of Daedalus, as the sculptor of the main statue of Artemis in Ephesus.
The Temple of Artemis was located at an economically robust region, seeing merchants and travellers from all over Asia Minor. The temple was influenced by many beliefs, and can be seen as a symbol of faith for many different peoples. The Ephesians worshiped Cybele, and incorporated many of their beliefs into the worship of Artemis. Artemisian Cybele became quite contrasted from her Roman counterpart, Diana. The cult of Artemis attracted thousands of worshipers from far-off lands. They would all gather at the site and worship her.
★ Ephesia Grammata
1. ''Description of Greece'' 7.2.6.
2. D.G. Hogarth, editor, 1908. ''Excavations at Ephesus''.
3. Anton Bammer, "A Peripteros" of the Geometric Period in the Artemision of Ephesus" ''Anatolian Studies'' '40' (1990), pp. 137-160
4. Bammer (1990:142) 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."
5. The flood is dated by fragmentary ceramics. (Bammer 1990:141).
6. 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; work attributed to him was noted by Pausanias. The more important fact, as LiDonnici points out, is that Ephesians remembered that a particular sculptor had created the remade image (LiDonnici 1992:398.)
7. Pliny's rationalized site selection did not take into account the antiquity of the sacred site.
8. Ramsay MacMullen, ''Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D. 100-400'' 1984, p 26.
9. John Freely, ''The Western Shores of Turkey: Discovering the Aegean and Mediterranean Coasts'' 2004 p 148
10. http://www.exploreturkey.com/exptur.phtml?id=176 St. Sophia Construction for the Third Time
11. http://archaeology.about.com/od/archaeologistsw/g/woodjt.htm
★ Anton Bammer, "A Peripteros" of the Geometric Period in the Artemision of Ephesus" ''Anatolian Studies'' ''40'' (1990), pp. 137-160.
★ Lynn R. LiDonnici, "The Images of Artemis Ephesia and Greco-Roman Worship: A Reconsideration" ''The Harvard Theological Review'' ''85''.4 (October 1992), pp 389-415.
★ British Museum's Temple of Artemis (Ephesos) objects
★ UnMuseum's The Temple of Artemis
★ Seven Wonders' Temple of Artemis
★ Florence Mary Bennett, ''Religious Cults Associated with the Amazons:'' (1912): Chapter III: Ephesian Artemis (text)
★ James Grout: ''Temple of Artemis'', part of the Encyclopædia Romana
★ ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>.html Diana's Temple at Ephesus (W. R. Lethaby, 1908)
Manje kuyini okuqakathekileyo ngalesonto kumbe ibalulekile eblungwini kuphela ngoba minan njengomuntu omnyama angisiboni isizatho sokuncoma isontwanyana nje engatsholutho
'
The site of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Turkey.
The 'Temple of Artemis' (Greek: 'Ἀρτεμίσιον' ''Artemision'', Latin: 'Artemisium'), also known less precisely as 'Temple of Diana', was a temple dedicated to Artemis completed, in its most famous phase, around 550 BC at Ephesus (in present-day Turkey) under the Achaemenid dynasty of the Persian Empire. Nothing remains of the temple—not the first on its site and with evidence dating as early as the Bronze Age—which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The temple was a 120-year project started by Croesus of Lydia. It was described by Antipater of Sidon, who compiled a list of the 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 (anything) so grand".
(Antipater, Greek Anthology [IX.58])
| Contents |
| Location |
| History |
| In the Bible |
| Destruction |
| Architecture and art |
| Cult and influence |
| See also |
| Notes |
| References |
| External links |
Location
The Temple of Artemis was located near the ancient city of Ephesus, about 50 km south from the modern port city of İzmir, in Turkey.
History
The sacred site at Ephesus was far older than the ''Artemision''. Pausanias[1] understood the shrine of Artemis there to be very ancient. He states with certainty 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 origin of the ''temenos'' at Ephesus to the Amazons, whose worship he imagines already centered upon an image {''bretas'').
Pre-World War I excavations by D.G. Hogarth,[2] who identified three successive temples overlying one another on the site, and corrective re-excavations in 1987-88[3] have confirmed Pausanias' report.
Test holes have confirmed the site was occupied as early as the Bronze Age, with a sequence of pottery finds that extend forward to Middle Geometric times, when the clay-floored peripteral temple was constructed, in the second half of the eighth century BCE.[4] The periptral temple at Ephesus was the earliest example of a peripteral type on the coast of Asia Minor, and perhaps the earliest Greek temple surrounded by colonnades.
In the seventh century, a flood[5] destroyed the temple, depositing over half a meter of sand and scattering flotsam over the former floor of hard-packed clay. In the flood debris were the remains of a carved ivory plaque of a griffon and the Tree of Life, apparently North Syrian. More importantly, flood deposits buried in place a hoard against the north wall that included drilled amber tear-shaped drops with elliptical cross-sections, which had once dressed the wooden effigy of the Lady of Ephesus; the ''xoanon'' must have been destroyed in the flood. Bammer notes that though the flood-prone site was raised about two metres between the eighth and sixth centuries, and a further 2.4 m between the sixth and the fourth, the site was retained: "this indicates that maintaining the identity of the actual location played an important role in the sacred organization" (Bammer 1990:144).
The new temple, now built of marble, with its peripteral columns doubled to make a wide ceremonial passage round the cella, was designed and constructed around 550 BC by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes. A new ebony or grapewood cult statue was sculpted by 'Endoios',[6] and a ''naiskos'' to house it was erected east of the open-air altar.
This enriched reconstruction was built at the expense of Croesus, the wealthy king of Lydia. The rich foundation deposit of more than a thousand items has been recovered: it includes what may be the earliest coins of the silver-gold alloy, electrum. Marshy ground was selected for the building site as a precaution against future earthquakes, according to Pliny the Elder.[7] The temple became a tourist attraction, visited by merchants, kings, and sightseers, many of whom paid homage to Artemis in the form of jewelry and various goods. Its splendor also attracted many worshipers, many of whom formed the cult of Artemis.
Croesus' temple was a widely respected place of refuge, a tradition that was linked in myth with the Amazons who took refuge there, both from Heracles and from Dionysus.
In the Bible
In the New Testament, Acts chapter 19, Paul visited Ephesus, where a riot began when a silversmith named Demetrius told the people that Artemis and her temple would be discredited. They became furious and shouted in unison, "Great is Artemis of Ephesus!", for about two hours.
Destruction
The temple of Artemis at Ephesus was destroyed on July 21, 356 BC in an act of arson committed by Herostratus. According to the story, his motivation was fame at any cost, thus the term ''herostratic fame''.
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.
★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>.html#14.ext.5 Valerius Maximus, VIII.14.ext.5
The Ephesians, outraged, announced that Herostratus' name never be recorded. Strabo later noted the name, which is how we know today.
That very same night, Alexander the Great was born. Plutarch remarked that Artemis was too preoccupied with Alexander's delivery to save her burning temple. Alexander later offered to pay for the Temple's rebuilding, but the Ephesians refused. Eventually, the temple was restored after Alexander's death, in 323 BC.
This reconstruction was itself destroyed during a raid by the Goths in 262, in the time of emperor Gallienus: "Respa, Veduc and Thuruar, 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'' (xx.107).
The Ephesians rebuilt the temple again. At Ephesus, according to the second-century ''Acts of John'', Paul of Tarsus prayed publicly in the very Temple of Artemis, exorcizing 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.[8] Over the course of the fourth century, perhaps the majority of Ephesians did convert to Christianity; the temples were declared closed by Theodosius I in 391.
In 401, the temple was finally destroyed by a mob led by St. John Chrysostom,[9] and the stones were used in construction of other buildings. Some of the columns in Hagia Sophia originally belonged to the temple of Artemis.[10]
The main primary sources for the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus are Pliny the Elder's ''Natural History'' ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>.html#95 XXXVI.xxi.95, Pomponius Mela i:17, and Plutarch's ''Life of Alexander'' ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>/3.html#3.5 III.5 (referencing the burning of the ''Artemisium'').
The site of the temple was rediscovered in 1869 by an expedition sponsored by the British Museum led by John Turtle Wood,[11] and while several artifacts and sculptures from the reconstructed temple can be seen there today, as for the original site, only a single column remains from the temple itself.
Architecture and art
Most of the physical description and art within the Temple of Artemis comes from Pliny, though there are different accounts and the actual size varies.
Pliny describes the temple as 377 feet (115 meters) long and 180 feet (55 meters) wide, made almost entirely of marble, making it about three times as big as the Parthenon by area. The Temple consists of 127 Ionic-styled columns, each 60 feet (18 meters) in height.
The Temple of Artemis housed many fine artworks. Sculptures by renowned Greek sculptors Polyclitus, Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon adorned the temple, as well as paintings and gilded columns of gold and silver. The sculptors often competed at creating the finest sculpture. Many of these sculptures were of Amazons, who are said to have founded the city of Ephesus.
Pliny tells us that Scopas, who also worked on the Mausoleum of Mausollos, worked carved reliefs into the temple's columns.
Athenagoras of Athens names Endoeus, a pupil of Daedalus, as the sculptor of the main statue of Artemis in Ephesus.
Cult and influence
The Temple of Artemis was located at an economically robust region, seeing merchants and travellers from all over Asia Minor. The temple was influenced by many beliefs, and can be seen as a symbol of faith for many different peoples. The Ephesians worshiped Cybele, and incorporated many of their beliefs into the worship of Artemis. Artemisian Cybele became quite contrasted from her Roman counterpart, Diana. The cult of Artemis attracted thousands of worshipers from far-off lands. They would all gather at the site and worship her.
See also
★ Ephesia Grammata
Notes
1. ''Description of Greece'' 7.2.6.
2. D.G. Hogarth, editor, 1908. ''Excavations at Ephesus''.
3. Anton Bammer, "A Peripteros" of the Geometric Period in the Artemision of Ephesus" ''Anatolian Studies'' '40' (1990), pp. 137-160
4. Bammer (1990:142) 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."
5. The flood is dated by fragmentary ceramics. (Bammer 1990:141).
6. 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; work attributed to him was noted by Pausanias. The more important fact, as LiDonnici points out, is that Ephesians remembered that a particular sculptor had created the remade image (LiDonnici 1992:398.)
7. Pliny's rationalized site selection did not take into account the antiquity of the sacred site.
8. Ramsay MacMullen, ''Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D. 100-400'' 1984, p 26.
9. John Freely, ''The Western Shores of Turkey: Discovering the Aegean and Mediterranean Coasts'' 2004 p 148
10. http://www.exploreturkey.com/exptur.phtml?id=176 St. Sophia Construction for the Third Time
11. http://archaeology.about.com/od/archaeologistsw/g/woodjt.htm
References
★ Anton Bammer, "A Peripteros" of the Geometric Period in the Artemision of Ephesus" ''Anatolian Studies'' ''40'' (1990), pp. 137-160.
★ Lynn R. LiDonnici, "The Images of Artemis Ephesia and Greco-Roman Worship: A Reconsideration" ''The Harvard Theological Review'' ''85''.4 (October 1992), pp 389-415.
External links
★ British Museum's Temple of Artemis (Ephesos) objects
★ UnMuseum's The Temple of Artemis
★ Seven Wonders' Temple of Artemis
★ Florence Mary Bennett, ''Religious Cults Associated with the Amazons:'' (1912): Chapter III: Ephesian Artemis (text)
★ James Grout: ''Temple of Artemis'', part of the Encyclopædia Romana
★ ★ class=wikiexternal target=_blank>.html Diana's Temple at Ephesus (W. R. Lethaby, 1908)
Manje kuyini okuqakathekileyo ngalesonto kumbe ibalulekile eblungwini kuphela ngoba minan njengomuntu omnyama angisiboni isizatho sokuncoma isontwanyana nje engatsholutho
'
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