Temple of Artemis
The Temple of Artemis (Greek: Ἀρτεμίσιον; Turkish: Artemis Tapınağı), also known as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to an ancient, local form of the goddess Artemis (identified with Diana, a Roman goddess). By 401 AD it had been destroyed. Only foundations and fragments of the last temple remain at the site.
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. He wrote "Apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on anything so grand".
Location and history
The Temple of Artemis was located near the ancient city of Ephesus, about 75 kilometres south from the modern port city of Izmir, in Turkey. Today the site lies on the edge of the modern town of Selçuk.
This 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.
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 Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes. It was 115 m long and 46 m wide, supposedly the first Greek temple built of marble. Its peripteral columns stood some 13 m 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 and a naiskos to house it was erected east of the open-air altar.
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.
In 356 BC, the temple burned down. Various sources describe this as 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. For this outrage, the Ephesians sentenced the perpetrator to death and forbade anyone from mentioning his name. Aristotle's Meteorology 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; he does not specify a cause for the fire.
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 long by 69 m wide and 18 m high, with more than 127 columns.
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. 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.
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 lain derelict until its official closure during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire. Ammonius of Alexandria comments on its closure, perhaps as early as 407 or no later than the mid 5th century. After closure and after the city had become Christian, the name of Artemis appears to have been erased from inscriptions throughout Ephesus.
At least some of the stone from the abandoned temple was used in construction of other buildings. A late medieval legend 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.
Rediscovery of the temple
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. 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 pot-hoard 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 dissociated fragments discovered on the site.
Artemis Tapinaği
Artemis Tapınağı, (Yunanca: Artemision; Latince: Artemisium) aynı zamanda Diana Tapınağı olarak da bilinir. Tanrıça Artemis'e ithaf edilmiş tapınak Efes'te Milattan önce 550 yıllarında tamamlanmıştır. Tapınak tamamen mermerden inşa edilmiştir. Dünyanın yedi harikasından biri sayılan tapınaktan geriye bugün sadece bir iki mermer parçası kalmıştır. Türkiye'deki antik kent Selçuk İzmir'de bulunmaktadır.
Tapınak Lidya Kralı Kroisos tarafından başlatılmış 120 senelik bir projenin eseridir. Dünyanın yedi harikasını derleyen Sidon'lu Antipater tapınağı şöyle tarif etmiştir. „Mağrur Babil'in üstünde savaş arabaları için yol olan duvarını ve Alpheus'taki Zeus heykelini ve asma bahçeleri gördüm ve Güneşin kolosusunu ve yüksek piramitlerin devasa işçiliğini ve Mausolos'un engin mezarını; ama Artemis'in bulutlar üzerine kurulmuş evini gördüğümde diğer tüm harikalar parlaklıklarını kaybetti ve dedim ki "İşte! Olimpus'un dışında, Güneş hiç bu kadar büyük bir şeye bakmadı.“
Bizanslı Philon ise tapınak için şunları yazmıştır: „Kadim Babillilerin kudretli işçiliğini ve Mausoleus'un mezarını gördüm. Ama bulutlara doğru yükselen Efes'teki tapınağı gördüğümde, diğerlerinin tümü gölgede kalmıştı.“
Mimari ve sanat
Tapınağın üç evreden oluştuğu sanılmaktadır. A evresi Artemisium olarak adlandırılan tapınaktan önce orada yaklaşık MÖ 7. yüzyılda yapılmış bir sunaktır. B evresi daha sonra bunun üzerine yapılmış olan tapınak, C evresi ise yangından sonra yapılan restorasyondur.
Tapınağın içi ve içindeki sanat hakkındaki tanımlamaların ve hemen hepsi tarihçi Plynus'un anlattıklarına dayanmaktadır. Pliny tapınağı 115 metre uzunluğunda ve 55 metre eninde neredeyse tamamen mermerden olarak tanımlamıştır. Tapınak her biri 18 metre olan 127 İyonik stilde kolondan oluşmaktadır.
Artemis Tapınağı içinde birçok sanat eseri vardı. Ünlü Yunan heykeltıraşlar Polyclitus, Pheidias, Cresilas, ve Phradmon tarafından yapılmış heykellerle, tablolarla ve altın ve gümüşle bezenmiş kolonlarla donatılmıştı. Sanatçılar en güzel heykeli yaratmak için birbirleri ile yarışırlardı. Bu heykellerin büyük çoğunluğu Efes şehrini kurduğu söylenen Amazonlar'ın heykelleridir.
Pliny ayrıca, Mausolos'un mozolesi üzerinde de çalışan Scopas'ın tapınağın kolonlarındaki kabartmaları oyduğunu söyler.
Kült ve tesir
Artemis Tapınağı Efes bölgesinin ekonomik olarak güçlü bir bölgesinde yer almaktaydı ve tüccarlar ve Anadolu'nun her yerinden yolcular tarafından ziyaret edilmekteydi. Tapınak birçok inanıştan etkilenmiştir ve birçok farklı dinden insan için bir inanç sembolü olmuştur. Efesliler Kibele'ye taparlardı ve inançlarının büyük bir kısmında Artemis'i de dahil ettiler. Artemis Kibele, Romalı karşıtı Diana'dan çok farklı bir şekil aldı. Artemis kültü uzak diyarlardan binlerce tapanı çekti. Hepsi bu yerde bir araya gelip ona taparlardı.
Source: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_Tapınağı
I would like to thank AndéRsSoN for his help with the maintenance the cache.