Artemis of Ephesus

Photo 2006, at Ephesus Museum

About 550 BCE, the first huge marble temple to a goddess was built in Ephesus, on the Aegean coast near the Turkish city of Izmir. Called the Artemision, this Temple to Artemis was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world. Today, only one of the pillars remains standing.

The Ephesus Museum in Seljuk has various representations of the goddess whose remarkable images once graced her nearby temple, now in ruins. These Artemis statues have long intrigued archelologists. Some say the oval shapes around her torso represent eggs or multiple breasts, while others theorize that they depict bull testicles. The bull was a powerful symbol in many ancient Mediterranean cultures.

This version of Artemis, also known as "the great mother goddess," has subsumed aspects of earlier goddesses including the Phrygian Cybele, the Egyptian Isis and the Sumerian Inanna/Ishtar. In earlier antiquity, it is quite possible that these more ancient goddesses were worshiped where the Artemis temple was later built.

Another epithet for this goddess was "mother of the animals." Appropriately, this statue is flanked by a lion and an antelope or stag. With her arm position as well as her association with animals, she resembles another of her incarnations, Diana, the Roman huntress and moon goddess. Many statues show Diana with a stag.

Part of this statue's costume is covered in flowers and bees and her braided hair resembles cereal grains. A larger image of Artemis of Ephesus at the same museum has a mural crown with a disc, a garland of flowers around her neck and, like this one, a tight skirt with empanelled carvings of lions, griffins, stags and bulls.