Jonathan Kieran

For those interested in the wonders of ancient history and archaeology, you won’t find a more concise and compelling article than THIS history of the great Temple of the goddess Artemis at Ephesus. The now-utterly destroyed structure was famous throughout the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond, both for its grandeur and for the popularity of its cult, which centered around the most beloved goddess of Asia Minor. Artemis was sometimes identified with the decidedly Roman Diana, but in her classic Hellenistic heyday she was the arrow-shooting, forest-conquering sister of Apollo, who had his own cult center not terribly far away in Delphi.

Artemis was a goddess of interesting contradictions and qualities, sometimes celebrated for her status as an untouched virgin and virago, while at other times invoked as the erotic patroness of fertile wombs and successful childbirth. These dualities should come as no surprise, given the ancient Greek mythological penchant for paradoxical figures. Whatever the case, Artemis reigned supreme in her glorious city for centuries, her sanctuary considered one of the “Seven Wonders of the World” even in ancient times. The temple itself underwent numerous trials and tribulations, especially given that Ephesus was located in one of the more frequently war-torn, politically fractious, and economically perilous regions of the Mediterranean.

One can still visit the city’s considerable ruins today. The importance of Ephesus in the trajectory and evolution of Western History itself cannot be overstated due to the fact that the city hosted the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE—it was at this great council, rife with intrigue and enormous implications for the future of human culture, that Christian bishops from all over the known world affirmed the right of the Christian faithful to continue their practice of invoking the Virgin Mary as “Theotokos” i.e. “God-birther,” thus sealing in spiritual and imperial society the henceforth incontestable understanding of Jesus as one Person with two united natures, fully human and fully divine.

One would have to imagine that the paradoxical Artemis herself would appreciate the juxtaposition, if not the sad collapse of her glorious temple into irrelevance.

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