At that time, there was a considerable rebellion against the path of the Lord, for a certain silversmith named Demetrius, who made the silver temples of Artemis and brought the artists considerable profit, having gathered them and other similar artisans, said: friends! you know that our well-being depends on this craft; meanwhile you see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul seduced a considerable number of people with his convictions, saying that those made by human hands are not gods.
And this threatens us with the fact that not only our craft will come into contempt, but the temple of the great goddess Artemis will mean nothing, and the greatness of the one that is revered by the whole of Asia and the universe will be overthrown. Having heard this, they were filled with rage and began to shout, saying: Great is Artemis of Ephesus!
Acts of the Apostles 23:28
Ancient civilization. In our cycle of acquaintance with ancient culture, two materials have already appeared: “Croatian Apoxyomenus from under the water. Ancient civilization. Part 2”and“Homer's Poems as a Historical Source. Ancient civilization. Part 1 ". Not so long ago, one of the readers of "VO" reminded me that there had been no new materials on this topic for a long time. And so, "the stars converged." There was a theme for the mood, and interesting illustrative material for it, and … the theme of war is also present in it, even if it is not the main one in it.
So, today our story will go about the fourth wonder of the world - the temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Unfortunately, of the seven wonders that were known in the era of the Ancient World, only one has survived to us - the three pyramids in Giza. All the rest were destroyed, and if something remained of them, then often it is not even ruins, but only some fragments of the same decorative decoration, or stone blocks embedded in the walls of later buildings and fortresses. The situation is approximately the same with this magnificent temple, but here we were a little more fortunate. However, first things first …
And it so happened that the inhabitants of mainland Greece constantly needed living space and periodically took some of their citizens to the colony. By the way, in a completely democratic way. Who to stay and who to go was decided by lot, that is, the will of the gods. One of these colonies was founded in Asia Minor opposite the island of Samos and was named Ephesus. The city grew rich quickly, as it had an advantageous location, and expanded. Near the city there was a small sanctuary of the local goddess of fertility in the form of a many-breasted woman. Why the Greeks who came here identified her with their goddess Artemis - a chaste virgin, goddess of the moon, hunter, patroness of young women, animals and … childbirth, is not entirely clear. But it was so. And every goddess needs a temple and the Ephesians decided to build it. But they had no money for this until the city in 560 BC. did not conquer the Lydian king Croesus, rich well, just to the point of impossibility. And although he conquered the city, he clearly did not dare to quarrel with the Greek gods and especially the goddesses, but on the contrary - made generous donations for the construction of the temple of Artemis and even … presented him with several columns. Here it was necessary to build a temple.
As earthquakes were frequent in Asia Minor, a swampy area was chosen as the site, hoping that the soft ground would soften the tremors. They dug a deep foundation pit, laid on the bottom beams made of charred oak trunks, and on top covered all this with a thick layer of stone chips. It was on this foundation that the first temple was built. Its dimensions were very impressive: 105 m long, 51 m wide, and 127 columns, each 18 meters high, supported its roof. The roof beams were cedar and the doors were cypress. In celle - the sanctuary of the temple - there was a two-meter statue of the goddess made of grape wood, faced with gold and silver
Surprisingly, it just so happened that this temple was closely connected with the fate of another great man of the ancient era - Alexander the Great. It so happened that the new temple did not stand even ten years, as it was set on fire by the madman Herostratus, who thus decided to immortalize his name for centuries. He said so directly at the trial and … the inhabitants of Ephesus decided to take an oath never to pronounce his name, in order to punish him for such a blasphemous act. But, apparently, one of the Ephesians blurted out, otherwise how would the expression "Glory of Herostratus" become winged?
The question arises: how can a stone temple burn down? But the fact is that there was a lot of wood in the Greek temples. These are partitions inside the temple and doors, and ceilings. There were rich draperies, vessels of oil donated to the temple. These are all excellent combustible materials. In addition, the heat turns the marble into lime. So it is not surprising that the temple was destroyed by fire to its foundations. But it is all the more surprising that between the cracked walls and charred beams the Ephesians found a statue of Artemis, practically untouched by the fire. This was considered a sign, the desire of the goddess, that her temple was rebuilt in this very place. Moreover, comparing the dates, the Ephesians learned that it was on the day when their temple burned down that the son of the powerful king Philip of Macedon, Alexander, was born in distant Pella. At all times there were snide and scathing people, and at that time there were quite a few of those who began to ask the Ephesians why their Artemis did not save her temple from the fire, to which they came up with a very worthy answer: “That night Artemis helped with childbirth Alexandra in Pella near Thessaloniki.
The news of the destruction of the temple shook the whole of Greece. The collection of donations has begun for the creation of a new temple, even more beautiful. The construction was entrusted to the architect Heirokrat, who began by transforming the remaining pile of ruins into its new foundation. They were leveled, tamped, and overlaid with slabs of marble. After that, the base increased to 125 m long and 65 m wide. The number of columns is 127, they did not change, but 36 of them received carved bas-reliefs at the base of a height of human height. They depicted figures of Greek gods and heroes. The new temple became two meters higher due to the higher foundation, and it also received a roof of stone slabs, which lay on stone beams, so that some Herostratus would not set it on fire again.
Interestingly, the fate of the temple and Alexander the Great crossed again in 334 BC. BC when he visited him after defeating the Persians by landing in Asia Minor. In honor of the goddess, he organized a ceremonial procession in front of the temple, and promised the inhabitants of Ephesus to give money for the maintenance of the new temple and pay the costs of its construction. The offer was tempting, but the inhabitants of Ephesus did not like it primarily because in their eyes even the great Alexander was just … a barbarian (and everyone who did not speak Greek was considered a barbarian in Greece) and a foreigner, although dangerous, and they resorted to trickery. They declared that they saw in him a god (in our textbooks they usually wrote that the Egyptian priests declared him a god) and rejected Alexander's proposal on the pretext that it was not proper for God to build temples in honor of the goddess. Flattery at all times worked on people flawlessly. So Alexander was flattered by such a statement, and he left these places.
It should be noted that the temples in Ancient Greece, including the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, were not just a center of religious worship. The temple also served as a large bank and a place for concluding transactions, since its deity was the guarantor of honesty. Anyone who needed money could go to the temple, bring a guarantor with him and turn to its chief priest with a request for a loan. That is, he played the role of … the director of the bank, that's even how. Usually the interest rate was ten percent, that is, if a person took, say, one hundred talents, he would pay ten talents annually as interest. Interestingly, the cities paid less - six percent, and if the city needed money for the war, then the priests of the temple of Artemis took only one and a half percent - that's how they sponsored the wars.
The temple enjoyed all its privileges under the Romans, only its patron goddess began to be called Diana. Only in 262 A. D. it was plundered and partially destroyed by the Goths. And after 118 years, Emperor Theodosius completely banned paganism, making Christianity the state religion, after which the temple began to be used as a quarry. The Christians, the Seljuk Turks, and the Arabs worked on it, the remains of the foundation were covered with silt, since the river Kastra flowed nearby, so when the Ottoman Turks finally came to these places, they could not even imagine that it was here when- it was the fourth wonder of the world!
Interesting story, isn't it? But we, however, are no less interested in the history of the archaeological research of Ephesus. And it began back in 1863, when the British architect and engineer John Turtle Wood, who had been designing the buildings of the railway stations on the Smyrna-Aydin line since 1858, became interested in the disappeared temple of Arthermis in Ephesus, which, however, was mentioned in the New Testament (Acts Apostles 19:34). That is, not only Heinrich Schliemann was inspired to excavate ancient lines. There were others besides him. Wood received a firman from Ports to excavate, the British Museum gave the money, and Wood began to dig. In February 1866, while excavating the theater of Ephesus in Roman times, Wood discovered an inscription in Greek indicating that gold and silver statuettes were being transported from the temple to the theater through the Magnesia Gate. A year later, he found the Sacred Way by which Artemision connected to the city. Finally, on December 31, 1869, Wood made his main discovery: he discovered that the ruins of the temple were covered with a six-meter layer of sand, after which he carried out a truly titanic work: from 1872 to 1874, he removed about 3700 cubic meters of sandy-stony soil. Moreover, he managed to send to the British Museum no less than about 60 tons of various fragments of sculpture and architecture. But due to difficult conditions, his health deteriorated and in 1874 he returned to London.
It was obvious to the scientific community that an outstanding discovery had been made, but … that far from everything had been excavated there! Therefore, in 1895, the German archaeologist Otto Benndorf, having agreed with the Austrian Karl Mautner Ritter von Marhof on a subsidy of 10,000 guilders, resumed excavations there. And in 1898, Benndorf founded the Austrian Archaeological Institute, which today plays a key role in the research of Ephesus. Since that time, Austrian scientists have been excavating there almost continuously, or rather with interruptions for two world wars, and have continued there and now since 1954. True, from this year on, such an already local organization as the Archaeological Museum of Ephesus began to dig there. The British also dug there and in 1903 made an important discovery: archaeologist David Hogarth found the "treasure of Artemis" - 3000 beautiful pearls, gold earrings, hair pins, brooches and coins made of electron - an alloy of gold and silver, which turned out to be the oldest minted coins. In 1956, the workshop of the great Phidias was excavated there, where three copies of a statue of Artemis from the first, burnt down temple were found. So excavations there have been going on for more than a century, but despite this, only 10% of the total area of ancient Ephesus has been explored, it turned out to be so great. True, in September 2016, Turkey revoked the license of the Austrian archaeologists due to the deterioration of relations between Ankara and Vienna. But it is expected that they will be continued after the clarification of relations between these countries. You can see the finds from Ephesus in the Vienna Hovburg Palace, where there is a whole Vienna Museum of Ephesus, in the Archaeological Museum of Ephesus in the city of Selcuk in Turkey, that is, almost in the same place where ancient Ephesus stood, and even in the sea nearby to swim, and also at the British Museum.
A very important role in the creation of the Museum of Ephesus in Vienna was played by the agreement between the Ottoman Empire and Austria. Then Sultan Abdul Hamid II presented a generous gift to Emperor Franz Joseph: some of the discovered antiquities were presented to his imperial house. Subsequently, ships of the Austrian Navy brought several shipments of these archaeological finds to Vienna, where they were displayed at Theseus' temple in Volksgarten. So everything that is exhibited in Hovburg got there absolutely legally! And this is especially valuable, since the export of antiquities from Turkey was then generally prohibited after the adoption of the Turkish Antiquities Law of 1907. After that Vienna received nothing more from Turkey.
The collection was kept for many years until, in December 1978, the Vienna Museum of Ephesus was finally opened in its present form inside the New Palace section of the Hovburg complex. Visitors are presented with an impressive array of Greek bas-reliefs and Roman sculptures that once adorned various institutions, including the expansive thermal baths and the Ephesian Theater. A number of architectural elements give the impression of the richly decorated facades of the magnificent old buildings, and the model of the ancient city provides a better understanding of the corresponding arrangement of objects in the topography of Ephesus.
The Ephesus Museum in Vienna is visited by two million visitors annually. And in Turkey, the Ephesus Museum is the most visited tourist site after the Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. By the way, the ruins need care, they need to be reconstructed, as well as the restoration of ancient monuments. Modern Austrian specialists are also engaged in all this in Turkey, although this work is almost invisible.
