@bout the teMple of aRtemis

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. To those who saw it and wrote about it, it was the most beautiful structure on Earth.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, also known as the Artemesium, was constructed in the mid 6th century B.C., around 550. It was located in Ephesus (modern Turkey), and was considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Antipater of Sidon included it on his definitive list of monuments, partly because of its size and grandeur, but also because of its location. It's location on the rim of the Greek world helped to provoke admiration to non-Greeks of the vastness of the Greek world.

The Artemesium was built to honor the Greek goddess Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt, by King Croesus of Lydia, a Persian ruler. The classic Ionic temple was designed and built by Cherisiphron, an architect from Crete, along with his son Metagenes. The location of the temple in Asia Minor was at a commercial crossroads, and therefore attracted a great variety of visitors, with varying religious beliefs. It is because of this that the cult of Artemis that was worshipped here also incorporated elements of worship of other deities, such as Cybele, an earth-mother goddess of the region around Turkey. In fact, the cult statue within the temple was likely reminiscent of this Near-Eastern goddess, featuring several breasts (a symbol of fertility), and portrayed in statuary with legs closed, tapering as a pillar or a sarcophagus (quite unlike Classical Greek statuary).




the Temple of Artemis (Greek: Ἀρτεμίσιον Artemision), also known less precisely as Temple of Diana, was a Greek 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, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. There were previous temples on its site, where evidence of a sanctuary dates as early as the Bronze Age.

The old temple antedated the Ionic immigration by many years. 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). In the seventh century the old temple was destroyed by a flood. Around 550 BC, they started to build the "new" temple, known as one of the wonders of the ancient world. It was a 120-year project, initially designed and constructed by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, at the expense of Croesus of Lydia.