Year: 1998
Type: article
Abstract: Artemis of Ephesos An Avant Garde GoddessArtemis of Ephesos may or may not have many "breasts," a debatable point, but she certainly has two faces, or more properly, two bodies in both iconography and literature. 1 One body is that of the traditional virgin goddess, the huntress of myth, as found in other Greek poleis.The other body, despite the sweet virginal face resembling that of her outdoor namesake, seems to belong to an ancient Anatolian goddess.In one form Artemis skirts over the mountains in a light tunic; in the other she stands rigidly imprisoned in a ponderously embroidered type of straightjacket, the "ependytes".2She seems to struggle to lift her arms, heavily weighed down by what the Fathers of the Church identified as breasts, and unable to take a step.Whatever the body language involved, both forms apparently belonged to the same person, at least in the late Hellenistic and Roman period.Naturally, the double nature of Artemis has to do with the Greek presence in the ancient religious sphere of Anatolia.The recent German excavations at Miletos suggest that Greeks were already settled there in the late Bronze Age, much earlier than scholars had previously thought.3 'Even a vase with a few characters of Linear A inscribed on it has been found, along with the remains of Mycenaean frescoes.The Hellenization of the Anatolian A general treatment of religion at Ephesos can be found in R.E.OSTER, Ephesus as a Religious Center under the Principate.r.Paganism before Constantine, in ANRW, II, 18.3 (1990), p. 1662-1728.2 For Greeks taking different cult forms as manifestations of the same divinity, see C. SOURVINOU-INWOOD, Tragedy and Religion: Constructs and Readings, in C. PELLING (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Historian, Oxford, 1997, p. 161-186, esp.p. 164-170.3The excavator, Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, has presented the evidence in a number of recent lectures and in very brief form as New Excavations in Bronze Age Miletos 1994, in BICS, 40 (1995), p. 260-261.For the Mycenaean presence at Ephesos, see S. KARWIESE, Groft ist die A/1emis von Ephesos.Die Geschichte einer der groftten Stiidte der Antike, Vienna, 1995, p. 13-18.A. BAMMER, U. Muss, Das Artemision von Ephesos.Das Weltwunder Ioniens in archiiischer und klassischer Zeif, Mainz, 1996, p. 25-28, think it quite likely there was a Mycenaean cult site under the Artemision, judging by the Mycenaean artifacts (calf, "Lord of Asine" type head, and double ax) found in the immediate vicinity (p.27).
Source: Kernos
DOI: 10.4000/kernos.1224
Author: Frederick E. Brenk
Language: French
Topic: Classical Antiquity Studies
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2075736009