Qualla: Temple of Artemis at Ephesus

Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elelicht, CC BY-SA 3.0. On July 21, 356 BC, a man named Herostratus walked into the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and set the wooden roof beams on fire. Caught soon after, he was tortured to determine his motive. He confessed willingly. He had wanted to become famous, he said, by destroying something so beautiful that his name would be tied to it forever. The Ephesians sentenced him to death and made it illegal to speak his name - a punishment they called damnatio memoriae. The historian Theopompus mentioned him anyway. Twenty-four centuries later, Herostratus is more famous than the architects who built the temple. The term "herostratic fame" entered the language to describe what he achieved: notoriety acquired through pure destruction. The temple he burned was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Image: Elelicht | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: A Wonder Among Wonders

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Antipater of Sidon, who compiled the canonical list of the Seven Wonders in the 2nd century BC, described his reaction to seeing the Temple of Artemis: "I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus, and the ha...

Image: Public domain

Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: The Goddess Beneath the Goddess

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yair Haklai, CC BY 3.0. Artemis at Ephesus was not the slim huntress Greeks knew elsewhere. She was something older, perhaps Anatolian in origin, perhaps tied to a Bronze Age "Great Goddess" whose cult was already ancient when Greek emigrants arrived on the coast and overlaid their own names on the exis...

Image: Yair Haklai | CC BY 3.0

Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: The Pilgrims and the Procession

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CherryX, CC BY-SA 3.0. Each year in March and again in early May, large crowds gathered at Ephesus for the great Artemis Procession. Pilgrims came from across the Greek and later Roman world. Coins, votive offerings, and dedicatory inscriptions accumulated in the temple's treasury until it was one of t...

Image: CherryX | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: The Long Decline

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit autor fotografie Zee Prime Original uploader was Zee Prime at cs.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Goth Cniva sacked Ephesus in 268 AD. Whether or not the temple was directly damaged is unclear - some sources say it was, others suggest it remained at least partially in use afterward. By the 5th century AD, with paganism formally banned across the Roman Empire, the temple w...

Image: autor fotografie Zee Prime Original uploader was Zee Prime at cs.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: Wood, the British Museum, and a Single Column

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dguendel, CC BY 3.0. John Turtle Wood spent six years searching for the temple. Funded by the British Museum, he combed the marshy ground outside the modern Turkish town of Selcuk, which had grown up over the ancient ruins of Ephesus, and in 1869 he found foundations. Excavations continued until 1874...

Image: Dguendel | CC BY 3.0