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Ephesus (; ; ; may ultimately derive from ) was an Ancient Greece city on the coast of Ionia, in present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. (1997). 9780195065121, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195065121 It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former capital, by Attica and Ionians Greek colonists. During the Classical Greece era, it was one of twelve cities that were members of the Ionian League. The city came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC.
The city was famous in its day for the nearby Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), which has been designated one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Its many monumental buildings included the Library of Celsus and a theatre capable of holding 24,000 spectators.
Ephesus was a recipient city of one of the Pauline epistles and one of the seven churches of Asia addressed in the Book of Revelation.2:1–7 The Gospel of John may have been written there,Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible, Palo Alto, Mayfield, 1985. and it was the site of several 5th-century Christian Councils (Council of Ephesus). The city was destroyed by the Goths in 263. Although it was afterwards rebuilt, its importance as a port and commercial centre declined as the harbour was slowly silted up by the Küçükmenderes River. In 614, it was partially destroyed by an earthquake.
Today, the ruins of Ephesus are a favourite international and local tourist attraction, being accessible from Adnan Menderes Airport and from the resort town Kuşadası. In 2015, the ruins were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Greek goddess Artemis and the great Anatolian goddess Kybele were identified together as Artemis of Ephesus. The many-breasted "Lady of Ephesus", identified with Artemis, was venerated in the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the World and the largest building of the ancient world according to Pausanias (4.31.8). Pausanias mentions that the temple was built by Ephesus, son of the river god Caystrus, before the arrival of the Ionians. Of this structure, scarcely a trace remains.
Ancient sources seem to indicate that an older name of the place was Alope ().
Later in the same century, the Lydians under Croesus went to war against Persia, which had recently conquered the Median kingdom. The Ionians refused a peace offer from Cyrus the Great, siding with the Lydians instead. After the Persians defeated Croesus, the Ionians offered to make peace, but Cyrus insisted that they surrender and become part of the empire.Herodotus i. 141 They were defeated by the Persian army commander Harpagos in 547 BC. The Persians then incorporated the Greek cities of Asia Minor into the Achaemenid Empire. Those cities were then ruled by .
Ephesus has intrigued archaeologists because for the Archaic Period there is no definite location for the settlement. There are numerous sites to suggest the movement of a settlement between the Bronze Age and the Roman period, but the silting up of the natural harbours as well as the movement of the Kayster River meant that the location never remained the same.
During the Peloponnesian War, Ephesus was first allied to Athens but in a later phase, called the Decelean War, or the Ionian War, sided with Sparta, which also had received the support of the Persians. As a result, rule over the cities of Ionia was ceded again to Persia.
These wars did not greatly affect daily life in Ephesus. The Ephesians were surprisingly modern in their social relations: they allowed strangers to integrate and education was valued. In later times, Pliny the Elder mentioned having seen at Ephesus a representation of the goddess Diana by Timarete, the daughter of a painter.Pliny the Elder Naturalis historia xxxv.40.147.
In 356 BC the temple of Artemis was burnt down, according to legend, by a lunatic called Herostratus. The inhabitants of Ephesus at once set about restoring the temple and even planned a larger and grander one than the original.
As the river Cayster (Grk. name Κάϋστρος) silted up the old harbour, the resulting marshes caused malaria and many deaths among the inhabitants. Lysimachus forced the people to move from the ancient settlement around the temple of Artemis to the present site two kilometres () away, when as a last resort the king flooded the old city by blocking the sewers. The new settlement was officially called Arsinoea (Edwyn Robert Bevan, The House of Seleucus, Vol. 1 (E. Arnold, 1902), p. 119. or ἈρσινοΐαWilhelm Pape, Wörterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen, Vol. 3 (Braunschweig, 1870), p. 145.) or Arsinoe (Ἀρσινόη), after the king's second wife, Arsinoe II of Egypt. After Lysimachus had destroyed the nearby cities of Lebedos and Colophon in 292 BC, he relocated their inhabitants to the new city.
Ephesus revolted after the treacherous death of Agathocles, giving the Hellenistic king of Syria and Mesopotamia Seleucus I Nicator an opportunity for removing and killing Lysimachus, his last rival, at the Battle of Corupedium in 281 BC. After the death of Lysimachus the town again was named Ephesus.
Thus Ephesus became part of the Seleucid Empire. After the murder of king Antiochus II Theos and his Egyptian wife in 246 BC, pharaoh Ptolemy III invaded the Seleucid Empire and the Egyptian fleet swept the coast of Asia Minor. Ephesus was betrayed by its governor Sophron into the hands of the Ptolemies who ruled the city for half a century until 197 BC.
The Seleucid king Antiochus III the Great tried to regain the Greek cities of Asia Minor and recaptured Ephesus in 196 BC but he then came into conflict with Rome. After a series of battles, he was defeated by Scipio Asiaticus at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC. As a result of the subsequent Treaty of Apamea, Ephesus came under the rule of Eumenes II, the Attalid king of Pergamon, (ruled 197–159 BC). When his grandson Attalus III died in 133 BC without male children of his own, he left his kingdom to the Roman Republic, on condition that the city of Pergamon be kept free and autonomous.
The city felt Roman influence at once; taxes rose considerably, and the treasures of the city were systematically plundered. Hence in 88 BC Ephesus welcomed Archelaus, a general of Mithridates, king of Pontus, when he conquered Asia (the Roman name for western Anatolia). From Ephesus, Mithridates ordered every Roman citizen in the province to be killed which led to the Asiatic Vespers, the slaughter of 80,000 Roman citizens in Asia, or any person who spoke with a Latin accent. Many had lived in Ephesus, and statues and monument of Roman citizens in Ephesus were also destroyed. But when they saw how badly the people of Chios had been treated by Zenobius, a general of Mithridates, they refused entry to his army. Zenobius was invited into the city to visit Philopoemen, the father of Monime, the favourite wife of Mithridates, and the overseer of Ephesus. As the people expected nothing good of him, they threw him into prison and murdered him. Mithridates took revenge and inflicted terrible punishments. However, the Greek cities were given freedom and several substantial rights. Ephesus became, for a short time, self-governing. When Mithridates was defeated in the First Mithridatic War by the Roman consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Ephesus came back under Roman rule in 86 BC. Sulla imposed a huge indemnity, along with five years of back taxes, which left Asian cities heavily in debt for a long time to come.
King Ptolemy XII Auletes of Egypt retired to Ephesus in 57 BC, passing his time in the sanctuary of the temple of Artemis when the Roman Senate failed to restore him to his throne.
Mark Antony was welcomed by Ephesus for periods when he was proconsul and in 33 BC with Cleopatra when he gathered his fleet of 800 ships before the battle of Actium with Augustus.
When Augustus became emperor in 27 BC, the most important change was when he made Ephesus the capital of proconsular Asia (which covered western Asia Minor) instead of Pergamum. Ephesus then entered an era of prosperity, becoming both the seat of the governor and a major centre of commerce. According to Strabo, it was second in importance and size only to Rome.
The city and temple were destroyed by the Goths in 263 AD. This marked the decline of the city's splendour. However, emperor Constantine the Great rebuilt much of the city and erected new public baths.
The wall of Lysimachus has been estimated to enclose an area of . Not all of this area was inhabited due to public buildings and spaces in the city center and the steep slope of the Bülbül Dağı mountain, which was enclosed by the wall. Ludwig Burchner estimated this area with the walls at 1000 acres. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor uses an estimate of 345 hectares for the inhabited land or 835 acres (Murphey cites Ludwig Burchner). He cites Josiah Russell using 832 acres and Old Jerusalem in 1918 as the yardstick estimated the population at 51,068 at 148.5 persons per hectare. Using 510 persons per hectare, he arrives at a population between 138,000 and 172,500 . J.W. Hanson estimated the inhabited space to be smaller, at . He argues that population densities of 150~250 people per hectare are more realistic, which gives a range of 33,600–56,000 inhabitants. Even with these much lower population estimates, Ephesus was one of the largest cities of Roman Asia Minor, ranking it as the largest city after Sardis and Alexandria Troas. Hanson and Ortman (2017) estimate an inhabited area to be 263 hectares and their demographic model yields an estimate of 71,587 inhabitants, with a population density of 276 inhabitants per hectare. By contrast, Rome within the walls encompassed 1,500 hectares and as over 400 built-up hectares were left outside the Aurelian Wall, whose construction was begun in 274 AD and finished in 279 AD, the total inhabited area plus public spaces inside the walls consisted of ca. 1,900 hectares. Imperial Rome had a population estimated to be between 750,000 and one million (Hanson and Ortman's (2017) model yields an estimate of 923,406 inhabitants), which imply in a population density of 395 to 526 inhabitants per hectare, including public spaces.
Excavations in 2022 indicate that large parts of the city were destroyed in 614/615 by a military conflict, most likely during the Sasanian War, which initiated a drastic decline in the city's population and standard of living.
The importance of the city as a commercial centre further declined as the harbour, today 5 kilometres inland, was slowly silted up by the river (today, Küçük Menderes) despite repeated dredging during the city's history. The loss of its harbour caused Ephesus to lose its access to the Aegean Sea, which was important for trade. People started leaving the lowland of the city for the surrounding hills. The ruins of the temples were used as building blocks for new homes. Marble sculptures were ground to powder to make lime for plaster.
Sackings by the Arabs first in the year 654–655 by caliph Muawiyah I, and later in 700 and 716 hastened the decline further.
When the Seljuq dynasty conquered Ephesus in 1090,Foss, Clive (1979) Ephesus after antiquity: a late antique, Byzantine, and Turkish city, Cambridge University Press, p. 121.
The Crusaders of the Second Crusade fought the Seljuks just outside the town in December 1147. In 1206, the city came under the control of the Laskaris. It was an important religious and intellectual center during the 13th century. Nikephoros Blemmydes, a prominent intellectual of the time, taught in the city. However, the Byzantines lost control of the region by 1308.
Shortly afterwards, Ephesus was ceded to the Aydinids principality that stationed a powerful navy in the harbour of Ayasuluğ (the present-day Selçuk, next to Ephesus). Ayasoluk became an important harbour, from which piratical raids on the surrounding Christian regions were organised, some officially sanctioned by the state and some by private parties.
The town knew a short period of prosperity again during the 14th century under these new Seljuq dynasty rulers. They added important architectural works such as the İsa Bey Mosque, caravansaries, and Hammam (bathhouses).
Ephesus was completely abandoned by the 15th century. Nearby Ayasuluğ ( Ayasoluk being a corrupted form of the original Greek name) was Turkification to Selçuk in 1914.
Roman Asia was also associated with John,Will Durant. Caesar and Christ. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1972 one of the chief apostles, and the Gospel of John might have been written in Ephesus, c 90–100.Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. Palo Alto: Mayfield. 1985. "The Gospels" p. 266-268. John is said to have died of natural causes at Ephesus sometime after AD 98, during the reign of Trajan, thus becoming the only apostle who did not die as a Christian martyr. His tomb is thought to be located in the former Basilica of St. John at Selçuk, a small town in the vicinity of Ephesus.Procopius of Caesarea, On Buildings General Index, trans. H. B. Dewing and Glanville Downey, vol. 7, Loeb Classical Library 343 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1940), 319 Ephesus was one of the seven cities addressed in the Book of Revelation, indicating that the church at Ephesus was strong.
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, Saint Timothy, the companion of Saint Paul, was the first bishop of Ephesus..
In the early 2nd century, the church at Ephesus was still important enough to be addressed by a letter written by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch to the Ephesians which begins with "Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church which is at Ephesus, in Asia, deservedly most happy, being blessed in the greatness and fullness of God the Father, and predestinated before the beginning of time, that it should be always for an enduring and unchangeable glory" ( Letter to the Ephesians). The church at Ephesus had given their support for Ignatius, who was taken to Rome for execution.
Polycrates of Ephesus () was a bishop at the Church of Ephesus in the 2nd century. He is best known for his letter addressed to the Pope Victor I, Bishop of Rome, defending the Quartodeciman position in the Easter controversy.
A legend, which was first mentioned by Epiphanius of Salamis in the 4th century, purported that
Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have spent the last years of her life in Ephesus. The Ephesians derived the argument from John's presence in the city, and Jesus' instructions to the "disciple whom he loved" to take care of his mother, Mary, after his death. Epiphanius, however, claimed that while the Bible says John was leaving for Asia, it does not say specifically that Mary went with him. He later stated that she was buried in Jerusalem.Vasiliki Limberis, 'The Council of Ephesos: The Demise of the See of Ephesos and the Rise of the Cult of the Theotokos' in Helmut Koester, Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia (2004), 327. Since the 19th century, The House of the Virgin Mary, about from Selçuk, has been considered to have been the last home of Mary, mother of Jesus, before her assumption into heaven in the Roman Catholic tradition, based on the visions of Augustinian sister the Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824). It is a popular place of Catholic pilgrimage which has been visited by three recent popes.
The Church of Mary near the harbour of Ephesus was the setting for the Third Ecumenical Council in 431, which resulted in the condemnation of Nestorius. A Second Council of Ephesus was held in 449, but its controversial acts were never approved by the Catholics. It came to be called the Robber Council of Ephesus or Robber Synod of Latrocinium by its opponents.
They are considered saints by Catholics and Orthodox Christians and their story is also mentioned in the Qur'an.
The Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, once stood 418' by 239' with over 100 marble pillars each 56' high. The temple earned the city the title "Servant of the Goddess".The Revelation Explained: An Exposition, Text by Text, of the Apocalypse of St. John by F.G. Smith, 1918, public domain. Pliny tells us that the magnificent structure took 120 years to build, but it is now represented only by one inconspicuous column, revealed during an archaeological excavation by the British Museum in the 1870s. Some fragments of the frieze (which are insufficient to suggest the form of the original) and other small finds were removed – some to London and some to the İstanbul Archaeology Museums.
The Library of Celsus, the façade of which has been carefully reconstructed from original pieces, was originally built in memory of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, an Ancient Greeks who served as governor of Roman Asia (105–107 AD) in the Roman Empire. Celsus paid for the construction of the library with his own personal wealth and is buried in a sarcophagus beneath it.
The interior of the library measured roughly and may have contained as many as 12,000 scrolls. By the year 400 A.D. the library was no longer in use after being damaged in 262 A.D. The facade was reconstructed during 1970 to 1978 using fragments found on site or copies of fragments that were previously removed to museums.
The Great Theatre, with an estimated 25,000 seating capacity, is believed to be the largest in the ancient world. This open-air theatre was used initially for drama, but during later Roman times gladiatorial combats were also held on its stage; the first archaeological evidence of a gladiator graveyard was found in May 2007.
There were two agora, one for commercial and one for state business.
Ephesus also had several major bath complexes, built at various times while the city was under Roman rule.
The city had one of the most advanced aqueduct systems in the ancient world, with at least six aqueducts of various sizes supplying different areas of the city. They fed a number of water mills, one of which has been identified as a sawmill for marble.
The Odeon was a small roofed theatre constructed by Publius Vedius Antoninus and his wife around 150 AD. It was a small salon for plays and concerts, seating about 1,500 people. There were 22 stairs in the theatre. The upper part of the theatre was decorated with red granite pillars in the Corinthian style. The entrances were at both sides of the stage and reached by a few steps.Keskin, Naci. Ephesus.
The Temple of Hadrian dates from the 2nd century but underwent repairs in the 4th century and has been reerected from the surviving architectural fragments. The reliefs in the upper sections are casts, the originals now being exhibited in the Ephesus Archaeological Museum. A number of figures are depicted in the reliefs, including the emperor Theodosius I with his wife and eldest son. The temple was depicted on the reverse of the Turkish 20 million Turkish lira banknote of 2001–2005 Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey . Banknote Museum: 7. Emission Group – Twenty Million Turkish Lira – I. Series . – Retrieved on 20 April 2009. and of the 20 new lira banknote of 2005–2009. Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey . Banknote Museum: 8. Emission Group – Twenty New Turkish Lira – I. Series .
The Temple of the Sebastoi (sometimes called the Temple of Domitian), dedicated to the Flavian dynasty, was one of the largest temples in the city. It was erected on a pseudodipteral plan with 8 × 13 columns. The temple and its statue are some of the few remains connected with Domitian.
The Tomb/Fountain of Pollio was erected in 97 AD in honour of C. Sextilius Pollio, who constructed the Marnas aqueduct, by Offilius Proculus. It has a concave façade. Ephesus. Distributed by Rehber Basım Yayın Dağıtım Reklamcılık ve Tic. A.Ş. and Revak publishers. ,
at the Basilica of St. John.]]A part of the site, Basilica of St. John, was built in the 6th century, under emperor Justinian I, over the supposed site of the apostle's tomb. It is now surrounded by Selçuk.
Finds from the site are exhibited notably in the Ephesos Museum in Vienna, the Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selçuk and in the British Museum.
In October 2016, Turkey halted the works of the archeologists, which had been ongoing for more than 100 years, due to tensions between Austria and Turkey. In May 2018, Turkey allowed Austrian archeologists to resume their excavations.
Byzantine Roman period (395–1308)
Ephesus remained the most important city of the Byzantine Empire in Asia after Constantinople in the 5th and 6th centuries. (2025). 9780756545864, Compass Point Books. ISBN 9780756545864 Emperor Arcadius raised the level of the street between the theatre and the harbour. The basilica of St. John was built during the reign of emperor Justinian I in the 6th century.
Gökovalı, Şadan; Altan Erguvan (1982) Ephesus, Ticaret Matbaacılık, p.7. it was a small village. The Byzantines resumed control in 1097 and changed the name of the town to Hagios Theologos. Crusaders passing through were surprised that there was only a small village, called Ayasalouk, where they had expected a bustling city with a large seaport. Even the temple of Artemis was completely forgotten by the local population.
Pre-Ottoman period (1304–1390)
On 24 October 1304, the town surrendered to Sasa Bey, a Turkish warlord of the Menteşoğulları principality. Contrary to the terms of the surrender, the Turks pillaged the church of Saint John and, when a revolt seemed probable, deported most of the local population to Thyrea, Greece. During these events, many of the remaining inhabitants were massacred.
Ottoman period
Ephesians were incorporated as vassals into the Ottoman Empire for the first time in 1390. The Central Asian warlord Tamerlane defeated the Ottomans in Anatolia in 1402, and the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I died in captivity. The region was restored to the Anatolian beyliks. After a period of unrest, the region was again incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1425.
Ephesus and Christianity
Ephesus was an important centre for Early Christianity from the AD 50s. From AD 52–54, the apostle Paul lived for three years in Ephesus, working with the congregation and organizing missionary activity into the hinterlands."Paul, St." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005 Initially, according to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul attended the Jewish synagogue in Ephesus, but after three months he became frustrated with the stubbornness of some of the Jews, and moved his base to the school of Tyrannus. The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary reminds readers that the unbelief of "some" () implies that "others, probably a large number, believed"Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary on Acts 19 accessed 5 October 2015 and therefore there must have been a community of in Ephesus. Paul introduced about twelve men to the 'baptism with the Holy Spirit' who had previously only experienced the baptism of John the Baptist. Later a silversmith named Demetrios stirred up a mob against Paul, saying that he was endangering the livelihood of those making silver Artemis shrines. Demetrios in connection with the temple of Artemis mentions some object (perhaps an image or a stone) "fallen from Zeus". Between 53 and 57 AD Paul wrote the letter 1 Corinthians from Ephesus (possibly from the 'Paul tower' near the harbour, where he was imprisoned for a short time). Later, Paul wrote the Epistle to the Ephesians while he was in prison in Rome (around 62 AD).
Seven Sleepers
Ephesus is believed to be the city of the Seven Sleepers, who were persecuted by the Roman emperor Decius because of their Christianity, and they slept in a cave for three centuries, outlasting their persecution.
Main sites
Ephesus is one of the largest Roman archaeological sites in the eastern Mediterranean. The visible ruins still give some idea of the city's original splendour, and the names associated with the ruins are evocative of its former life. The theatre dominates the view down Harbour Street, which leads to the silted-up harbour.
Hanfmann, George Maxim Anossov (1975). 9780472084203, University of Michigan Press. . ISBN 9780472084203 The library was mostly built by his son Gaius Julius Aquila and once held nearly 12,000 scrolls. Designed with an exaggerated entrance — so as to enhance its perceived size, speculate many historians — the building faces east so that the reading rooms could make best use of the morning light.
Announcement on the Withdrawal of E8 New Turkish Lira Banknotes from Circulation , 8 May 2007. – Retrieved on 20 April 2009.
On a slope opposite the Hadrian Temple, the Terrace Houses also called as "The Houses of the Rich" includes six luxury Roman residences, featuring on the floor and on the wall. Built on three terraces at the lower end of the slope of Bulbul Mountain, they were built according to the Hippodamian plan of the city in which roads transected each other at the right angles. The oldest structure dates to the first century BC, and some of them were in use until the seventh century AD. The discovery and excavations of them shed light on the family life during the Roman period. Today, Ephesus terrace houses are covered with protective roofing.Elisabeth Rathmayr (2025). 9783700176305, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. . ISBN 9783700176305
Archaeology
The history of archaeological research in Ephesus stretches back to 1863, when British architect John Turtle Wood, sponsored by the British Museum, began to search for the Artemision. In 1869 he discovered the pavement of the temple, but since further expected discoveries were not made the excavations stopped in 1874. In 1895 German archaeologist Otto Benndorf, financed by a 10,000 guilder donation made by Austrian Karl Mautner Ritter von Markhof, resumed excavations. In 1898 Benndorf founded the Austrian Archaeological Institute, which plays a leading role in Ephesus today.
Notable people
See also
Sources
External links
Categories: Ancient Greek Archaeological Sites In Turkey, Ephesus, Archaeological Sites In The Aegean Region, Athenian Colonies, Former Populated Places In Turkey, History Of İzmir Province, Holy Cities, Ionian League, Members Of The Delian League, New Testament Cities, Pauline Churches, Populated Places Established In The 10th Century Bc, Asia, Tourist Attractions In İzmir Province, Populated Places In Ancient Ionia, Former Kingdoms
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