Ancient Ephesus (Part 3)

At the bottom of the Ephesus site are the ruins of the Church of the Virgin Mary. Built in the 2^nd century AD it was converted to a basilica in the 4^th century AD and is the first church known to be dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The 3^rd Ecumenical Council convened here in 431AD and fiercely debated the divinity of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Was Christ a human with divine qualities of was he God Himself? Christ’s divine status was agreed and the dissenter, Nestorius, was sent into exile. As a result Ephesus became an important centre of the Christain world and the Virgin Mary became much more significant in Christian teachings. The other link to the Virgin Mary is that she was brought to live near to Ephesus by the Apostle St John after Christ’s crusifiction.

Runs of the Church of the Virgin Mary including its baptism bath    

Christianity had gained followers at Ephesus much earlier with the arrival of St Paul in AD51. There were objections however, particularly from the silversmiths who had a lucrative business selling statuettes of the godess Diana (the Roman version of Artemis). The protest of several thousand people against St Pauls preachings, arranged by the union of silversmiths, is described in the Bible (Acts 19:23-19:40).

By now we had viewed all the ruins open to tourists and felt that we should take a look at the highly recommended Ephesus Museum in Selçuk. Perhaps we should have walked back to the main road to await the next dolmuş but we were feeling a little weary and didn’t want to then have to wander around the town trying to find the museum. So we spent all of 20TL (£5) on a taxi ride into town. Once there the taxi driver helpfully pointed out that the museum was located directly opposite the dolmuş station!

We were fortunate in that the musuem, which houses an exceptional collection from the ancient city, had only relatively recently been reopened following renovation work.

Some of the original statues from the Epesus site are displayed here. The little bronze statue of Eros riding a dolphin is one of the most famous ones. Many of the others came from along the Street of the Curetes.

There were several cases of fine jewellery dating from the 3^rd to the 1^st centuries BC, as well as votive offerings, tomb finds and effects recovered from the houses.

Outside is an area dedicated to more architectural finds, including this sundial.  There were also numerous sarcophagi and a couple of lovely floor mosaics.

Artist’s impression of the Temple of Artemis

Artemis was the protecting goddess of Ephesus and the Temple of Artemis, that was built about 1.5km to the east of the city, was so large and so impressive that it ranked as one of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. The oldest finds from the site are fragments of Mycenaean pottery from 14-13BC. The site appears to have been used as a cult sanctuary since the 11^th century BC and was home to suceessive temples from Late Antiquity on. The first vast temple on the site was constructed around 570BC, measured about 100m x 60m and featured 106 marble columns decorated with reliefs. Some sections, found during early excavations of the temple, are now on display in the British Museum. However, in 356BC, Herostratus burned the temple down so that he might achieve immortality and so a new one was erected in its place. Alexander the Great offered to help to pay for it (in exchange for a dedicatory inscription) but the Ephesians turned him dowm on the grounds that it was inappropriate for one god to dedicate a temple to another. Twenty-two years after its destruction, the temple was restored to even greater glory and came to rank among the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. Unfortunately, this latter temple was also destroyed, partly by an earthquake and partly by the invading Goths who ransacked in the earthquake’s wake, although part of it was later restored and remained in use until 400AD.

The museum contains 2 huge and almost complete statues of Artemis which came from the Prytaneion in Ephesus, the building which housed the sacred hearth and which was used to host eminent visitors and envoys to the city. The museum blurb about the cult of Artemis stated that these depictions of the goddess are unusual as she is normally depicted in hunting garb and holding a bow.

We considered going up to the site of the Temple of Artemis but there is little to see there now and just one column standing, so we gave it a miss and got the dolmuş back to Kuşadasi.

Once back at BV, however, Nicky realised that her mobile phone was missing and that she must have lost it on the dolmuş. She walked bck up to the dolmuş station and, happily, managed to locate the one English-speaking attendant there again. He explained the situation to the non-English speaking ‘manager’ of the Selçuk dolmuş’ who promptly radioed all his drivers and used his phone to call Nicky’s so that the drivers could listen out for the ring-tone and locate the missing phone. To no avail. So, Nicky waited at the dolmuş station for several hours checking the buses as they arrived and trying to identify the one we had travelled back on. The manager explained the situation to all his drivers in the hope that word would get round and the phone located. However, there are a lot of buses on the Kuşadasi to Selçuk route and, eventually, Nicky gave the phone up as lost.

As we left to find a supermarket, she gave the manager my mobile number, just in case her phone should be found. Less than 20mins after leaving, I received a phonecall “telephone, telephone”, followed by some words in Turkish which, from the tone, we took to mean “come quickly”. We got back to the dolmuş station as quickly as possible but (for a reason we never really understood, due to our not speaking Turkish) the dolmuş driver with Nicky’s phone did not arrive for another 2 hours. Nevertheless, she did get her phone back, and was greatly relieved to do so. We can’t think of many other places in the world where we would have had such a happy outcome.

Kuşadasi, Turkey