The Temple Of  Artemis At Ephesus

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was the third Temple of Artemis.  The architect was Scopas of Paros, one of the most famous sculptors of his day.  Ephesus was one of the greatest cities in Asia Minor at this point and no expense was spared in the construction.  According to Piny the Elder, a Roman historian, the temple was a "wonderful monument of Grecian magnificence, and one that merits our genuine admiration."

To prepare the ground for the temple, layers of trodden charcoal were placed beneath, with fleeces covered with wool upon the top of them.  The building is thought to be the first completely constructed with marble.  The temple also housed many works of art including four bronze statues of Amazon women.

The length of  the temple was 425 feet and the width 225 feet.  It included 127 columns, 60 feet in height, to support the roof.  Some accounts say the construction took 120 years, though some experts suspect it may have only taken half that time.  We do know that when Alexander the Great came to Ephesus in 333 B.C., the temple was still under construction.  He offered to finance the completion of the temple if the city would credit him as the builder.  The city fathers didn't want Alexander's name carved on the temple, but didn't want to tell him that.

Ramps were built to get the heavy stone beams perched on top of the columns.  This method seemed to work well until one of the largest beams was put into position above the door.  It went down crookedly and the architect could find no way to get it to lie flat.  He was beside himself with worry about this until he had a dream one night in which the Goddess herself appeared to him saying that he should not be concerned.  She herself had moved the stone in the proper position.  The next morning the architect found that the dream was true.  During the night the beam had settled into its proper place!

In 1863, the British Museum sent John Turtle Wood, an architect, to search for the temple. Wood met with many obstacles.  The region was infested with bandits.  Workers were hard to find.  His budget was too small.  The biggest difficulty was that he had no idea where the temple was located!  He searched for the temple for six years.   Each year the British Museum threatened to cut off his funding unless he found something important, and each year he convinced them to fund him for just one more season.

Finally in 1869, at the bottom of a muddy twenty-foot deep test pit, his crew struck the base of the great temple.  Wood then excavated the whole foundation removing 132,000 cubic yards of the swamp to leave a hole some 300 feet wide and 500 feet long.  The remains of some of the sculptured portions were found and shipped to the British Museum where they can be viewed even today.

In 1904 another British Museum expedition under the leadership of D.G. Hograth continued the excavation. Hograth found evidence of five temples on the site, each constructed on top of the other.

Today the site of the temple is a marshy field. A single column is erect to remind visitors that once there stood in that place one of the wonders of the ancient world.

In any case the gardens were an amazing sight: A green, leafy, artificial mountain rising off the plain. But did it actually exist? After all, Herodotus never mentions it.

This was one of the questions that occurred to German archaeologist Robert Koldewey in 1899. For centuries before that the ancient city of Babel was nothing but a mound of muddy debris. Though unlike many ancient locations, the city's position was well-known, nothing visible remained of its architecture. Koldewey dug on the Babel site for some fourteen years and unearthed many of its features including the outer walls, inner walls, foundation of the Tower of Babel, Nebuchadnezzar's palaces and the wide processional roadway which passed through the heart of the city.

While excavating the Southern Citadel, Koldewey discovered a basement with fourteen large rooms with stone arch ceilings. Ancient records indicated that only two locations in the city had made use of stone, the north wall of the Northern Citadel, and the Hanging Gardens. The north wall of the Northern Citadel had already been found and had, indeed, contained stone. This made it seem likely that Koldewey had found the cellar of the gardens.

He continued exploring the area and discovered many of the features reported by Diodorus. Finally a room was unearthed with three large, strange holes in the floor. Koldewey concluded this had been the location of the chain pumps that raised the water to the garden's roof.

The foundations that Koldewey discovered measured some 100 by 150 feet. Smaller than the measurements described by ancient historians, but still impressive.

One can only wonder if Queen Amyitis was happy with her fantastic present, or if she continued to pine for the green mountains of her homeland.