2024 Turkey: Ephesus (I)

 "When Apollos was at Corinth, Paul through the upper country and came to Ephesus....And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, pleading about the kingdom of God; but when some were stubborn and disbelieved, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them, taking the disciples with him, and argue daily in the hall of Tyrannus.  This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks" - Acts of The Apostles, 19:1, 8-10

Map of Ephesus

The city of Ephesus has a long and famous history - although to many of its inhabitants, they would not have recognized the later city.

Records show that a city associated with this region - Apasa -existed during Mycenean Period (1500 - 1300 B.C.).  The Attic Greeks arrived circa 10th Century B.C. and founded a city - not here, but in nearby modern Selçuk.  They prospered there, forming first the ancient association of the Ionian league, twelve cities of Anatolia that were Greek.   The location of the city along the river Cayster meant that it was a trading city - interestingly, it also meant the city relocated a fair amount.  Archaeologists have had some difficulty fixing the original city.

The city was most famous for the Temple of Artemis, at one time considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  The Greek goddess Artemis and the Anatolian goddess Cybele were conflated into one.  The site, as a religious center, dates back much farther than the use of it by the Greeks itself.

The city was razed by the Cimmerians (not those of the Conan variety around 650 B.C., but was rebuilt and became prosperous until conquered by king Croesus of the Kingdom of Lydia (who rebuilt the temple) in 547 B.C.  The kingdom of Lydia was in turn conquered by the Persian (Achaemenid) Empire and the city of Ephesus and all the cities of Ionia taken into a satrapy.

The main street in the town

The Ionian cities revolted in the Ionian revolt of 499 - 493 B.C.;  although they ultimately lost the peace they received was considered reasonable and profitable for both the Greeks and the Persians (although one of the results of the revolt was the beginning of the Greco-Persian Wars and the invasion of Greece.  Ephesus, 

The Temple of Artemis burned in 356 B.C. and was rebuilt into its third and final form and lasted for 600 years; this would have been the temple that the Apostles knew.

Ephesus and all of Anatolia fell to Alexander the Great, who liberated all the cities of Ionia.  After his death in 323 B.C. and the Wars of the Diadochi, Ephesus fell to the general Lysimachus.  

During the intervening years, the river Cayster had silted up and the harbor was lost, as well as an increase in disease due to the marshes that developed.  Lysimachus decreed a new city was to be built approximately1 mile away and a new harbor established.  When some of the inhabitants refused to relocate, he helpfully stopped up the sewers and forced everyone to move.  The city was renamed Arsinoe, after Lysimachus' wife.  After this death in 281 B.C., the name reverted to Ephesus

(The Bolouterion, or Council Chambers, of Ephesus.  The city council met here)

Ephesus passed from kingdom to kingdom:  First the Seleucid empire, then the kingdom of Pergamon, and then to Rome in 133 B.C.  They joined in the First Mithridatic revolt against Rome (88-84 B.C), partially fueled by rising taxes and the plundering of the city for artifacts to be sent abroad.  They lost, and were subject to taxes and indemnities that crippled the city for years.

In 27 B.C. Augustus named the city of Ephesus the capital of proconsular Asia.  It became the seat of the Governor of the province of Asia and a major center of commerce.  This is the city that the apostles of Christ would have known - and no wonder; it was considered second only to Rome.

Looking down the main street towards the harbor.

Symbols of Hermes:

The city was destroyed by the Goths in A.D. 263 but rebuilt by Constantine and remain a key city of the Empire into the A.D. 600s.  At that point two issues impacted the city. The first was a silting up of the harbor similar to what had happened to the first city; the harbor silted up and the coastline moved, thus destroying its value as a commercial port.  The second was another round of burning in A.D. 614-615 followed by a sacking by the advancing armies of Islam later that century.  By the time the Crusaders arrived in the late 11th Century A.D. it was little more than a village.

The city, once the location of a marvel of the ancient world and capital of the much of the modern area of Anatolia, was completely abandoned in the 15th Century A.D., remaining undiscovered until archeological efforts began in A.D. 1863.