About Ephesus
Information, Ephesus Selcuk (Seljuk) Ephesus History,
Ancient Ephesus
Ancient Ephesus
The area surrounding Ephesus was already inhabited during the Neolithic Age (about 6000 BC) as was revealed by the excavations at the nearby hoyuk (artificial mounds) of Arvalya and Cukurici.[2]Excavations in recent years have unearthed settlements from the early Bronze Age at the Ayasuluk Hill. In 1954 a burial ground from the
Mycenaean era (1500-1400 BC) with ceramic pots was discovered close to the ruins of the basilica of St. John. [3] This was the period of the Mycenaean Expansion when the Achaioi (as they were called by Homer) settled in Ahhiyawa during the 14th and the 13th centuries BC. Scholars believe that Ephesus was founded on the settlement of Apasa (or Abasa), a Bronze Age-city noted in 14th century BC Hittite sources as in the land of Ahhiyawa.
Hellenistic Ephesus
The city of Ephesus itself was founded as an Attic-Ionian colony in the 10th century BC on the
Ayasuluk Hill, three kilometers from the center of antique Ephesus (as attested by excavations at the Seljuk castle during the 1990s). The mythical founder of the city was
Androklos, son of king Kadros and a prince of Athens, who had to leave his country after the death of his father. According to legend, he founded Ephesus on the place where the oracle of Delphi became reality ("A fish and a boar will show you the way").
Androklos drove away most of the native Carian and Lelegian inhabitants of the city and united his people with the remainder. He was a successful warrior and, as king, he was able to join the twelve cities of Ionia together into the Ionian League. During his reign the city began to prosper. He died in a battle against the
Carians when he came to the aid of Priene, another city of the Ionian League. [5] Androklos and his dog are depicted on the Hadrian temple frieze, dating from the second century. Later, Greek historians such as
Pausanias, Strabo and the poet
Kallinos, and the historian
Herodotos however reassigned the city's mythological foundation to Ephos, queen of the Amazons.
About 650 BC Ephesus was attacked by Cimmerians who razed the city, including the temple of Artemis. A few small Cimmerian artifacts can be seen at the archaeological museum of
Ephese. When the Cimmerians had been driven away, the city was ruled by a series of tyrants. After a revolt by the people,
Ephesus was ruled by a council called the Kuretes. The city prospered again, producing a number of important historical figures, such as the iambic poets Callinus [7] and the satirist Hipponax, the philosopher
Heraclitus, the great painter
Parrhasius and later the grammarian
Zenodotos, the physicians Soranus and Rufus.
About 560 BC Ephesus was conquered by the Lydians under the mighty king Croesus. He treated the inhabitants with respect, despite ruling harshly, and even became the main contributor to the construction of the temple of Artemis.[8] His signature has been found on the base of one of the columns of the temple (now on display in the British Museum). Croesus made the populations of the different settlements around Ephesus regroup (synoikismos) in the vicinity of the Temple of Artemis, enlarging the city.
Later in the same century, the Lydians under Croesus invaded Persia. 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.[9] 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 satraps.
Ephesus continued to prosper. But when taxes continued to be raised under
Cambyses II and Darius, the Ephesians participated in the Ionian Revolt against Persian rule in the Battle of Ephesus (498 BC), an event which instigated the Greco-Persian wars. In 479 BC, the Ionians, together with Athens and Sparta, were able to oust the Persians from Anatolia. In 478 BC, the Ionian cities entered with
Athens and Sparta the Delian League against the
Persians. Ephesus did not contribute ships, but only participated with financial support by offering the treasure of Apollo to the goddess Athena, protector of Athens.
In 356 BC the temple of Artemis was burnt down, according to legend, by a lunatic called Herostratus. By coincidence, this was the night that Alexander the Great was born. The inhabitants of Ephesus started at once with the restoration and even planning a larger and grander temple.
Historical Map of Ephesus, from Meyers
Konversationslexikon 1888
When Alexander the Great defeated the Persian forces at the Battle of Granicus in 334 BC, the Greek cities of Asia Minor were liberated. The pro-Persian tyrant
Syrpax and his family were stoned to death and
Alexander was greeted warmly in Ephesus when he entered it in triumph. When he saw that the temple of Artemis was not yet finished, he proposed to finance the temple and have his name as an inscription of the front. But the inhabitants of
Ephesus refused, claiming that it was not fitting for a god to build a temple for another god. After the death of Alexander in 323 BC, Ephesus came under the rule of
Lysimachus, one of Alexander's generals, in 290 BC.
As the river Cayster was silting up the
harbour, the resulting marshes were the cause of malaria and many deaths among the inhabitants. The people of Ephesus were forced to move to a new settlement 2 kilometers further on, when the king flooded the old city by blocking the sewers. [10] This settlement was called 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. After the murder on king
Antiochus II Theos and his Egyptian wife, pharao Ptolemy III invaded the Seleucid Empire and the Egyptian fleet swept the coast of Asia Minor. Ephesus came under
Egyptian rule between 263-197 BC.
When the Seleucid king Antiochus III the Great tried to regain the Greek cities of Asia Minor, he came in 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, Ephesus came under the rule of the
Attalid king of
Pergamon Eumenes II (197-133 BC). When his grandson
Attalus III died without
male children of his own, he left his kingdom to the Roman
Republic.
Roman Ephesus
Ephesus became subject the Roman Republic. The city felt at once the Roman influence. Taxes rose considerably and the treasures of the city were systematically plundered. In 88 BC Ephesus welcomed
Archelaus, a general of
Mithridates the Great, king of Pontus, when he conquered Western Anatolia. This led to the Asiatic Vespers, the slaughter of 80,000 Roman citizens in Asia Minor, or any person who spoke with a Latin accent. Many had lived in Ephesus. 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 Monima, the favorite 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.
When Augustus became emperor in 27 BC, he made Ephesus instead of Pergamon the capital of proconsular Asia, which covered the western part of
Asia Minor. Ephesus entered an era of prosperity. It became the seat of the governor, growing into a metropolis and a major center of commerce. It was second in importance and size only to Rome.
The city was famed for the Temple of Artemis (Diana), who had her chief shrine there, the Library of
Celsus, and its theatre, which was capable of holding
25,000 spectators. This open-air theater was used initially for drama, but during later Roman times gladiatorial combats were also held on its stage, with the first archaeological evidence of a gladiator graveyard found in May 2007. The population of Ephesus also had several major bath complexes, built at various points while the city was under Roman rule.
Byzantine era (395-1071)
Ephesus remained the most important city of the Byzantine Empire in Asia (after Constantinople) in the 5th and 6th centuries. The emperor Constantine rebuilt much of the city and erected a new public bath. In 406 John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople, ordered the destruction of the Temple of Artemis. Emperor Flavius 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 sixth century.
The importance of the city as a commercial centre declined as the
harbour slowly filled with silt from the river (today, Küçük Menderes) despite repeated dredges during the city's history. (Today, the harbor is 5 kilometers inland). The loss of its harbor caused Ephesus to lose its access to the Aegean Sea, which was important for trade.
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 Seljuk Turks conquered it in 1071-1100, it was a small village. The Byzantines resumed control in 1100 and changed the name of the town into Hagios Theologos. They kept control of the region until 1308. 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.
Turkish era
The town was conquered in 1304 by Sasa Bey, an army commander of the Menteşoğullari principality. Shortly afterwards, it was ceded to the Aydinoğullari principality that stationed a powerful navy in the harbour of Ayasluğ (the present-day Selçuk, next to Ephesus). Ayasoluk became an important harbour, from where the navy organised raids to the surrounding regions.
The town knew again a short period of flourishing during the 14th century under these new Seljuk rulers. They added important architectural works such as the İsa Bey Mosque, caravansaries and Turkish bathhouses (hamam).
They 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 Turkish Beyliks. After a period of unrest, the region was again incorporated into the Ottoman Empire by sultan Mehmed II in 1425.
Ephesus was eventually completely abandoned in the 15th century and lost her former glory. Nearby Ayasluğ was renamed Selçuk
in 1914. |
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| 1- The Water Palace |
8- The Temple of
Dominitian |
15- The Scolastica Baths |
22- The Grand Theater |
| 2- The Varius Baths |
9- The Memmius Monument |
16- The Public Toilets |
23- The Theater
Gymnasium |
| 3- The State Agora |
10- The Heracles Gate |
17- The Brothel |
24- The Harbour Street |
| 4- Basilica |
11- The Curetes Street |
18- Mazeus &
Mithriadates Gate |
25- The Harbour Bath |
| 5- Odeon, Bouleuterion |
12- The Fountain of
Trajan |
19- The Library of
Celsus |
26- The Church of Virgin
Mary |
| 6- The Palace of
Council, Prytaneion |
13- The Terrace Houses |
20- The Marble Street |
27- The Stadium Street |
| 7- The Fountain of
Pollio |
14- The Temple of
Hadrian |
21- The Agora |
28- The Stadium |
CLICK ON THE
MAP AND SEE THE DETAILS OF EPHESUS IN SATELLITE
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