![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/EphesosM-a23-Artemis-Ephesia-635x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\nHere is perhaps the best known statue of Artemis Ephesia (or Artemis of Ephesus) as preserved in the Sel\u00e7uk Archeological Museum (room C, inv. 718) near the ancient site of Ephesus:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
After my recent trip to the Naples archeological museum, I now have a number of depictions of Artemis Ephesia and other gods and goddesses in photo form.\u00a0 So I will be making a series of posts on Greco-Roman deities. There were many different local understandings and depictions of a particular god: in other words, there were many Dionysoses, Zeuses, and Artemises.\u00a0 Often one Zeus would be distinguished from another Zeus by an epithet: for example, there was a Zeus Soter (“Saviour Zeus”), a Zeus Brontos (“Thunderer Zeus”), and a Zeus Polieus (City-protecting Zeus). One local understanding of Zeus could be distinguished from another through art, in the depiction of the specific form of the god in statues.<\/p>\n
Artemis of Ephesus is just one local way in which this goddess was understood.\u00a0 This Artemis Ephesia is consistently depicted as associated with nature and the wild, as the animals integrated within her garb and the deer at her side indicate.\u00a0 And she is also always depicted with the strange protuberances which you will see in each of the photos I post.<\/p>\n
There is some debate as to what these are.\u00a0 Are they multiple breasts?\u00a0 This may indicate notions of fertility and Artemis’ oversight over birth and life.\u00a0 Are they part of Artemis’ outfit here (perhaps a garment made using bull-testicles, as some scholars suggest)?\u00a0 Was this similar to an outfit worn by Artemis Ephesia’s main priestess and representative?\u00a0 Did interpretations of these objects vary even among ancient observers and sculptors?\u00a0 Actually, some of the photos I will show subsequently help to answer this mystery about the multiple breast-like objects.<\/p>\n
More statues of this mysterious goddess to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Here is perhaps the best known statue of Artemis Ephesia (or Artemis of Ephesus) as preserved in the Sel\u00e7uk Archeological Museum (room C, inv. 718) near the ancient site of Ephesus: After my recent trip to the Naples archeological museum, I now have a number of depictions of Artemis Ephesia and other gods and goddesses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,467],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gods-and-goddesses","category-religions-of-the-ancient-mediterranean-blog-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13646,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions\/13646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}