Artemis of the Ephesians

by James Rietveld

In perhaps one of the most definitive works on Artemis of the Ephesians ever published,
James D. Rietveld, Ph.D., provides a comprehensive examination of the cult statue of Artemis Ephesia, examining her representations throughout the ancient world and discovering that her image cannot be confined to a limited set of explanations, but that Artemis Ephesia was a figure in constant flux, with interpretations dependent on the particular time period and audience viewing it.

Second, personal religious perspectives are investigated in relation to the image and the cult of Artemis in general, providing a counterbalance to many modern studies more focused on the political and social aspects of her cult.

The third section investigates Artemis Ephesia in relation to the city’s sacred geography, creating a more contextually discerning view of how her belief system permeated the daily lives of the Ephesians through examining what they left behind in the material culture.

Finally, the fourth section examines how understandings of Artemis Ephesia changed with the spread of Christianity, explaining how this Ephesian goddess eventually succumbed to the forces of this new religious perspective, but also noting how some aspects survived even within this new context.

Ultimately, Artemis Ephesia is revealed as a goddess of protection, the sacred space of her precinct understood as a place of asylum for individuals seeking refuge; a bank for those wishing to secure their material wealth, and a shrine for virgins desiring to protect their chastity. By extension of the Via Sacra, her role as protective mother moved beyond the Temple of Artemis to the city itself. Along with the images of Artemis, the Ephesian letters carried her perceived magical protective powers even further, all along the shores of the Mediterranean and even to the very ends of the Greco-Roman world.

410 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 22, 2014

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Rietveld is probably the foremost American authority on Artemis of Ephesus, so if you're sincerely interested in the worship of Artemis,or the history and spirituality surrounding this Goddess, there is no better source. Over a decade in the making, this book is a work of art with dozens of color pictures - even the footnotes are in blue and captions in green. The bibliography goes on and on. And for practitioners, one can use this book to reconstruct the worship of Artemis for contemporary times using a plethora of information provided by Dr. Rietveld. Perhaps best of all, this book provides readers with information never before published in English. This will be the "ultimate go to" source for understanding Artemis for decades to come, written by a scholar who has spent years researching the subject, walking the sacred sites, even discovering archaeological sites which teams of full time archaeologists failed to find. A must for your library written by a true expert on the subject! For the history buff, practitioner and academic.

[Carolyn Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The wealth of information in this book is utterly phenomenal. It’s a great source for Biblical Background information on Ephesians, but also covers pre and post New Testament history. Though the author agrees that his findings back up the NT accounts he remains neutral and professional, in no way trying to prove scripture but rather he gives a colourful background picture for it.
This book is very useful for people who want a history of the way Ephesians thought and lived out their pagan beliefs.
It’s a bit disorganized, especially the e-version, but the decade of work and thought going into it is well deserving of 5 stars.

[J. Windham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. James Rietveld’s Artemis of the Ephesians is a masterful study of what was arguably the ancient’s world’s most influential religious cult. This important Anatolian deity has long been ignored, underserved, or mischaracterized by scholars conflating evidence from different cults and eras. Dr. Rietveld corrects this by meticulously reconstructing the origins of the Artemis cult, and demonstrating how it evolved as it spread throughout the ancient world. I have been waiting for a comprehensive book about Artemis for a long time, but I admit that I found Artemis of the Ephesians hard going in places. Not that the book is poorly written—it is not—but Dr. Rietveld packs every sentence with a wealth of recherché facts about the goddess. In other words, it’s a very dense book. This is not a bad thing, of course. It’s one of those books that however many times one reads it something new will be discovered—not unlike Peter Green’s Alexander to Actium. As a former collector of ancient Greek and Roman coins, I found his numismatic evidence particularly fascinating; a close second was the chapter discussing the architectural aspects of her temple at Ephesos. Before reading this book, I had no idea that the Lydian king Croesus had constructed the original temple. Equally compelling is his description of Ephesos itself and the city’s relationship with its tutelary deity and the priesthood that served it. Dr. Rietveld brings his book to a close with a close examination of the Artemis cult’s rivalry with the early Christianity, and its subsequent decline. Lavishly illustrated throughout with photographs taken by the author, this book is clearly aimed toward scholars, but a layperson with an appetite for ancient history will undoubtedly find Artemis of the Ephesians a hearty meal.