Archaeology Odyssey

Ironically, the Third Ecumenical Council spelled the end of Ephesus’s religious importance. Like Rome, Jerusalem and Antioch, Ephesus derived some of its eminence from the fact that it was an apostolic see—a site visited by apostles. This council recognized Constantinople as the second city in Christianity after Rome, indicating that the sacred status of a city did not depend upon its being a see. Constantinople thus became the chief Christian city in Asia Minor.

Although both the New Testament and Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 16:27–65) testify to a thriving Jewish community in Ephesus, archaeologists have not found evidence of synagogues.

Artemis Ephesia was originally a hunting goddess named Kybele in Lydia and Phrygia and called Ma in Cappadocia.

The place-name “Ayasoluk” is a corruption of the Greek Hagios Theologos (Holy Word of God). This name may derive from the (almost certainly mistaken) belief that the Gospel of John was written at Ephesus.

See Florent Heintz, “Polyglot Antioch,” AO 03:06.

See James P. Allen, “Monotheism—The Egyptian Roots,” AO 02:03.

After serving as a cavalry officer in the Crimean and American civil wars, Luigi di Palma Cesnola was appointed American Consul to Cyprus in 1865, where he acquired numerous Cypriot antiquities. The fledgling Metropolitan Museum of Art bought his collection at a bargain price in 1877, and in thanks (or in return) the trustees of the museum made Cesnola the first director of the Metropolitan.

See David A. Traill and Igor Bogdanov, “Heinrich Schliemann: Improbable Archaeologist,” AO 02:03.

The 18th-century German classicist Johann Joachim Winckelmann served as the librarian of a Catholic cardinal in Rome. In 1763 he was appointed superintendent of Roman antiquities, and in 1764 he wrote a pioneering study of classical art, History of the Art of Antiquity.

This theory is reminiscent of the ideas of the Greek philosopher Empedocles (c. 493–443 B.C.), who taught that the principles of love and strife alternately predominate in earthly affairs.