July 4 - EPHESUS

Ephesus aka Ἔφεσος

Ancient Greek city of Asia Minor, near the mouth of the Menderes River, in what is today West Turkey, South of Smyrna (now Izmir). One of the greatest of the Ionian cities, it became the leading seaport of the region. Its wealth was proverbial. The Greek city was near an old center of worship of a native nature goddess, who was equated with the Greek Artemis, and c.550 B.C. a large temple was built. To this Croesus, who captured the city, contributed.

History:

In the year of 10 BC, Androclos, the son of King of Athens-Kodros, was searching a location for establishing a site. Androclos belonged to Akhas, was running from the Dor invasion in Greece. He was leading one of the migration convoys. It was predicted by an Apollon oracle that a fish and a boar would show the location of the new settlement. Days later, parallel to the oracle’s prediction, while frying, a fish fell down from the pan, irritating a hiding boar behind the bushes. The feared boar escaped immediately. Androclos followed the boar and established the city of Ephesus, where he had killed the boar. When Androclos died in the wars with Carians, a mausoleum was built to the memory of the first king of Ephesus. The mausoleum is considered to be placed around "The Gate of Magnesia".
Ephesus was ruled by the Lydian king, Kreisos, in the mid 6BC. The city reached the "Golden Age" and became a good model to the Antic World in culture and art, as well.

Location:

Ephesus was constructed on a river bend, that was eventually dredged into a full harbor near the mount of the Cayster River, on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Along the coastal plain between Smyrna to the north and Miletus to the south, the site is now about six miles from the Aegean Sea. The city shifted in five distinct locations over time, each within a small area. The Apostles Paul and John were familiar with the city that scholars have dubbed "Ephesus III" the largest (in area) of the five.

The areas where Ephesus located on as follows: Ephesus I: Aya Suluk (St. John Area); Ephesus II: Artemission area; Ephesus III: Port of St. Paul: base of Mount Koressos;Ephesus IV: north of Aya Suluk; Ephesus V: Selcuk area.

Because of the man-made harbor structure and the flow of the river, a backwash flow caused the harbor to frequently silt up (by 449 BCE we already read of problems documented about the silting. Later, Eusebius records that Ephesus honoured Emperor Hadrian for dredging and making navigable the harbor).

When cleared, Ephesus was in a location that justified a great seaport. The city sat at the convergence of three land routes with a shipping lane from the north via the channel created by the Island of Chios and an opening facing the cities of Macedonia. The land routes that converged on Ephesus included: 1) The Colossae / Laodicea road (traveling east), 2) The road to Sardis and Galatia (northeast), and 3) The Smyrna (north) main road.

Population: Some scholars estimate the number of people living at Ephesus to have exceeded 250,000 inhabitants during Ephesus III, which would make it perhaps the fourth largest of its day behind: 1) Rome; 2) Alexandria; and 3)An Antioch. This large a city was an economic stronghold in Asia Minor, and justified the title supreme metropolis of Asia though there is an evidence that its overall economic standing may have been slowly declining.

Excavations in Ephesus

Since 1954, excavations and restorations have been carried out not only by the Austrian Institute, but also by the archaeologists of the Ephesus Museum. In their intensive work since 1954, they have uncovered and restored important structures. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism accelerated this cooperative work in 1979 through its program "Selcuk-Ephesus Excavations, Restorations, and Systematization of its Environs."
In recent years, new perspective informs the project.

The main accent no longer lies so much on the excavation of further buildings and public spaces, but more on the care and pereservation of the buildings that have already been discovered. Accordingly, the project has restored important structures and monuments in the past fifteen years.
In the course of the excavations, which have now lasted over a century, only ten percent of the ancient city of Ephesus has been unearthed.

Excavations will go on for many years together with restoration works.

http://www.ephesus.us/ephesus/ephesus.htm