mosque to the Holy Hill and Church of Ayassoluk. All the sacred places of all the religions are close

The site of the temple was only found after many years of search. Those who know the spirit of Anatolian

religion, and the marvellous persistence with which it clings to definite localities, would have looked for it

beside the mosque, the hill and the church. But it was sought everywhere except in the right place. Professor

Kiepert marked it conjecturally on his plan of Ephesus out in the open plain near the Cayster, two kilometres

west of Ayassoluk; and Mr. Wood spent several years and great sums of money digging pits all over the

plain. Afterwards, he went to the city, searching the public buildings for inscriptions which might by some

chance allude to the temple, and at last found in the Great Theatre a long inscription which mentioned a

procession going out from the Magnesian Gate to the temple. He went to the gate, and followed up the road,

which lay deep beneath the ground, till he found the sacred precinct and finally the temple.

Yet this was not the earliest Ephesian sanctuary and home of the goddess. In her oldest form she was a

goddess of the free wild life of nature, and her first home was in the southern mountains near Ortygia.

Thence she migrated to dwell near her people in their more civilised homes on the plain, or rather she, as the

Mother and the Queen-bee, guided her swarming people to their new abodes, and taught them how to adapt

themselves to new conditions. But her love for her favourite wild animals, who had lived round her old home

among the hills, always continued; and two stags often accompany her idol, standing one on each side of it:

see Figure 10 chapter 14, Figure 26 chapter 25, and Figure 17 in this chapter; also chapter 19.

But her old home among the mountains was always sacred. There were there a number of temples, ancient

and recent; an annual Panegyris was held there, at which there was much competition among the young

nobles of Ephesus in splendour of equipment; and Mysteries and sacred banquets were celebrated by an

association or religious club of Kouretes. The myth connected the birth of Artemis with this place; and in a

sense it was the birthplace of the goddess and her first Ephesian home.

In Christian times the holiness of this locality was maintained. The Mother of God was still associated with

it, though the birth of God could no longer be placed there. The legend grew that she had come to Ephesus

and died there; and her home and grave were known. This legend is at least as old as the Council held in

Ephesus AD 431. After the Greek Christians of Ephesus had fled to the eastern mountains and settled in the

village of Kirkindji they celebrated an annual pilgrimage and festival at the shrine of the Mother of God, the

Virgin of the Gate, Panagia Kapulu. The Christian shrine was at a little distance from Ortygia; both were

under the peak of Solmissos (Ala -Dagh), but Ortygia was on the west side, while the Panagia was on the

north side higher up the mountain; both peak and Panagia lie outside our map, and even Ortygia is strictly

outside the southern limit, though the name has been squeezed in.

The home and grave of the Mother of God have been recently discovered by the Roman Catholics of

Smyrna, aided by visions, prayers and faith; and the attempt has been made in the last ten years to restore

the Ephesian myth to its proper place in the veneration of the Catholic Church. The story is interesting, but

lies beyond our subject. What concerns us is to observe the strong vitality of local religion in Asia Minor

amid all changes of outward form. The religious centre is moved a little to and fro, but always clings to a

comparatively narrow circle of ground.

The date and even the order of the successive stages in the history of the Ephesian valley cannot as yet be

fully determined--though Professor Benndorf's expected memoir will doubtless throw much light on them.

About 1100 BC the first Greek colonists, coming from Athens, expelled most of the older population and

founded a joint city of Greeks and the native remnant beside the shrine of their own Athena, including in

their city also a tract along the skirts of Koressos. Its exact situation has not been determined; but it was

probably identical with a district called Smyrna, which lay between Koressos and Pion, partly inside, partly

southeast from, the Hellenic Ephesus.