Statue of the Artemis of Ephesus, dating to the II century A.D., now in the National Archaeological Museum (Museo Archeologico Nazionale), Naples, Italy.
The statue is a copy of the cult image which stood in the temple of Ephesus, dedicated to Artemis, and represents the goddess as many-breasted (multimamma), suggesting her generative and fertilizing power, but perhaps this iconography follows an Archaic Anatolian pattern and had nothing to do with female breasts (Graf 2005c). The intimate relationship of the goddess with the animal world – which is emphasized in Asia Minor since the Neolithic times in the representations of the Mother Goddess – manifests itself in the several images of animals that are scattered on the body of the statue. It is probable, indeed, that the Artemis of Ephesus was originally a different goddess from the one worshiped in Greece, an Asiatic goddess, associated with fecundity and the earth, heir of the female deities of Prehistory. The Greeks, when they came to the shores of Asia Minor, identified this ancient goddess with Artemis, and built, in her honor, the great temple of the Artemision in the city of Ephesus, which was still very important for the local people at the times of Paul’s visit in this place (Acts, XIX, 23-48). The black face of the goddess could represent the color of the fertile land, or referring to the obscurity of the subterranean world, both aspects amenable to the idea of the fertilizing power of nature.


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