In many historical sources,
the city of Ephesus was described as a leading seaport of the region but searches for it on the coast of Turkey proved
fruitless. Then in 1860, when J Wood, an Englishman, was building a railroad, the
ruins of a city were accidentally discovered.
The river Meander or Menderes had left deposits of silt in the delta making
what had once been a seaport now about 6 miles inland from the port of Kusadasi
(now in Turkey). Archaeologists have been
digging in Ephesus for 150 years but only 10% of the city has been excavated.
The Library of Celcius is the two-story building (the front wall
only) at the end of the street. There
was supposedly a secret passage from the library to a brothel. The women went to the market and the men went
to the brothel via the library!
A tourist city today
Tourists today can walk down
the main street, Kuret, which leads to the Celcius Library. The library was situated next to the
marketplace. There is a large theatre nearby
where the citizens of Ephesus would have been entertained. Another interesting place has a row of
toilets where the men of the city would gather to gossip as they attended to
physical necessities!
Ephesus and the Goddess
Diana
Once this Greek city of Asia Minor was not only wealthy but was the
centre of the worship of the nature goddess, Diana (Roman) or Artemis (Greek)
and c. 550 B.C. a large temple for her worship was built.
St. Paul in Ephesus
It was to this city that the Apostle Paul came with his friends and
fellow Christians, Prisca and Aquilla. During
the time of St Paul, Ephesus was a city in Greece.
In the first century, when
St. Paul came there were about a million people living in Ephesus and it was
the second-largest city in the Roman Empire after Rome itself. It was here that St. Paul was driven out of
town by the silversmiths of Ephesus who feared losing their livelihood because
of many conversions to Christianity (Acts 19).
The man who gathered the silversmiths together to riot was Demetrius and
their trade was making silver images of Artemis which the Christians refused to
buy. St. Paul left but the Christian
community continued to grow and one of St. Paul's letters to the Church in
Ephesus is part of the New Testament today.
It is also mentioned by St. John as one of the Seven Churches in the
Book of Revelation. A Basilica was built
in the 4th century over what is believed to be the site of St John’s burial.
Mary’s House
Tradition says that St. John brought the Virgin Mary from Nazareth
to live with him near Ephesus in order to escape persecution after the death
and resurrection of Jesus. A small
house, believed to be the house where she lived is on Mt. Coressus about 8 km
from the ruins of the city.
In 1824, a German nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) saw
visions of Mary at this house and described it exactly and said it was near
Ephesus. Ephesus was not discovered until the 1860s. In 1951 archaeologists from Izmir excavated
the area on Mt Coressus and rebuilt the house.
Some parts have been carbon dated as older. People who lived nearby said that the story
was passed down for generations that this was the house where the Virgin Mary
the Mother of Jesus had lived.
Pope Paul VI was the first pope to visit
the house. Pope John Paul II and
Pope Benedict have since visited. The
Roman Catholic Church built the road that leads to the House. Two priests and three nuns (German) live near
the house and look after it and the property is rented from a farmer.
Council of Ephesus
An international Church council was held in Ephesus in 431 BC. at
which the Bishop of Constantinople,
Nestorius was declared a heretic because of his rejection of the divine
nature of Christ. He also rejected the
title theotokos (Greek: God-bearer)
for the Virgin Mary.
References
Travel notes of the city of Ephesus taken by the author.
Erdemgil, Selahattin Ephesus. Istanbul: Net Turistik Yayinlar A.S 2009.
