121-602: The Temple of Artemis or Artemision ( Greek : Ἀρτεμίσιον ; Turkish : Artemis Tapınağı ), also known as the Temple of Diana , was a Greek temple dedicated to an ancient, localised form of the goddess Artemis (equated with the Roman goddess Diana ). It was located in Ephesus (near the modern town of Selçuk in present-day Turkey ). By AD 401 it is belived it had been ruined or destroyed. Only foundations and fragments of
242-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
363-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
484-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
605-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
726-616: A gallery of images above this altar, including an ancient figure of Nyx (the primordial goddess of Night) by the sculptor Rhoecus (6th century BC). Pliny describes images of Amazons, the legendary founders of Ephesus and Ephesian Artemis' original protégés, carved by Scopas . Literary sources describe the temple's adornment by paintings, columns gilded with gold and silver, and religious works of renowned Greek sculptors Polyclitus , Pheidias , Cresilas , and Phradmon . This reconstruction survived for 600 years and appears multiple times in early Christian accounts of Ephesus. According to
847-583: A gift and honor to the goddess – brought further prosperity. Large numbers of people came to Ephesus in March and in the beginning of May to attend the main Artemis Procession. Artemis' shrines, temples and festivals ( Artemisia ) could be found throughout the Greek world, but Ephesian Artemis was unique. The Ephesians considered her theirs, and resented any foreign claims to her protection. Once Persia ousted and replaced their Lydian overlord Croesus ,
968-536: A powerful religious edge. Under Hellenic rule, and later, under Roman rule, the Ephesian Artemisia festival was increasingly promoted as a key element in the pan-Hellenic festival circuit. It was part of a definitively Greek political and cultural identity, essential to the economic life of the region, and an excellent opportunity for young, unmarried Greeks of both sexes to seek out marriage partners. Games, contests and theatrical performances were held in
1089-433: A red chest and white wings". Aelian was the last source on the griffin to add fresh information on the griffin, and late writers (into medieval times) merely rehashed existing material on griffins, with the exception of the lore about their "agate eggs" which emerged at some indistinct time later on (cf. infra). The griffin has been associated with various deities (Apollo, Dionysus, Nemesis), in Greek mythography but here,
1210-413: A region of very rich soil but quite uninhabitable because griffins, a savage and tenacious breed of wild beasts, love.. the gold that is mined from deep within the earth there, and because they guard it with an amazing hostility to those who set foot there. The aforementioned Aelian ( Claudius Aelianus , d. 235 AD) added certain other embellishments, such as its reputation of "black plumage on its back with
1331-553: A synthetic account of the Lady of Ephesus by drawing together documentation that ranges over more than a millennium in its origins, creating a falsified, unitary picture, as of an unchanging icon. 37°56′59″N 27°21′50″E / 37.94972°N 27.36389°E / 37.94972; 27.36389 Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
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#17327724803721452-537: A tapering pillar-like term , from which the goddess' feet protrude. On the coins minted at Ephesus, the goddess wears a mural crown (like a city's walls), an attribute of Cybele as a protector of cities (see polos ). The traditional interpretation of the oval objects covering the upper part of the Ephesian Artemis is that they represent multiple breasts, symbolizing her fertility. This interpretation began in late antiquity and resulted in designations of
1573-755: Is a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion , and the head and wings of an eagle with its talons on the front legs. Because the lion was traditionally considered the king of the beasts, and the eagle the king of the birds, by the Middle Ages, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature. Since classical antiquity, griffins were known for guarding treasures and priceless possessions. In Greek and Roman texts, griffins and Arimaspians were associated with gold deposits of Central Asia. The earliest classical writings derive from Aristeas (7th cent. BC), preserved by Herodotus and Aeschylus (mid 5th century BC), but
1694-639: Is a distinctive form of their goddess Artemis . In Greek cult and myth, Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo , a virgin goddess of the hunt, the wilderness and the moon, who, despite being a goddess of childbirth was nevertheless known for her chastity. At Ephesus, a goddess whom the Greeks associated with Artemis was venerated in an archaic, pre-Hellenic cult image that was carved of wood (a xoanon ) and kept decorated with jewelry. The features are most similar to Near-Eastern and Egyptian deities, and least similar to Greek ones. The body and legs are enclosed within
1815-523: Is a road for chariots, and the statue of Zeus by the Alpheus , and the hanging gardens , and the colossus of the Sun , and the huge labour of the high pyramids , and the vast tomb of Mausolus ; but when I saw the house of Artemis that mounted to the clouds, those other marvels lost their brilliancy, and I said, "Lo, apart from Olympus, the Sun never looked on aught so grand". The Temple of Artemis (artemisia)
1936-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
2057-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system
2178-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
2299-536: Is clear that at Ephesus, the identification with Artemis that the Ionian settlers made of the "Lady of Ephesus" was slender. Nevertheless, later Greeks and Romans identified her with both Artemis and Diana, and there was a tradition in ancient Rome that identified her with the goddess Isis as well. The Christian approach was at variance with the syncretistic approach of pagans to gods who were not theirs. A Christian inscription at Ephesus suggests why so little remains at
2420-534: Is described as having a " visor " (i.e., beaks) made by Urartian craftsmen, similar to what is found on Greek protomes. Representations of griffin-like hybrids with four legs and a beaked head appeared in Ancient Egyptian art dating back to before 3000 BC. The oldest known depiction of a griffin-like animal in Egypt appears as a relief carving on slate on the cosmetic palette from Hierakonpolis ,
2541-410: Is known of her cult. The literary accounts that describe it as " Amazonian " refer to the later founder-myths of Greek émigrés who developed the cult and temple of Artemis Ephesia . The wealth and splendor of temple and city were taken as evidence of Artemis Ephesia's power, and were the basis for her local and international prestige: despite the successive traumas of Temple destruction, each rebuilding –
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#17327724803722662-459: Is not uniquely applied to the griffin beast, and tštš ( Teš-teš ) has also been used to denote the god Osiris elsewhere. Most statuary representations of griffins depict them with bird-like forelegs and talons , although in some older illustrations griffins have a lion's forelegs (see bronze figure, right); they generally have a lion's hindquarters. Its eagle's head is conventionally given prominent ears ; these are sometimes described as
2783-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
2904-1025: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Griffin The griffin , griffon , or gryphon ( Ancient Greek : γρύψ , romanized : grýps ; Classical Latin : grȳps or grȳpus ; Late and Medieval Latin : gryphes , grypho etc.; Old French : griffon )
3025-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
3146-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
3267-618: Is that these derive from the bumps (furrows) on a lion's snout. Another view regards the wart as deriving from the bumpy cockscomb on a rooster or other such fowls. Griffin-like animals were depicted on cylinder seals in Mesopotamia c. 3000 BC, perhaps as early as the Uruk period (4000–3100BC) and subsequent Proto-Elamite ( Jemdet Nasr ) period. An example of a winged lion with beaks, unearthed in Susa (cf. fig. right ) dates to
3388-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with
3509-554: The Achaemenian Persian Empire . Russian jewelry historian Elena Neva maintained that the Achaemenids considered the griffin "a protector from evil, witchcraft, and secret slander", but no writings exist from Achaemenid Persia to support her claim. R.L. Fox (1973) remarks that a "lion-griffin" attacks a stag in a pebble mosaic at Pella , from the 4th century BC, perhaps serving as an emblem of
3630-551: The British Museum . These excavations continued until 1874. A few further fragments of sculpture were found during the 1904–1906 excavations directed by David George Hogarth . The recovered sculptured fragments of the 4th-century rebuilding and a few from the earlier temple, which had been used in the rubble fill for the rebuilding, were assembled and displayed in the "Ephesus Room" of the British Museum. In addition,
3751-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
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3872-515: The Galli . The Megabyzoi of Ephesian Artemis were assisted by young, virgin girls ( korai ). A votive inscription mentioned by Bennett (1912) , which dates probably from about the 3rd century BC, associates Ephesian Artemis with Crete: The Greek habits of syncretism assimilated all foreign gods under some form of the Olympian pantheon familiar to them – the interpretatio graeca – and it
3993-533: The Goths , under their leaders "Respa, Veduc, and Thurar", "laid waste many populous cities and set fire to the renowned temple of Diana at Ephesus." The extent and severity of the damage are unknown; the temple may have been repaired and open to us again, or it may have lain derelict until its official closure during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire . There are signs that it may have been of use after 268, since Christians authors refers to its closure in
4114-588: The Hagia Sophia were taken from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, but there is no truth to this story. The main primary sources for the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus are Pliny the Elder 's Natural History , writings by Pomponius Mela , and Plutarch 's Life of Alexander . The site of the temple was rediscovered in 1869, after six years of searching by an expedition led by John Turtle Wood and sponsored by
4235-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
4356-511: The Lamassu , an Assyrian protective deity, often depicted with a bull or lion's body, eagle's wings, and human's head. Sumerian and Akkadian mythology feature the demon Anzu , half man and half bird, associated with the chief sky god Enlil . This was a divine storm-bird linked with the southern wind and the thunder clouds. Jewish mythology speaks of the Ziz , which resembles Anzu, as well as
4477-548: The New Testament , the appearance of the first Christian missionary in Ephesus caused locals to fear for the temple's dishonor. The 2nd century Acts of John includes an apocryphal tale of the temple's destruction: The apostle John prayed publicly in the Temple of Artemis, exorcising its demons and "of a sudden the altar of Artemis split in many pieces ... and half the temple fell down," instantly converting
4598-919: The Two Dog Palette dated to the Early Dynastic Period , c. 3300–3100 BC. Griffin-type creatures combining raptor heads and mammalian bodies were depicted in the Levant , Syria , and Anatolia during the Middle Bronze Age , dated at about 1950–1550 BC. Griffin-type animals appeared in the art of ancient Crete in the MM III Period (1650–1600 BC) in Minoan chronology , found on sealings from Zakro and miniature frescos dated to this period. One early example of griffin-types in Minoan art occurs in
4719-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
4840-588: The "curled tresses" that are the signature of Uratrian workmanship. Even the ornate crests on Minoan griffins (such as the fresco of the Throne Room, figure top of page) may be a development of these curled tresses. One prominent characteristic of the cauldron griffins is the "top-knob between the brows" (seemingly situated at the top of the head ). The top-knob feature has clear oriental origins. Jack Leonard Benson says these appendages were "topknots" subsequently rendered as "knobs" in later development of
4961-592: The 15th century BC frescoes of the Throne Room of the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos , as restored by Sir Arthur Evans . The griffin-like hybrid became a fixture of Aegean culture since the Late Bronze Age , but the animal called the gryps, gryphon, or griffin in Greek writings did not appear in Greek art until about 700 BC, or rather, it was "rediscovered" as artistic motif in
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5082-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
5203-723: The 4th millennium B.C., and is a unique example of a griffin-like animal with a male lion's mane . However, this monster then ceased to continue to be expressed after the Elamite culture. What the Sumerians of the Early Dynastic period portrayed instead were winged lions, and the lion-headed eagle ( Imdugud ). In the Akkadian Empire that succeeded Sumer, early examples (from early 3rd millennium BC ) of lions with bird heads appeared on cylinder seals, shown pulling
5324-442: The 5th-century. Ammonius of Alexandria comments on its closure, perhaps as early as 407 CE, or no later than the mid 5th century. After the city had been made Christian and the temple had been closed, the name of Artemis appears to have been erased from inscriptions throughout Ephesus. Cyril of Alexandria credited Archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom with destroying the temple, referring to him as "the destroyer of
5445-511: The 7th century BC, a flood destroyed the temple, depositing over half a meter of sand and flotsam over the original clay floor. Among the flood debris were the remains of a carved ivory plaque of a griffin and the Tree of Life , apparently North Syrian, and some drilled tear-shaped amber drops of elliptical cross-section. These probably once dressed a wooden effigy ( xoanon ) of the Lady of Ephesus, which must have been destroyed or recovered from
5566-517: The 8th to 7th centuries BC, adapting the style of griffin current in Neo-Hittite art. It became quite popular in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, when the Greeks first began to record accounts of the "gryps" creature from travelers to Asia, such as Aristeas of Proconnesus. A number of bronze griffin protomes on cauldrons have been unearthed in Greece (on Samos , and at Olympia , etc., cf. fig. right). Early Greek and early Etruscan (e.g.
5687-535: The Barberini) examples of cauldron-griffins may have been of Syric-Urartian make, based on evidence (the "tendrils" or "tresses" motif was already touched upon, above), but "Vannic (Urartian) originals" have yet to be found (in the Orient). It has thus been controversially argued (by Ulf Jantzen [ de ] ) that these attachments had always since the earliest times been crafted by Greek workshops, added to
5808-560: The Ephesian goddess as Diana Efesia Multimammia and other related descriptions. This interpretation was rooted in Minucius Felix and Jerome 's Christian attacks on pagan popular religion, and modern scholarship has cast doubt on the traditional interpretation that the statue depicts a many-breasted goddess. Evidence suggests that the oval objects were not intended to depict part of the goddess' anatomy at all. In some versions of
5929-607: The Ephesians played down his contribution to the temple's restoration. On the whole, the Persians dealt fairly with Ephesus, but removed some religious artifacts from Artemis' Temple to Sardis and brought Persian priests into her Ephesian cult; this was not forgiven. When Alexander conquered the Persians, his offer to finance the temple's second rebuilding was politely but firmly refused. Ephesian Artemis lent her city's diplomacy
6050-405: The Ephesians, who wept, prayed, or took flight. Against this, a Roman edict of 162 AD acknowledges the importance of Artemesion , the annual Ephesian festival to Artemis, and officially extended it from a few holy days over March–April to a whole month, "one of the largest and most magnificent religious festivals in Ephesus' liturgical calendar". In 268 AD, according to Jordanes , a raid by
6171-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
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#17327724803726292-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
6413-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
6534-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
6655-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
6776-487: The Lady of Ephesus, it now appears, were likely based on amber gourd-shaped drops, elliptical in cross-section and drilled for hanging, that were rediscovered in the archaeological excavations of 1987–1988. These objects remained in place where the ancient wooden statue of the goddess had been caught by an 8th century flood. This form of jewelry, then, had already been developed by the Geometric Period . On
6897-770: The Mesopotamian lion-griffin. There is also the Armenian term Paskuč ( Armenian : պասկուչ ) that had been used to translate Greek gryp 'griffin' in the Septuagint , which H. P. Schmidt characterized as the counterpart of the simurgh. However, the cognate term Baškuč (glossed as 'griffin') also occurs in Middle Persian, attested in the Zoroastrian cosmological text Bundahishn XXIV (supposedly distinguishable from Sēnmurw which also appears in
7018-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
7139-412: The ancient Greek Phoenix . The Bible mentions the Ziz in Psalms 50:11. This is also similar to a cherub . The cherub, or sphinx, was very popular in Phoenician iconography. In ancient Crete, griffins became very popular, and were portrayed in various media. A similar creature is the Minoan Genius . In the Hindu religion, Garuda is a large bird-like creature that serves as a mount ( vahana ) of
7260-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
7381-411: The ant into his description of griffins. Later, Pliny the Elder became the first to explicitly state the griffins as having wings and long ears. In one of the two passages, Pliny also located the "griffons" in Æthiopia . According to Adrienne Mayor , Pliny also wrote, "griffins were said to lay eggs in burrows on the ground and these nests contained gold nuggets ". Apollonius of Tyana , who
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#17327724803727502-400: The cauldron Griffins. Benson's emphasis is that the Greeks attached a stylized "anorganic" topknot or an "inorganic" plug on the griffin's head (due to lack of information), while in contrast, a known oriental example (stone protomes from Nimrud ) is simple but more "plausible" (naturalistic), resembling a forelock. A cluster of "warts" between the eyes are also mentioned. One conjecture
7623-424: The chariots for its rider, the weather god. The "lion-griffin" on Akkadian seals are also shown as fire-belching, and shaggy (at the neck) in particular examples. The bronzeworks of Luristan , the North and North West region of Iran in the Iron Age , include examples of Achaemenid art depicting both the "bird-griffin" and "lion-griffin" designs, such as are found on horse-bits . Bernard Goldman maintains
7744-436: The coins she rests either arm on a staff formed of entwined serpents or of a stack of ouroboroi – the eternal serpent with its tail in its mouth. In some accounts, the Lady of Ephesus was attended by eunuch priests called "Megabyzoi" ; this might have been either a proper name or a title. The practice of ritual self-emasculation as qualification to serve a deity is usually identified with Cybele 's eunuch mendicant priests,
7865-421: The deity Vishnu . It is also the name for the constellation Aquila . Local lore on the gryps or griffin was gathered by Aristeas of Proconnesus, a Greek who traveled to the Altai region between Mongolia and NW China in the 7th century BC. Although Aristeas's original poem was lost, the gryps lore preserved in secondhand accounts by the playwright Aeschylus (ca. 460 BC), and later his contemporary, Herodotus
7986-406: The demons and overthrower of the temple of Diana". A later Archbishop of Constantinople, Proclus , noted the achievements of John, saying "In Ephesus, he despoiled the art of Midas," but there is little evidence to support this claim. At least some of the stone from the abandoned temple was used in construction of other buildings. A legend of the Late Middle Ages claims that some of the columns in
8107-414: The earliest coins made from the silver-gold alloy electrum . The deposit contains some of the earliest inscribed coins, those of Phanes , dated to 625–600 BC from Ephesus , with the legend ΦΑΕΝΟΣ ΕΜΙ ΣΗΜΑ (or similar) ("I am the badge of Phanes"), or just bearing the name ΦΑΝΕΟΣ ("of Phanes"). Fragments of bas-relief on the lowest drums of the temple columns, preserved in the British Museum, show that
8228-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of
8349-512: The enriched columns of the later temple, of which a few survive ( illustration below ) were versions of this earlier feature. Pliny the Elder , seemingly unaware of the ancient continuity of the sacred site, claims that the new temple's architects chose to build it on marshy ground as a precaution against earthquakes, with lower foundation layers of fleeces and pounded charcoal. The temple became an important attraction, visited by merchants, kings, and sightseers, many of whom paid homage to Artemis in
8470-448: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute
8591-442: The flood. Bammer notes that though the site was prone to flooding, and raised by silt deposits about two metres between the 8th and 6th centuries, and a further 2.4 m between the sixth and the fourth, its continued use "indicates that maintaining the identity of the actual location played an important role in the sacred organization". The new temple was sponsored at least in part by Croesus , who founded Lydia 's empire and
8712-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
8833-476: The form of jewelry and various goods. It also offered sanctuary to those fleeing persecution or punishment, a tradition linked in myth to the Amazons who twice fled there seeking the goddess's protection from punishment, firstly by Dionysus and later, by Heracles . Diogenes Laertius claims that the misanthropic philosopher Heraclitus , thoroughly disapproving of civil life at Ephesus, played knucklebones in
8954-467: The god Apollo due to "syncretism between the two gods". At the Temple of Hera at Samos , a griffin-themed bronze "wine-cup" or "cauldron" had been installed, according to Herodotus. The vessel was attached griffin heads around the rim (like the protomes , described above): it was an Argolic or Argive krater , according to the text, standing on a tripod shaped like colossal figures. The notion that griffins lay stones or agate instead of eggs
9075-407: The goddess's cult image. Thirty-six of these columns were, according to Pliny the Elder , decorated by carvings in relief. A new ebony or blackened grapewood cult statue was sculpted by Endoios, and a naiskos to house it was erected east of the open-air altar. A rich foundation deposit from this era, also called the "Artemision deposit", yielded more than a thousand items, including what may be
9196-463: The goddess's name, and Pliny describes her procession as a magnificent crowd-puller; it was shown in one of Apelles ' best paintings, which depicted the goddess's image carried through the streets and surrounded by maidens. In the Roman Imperial era , the emperor Commodus lent his name to the festival games, and might have sponsored them. From the Greek point of view, the Ephesian Artemis
9317-536: The gold which the griffins collected from various areas in the periphery (presumably including the Armaspi's territorial stream, the stream of Pluto "rolling with gold"). The equestrian Arimaspi would ride off with the loot, and the griffins would give pursuit. Aeschylus likened the gryps to "silent hounds of Zeus" That they are called dogs or hounds here has led to the conjecture that Aeschylus considered them wingless or flightless. Whereas Ctesias , had located
9438-454: The griffin's neck, carven on some of the Greek protomes. The tendril motif emerged at the beginning of the first millennium, BC., in various parts of the Orient. The "double spiral of hair running downwards from the base of the ear" is said to be a hallmark of Iranian (Uratrian) art. The Etruscan cauldron-griffins (e.g., from Barberini tomb [ it ] , figure right ) also bear
9559-583: The griffins in India, and more explicitly classed them as beaked, four-legged birds. Herodotus also mentions elsewhere that there are gold-collecting ants in Kashmir , India, and this has been interpreted by modern scholars as "doublets or garbled versions" of the lore of gold-hoarding griffins. It appears that the accounts of griffins given by Pliny had been admixed with the lore of these gold-guarding ants of India, and later Aelian also inserted attributes of
9680-514: The historian. Herodotus explains (via Aristeas) that the gold-guarding griffin supposedly dwelled further north from the one-eyed Arimaspi people who robbed the gold from the fabulous creatures. Aristeas is said to have been informed through the Issedones people neighboring region to the Arimaspi, in the northern extremes (of Central Asia). Aeschylus also concurs that the Arimaspi robbed
9801-429: The identifiable attested "accounts" presented in scholarship are largely not literary, but artistic, or numismatic . The griffin was naturally linked to Apollo, given the existence of the cultus of Hyperborean Apollo , with a cult center at the Greek colony of Olbia on the Black Sea . And even the main Temple of Apollo at Delphi featured a statue of the god flanked by griffins, or so it can be presumed based on
9922-401: The image of a griffin attacking a horse. Other Scythian artifacts show griffins attacking horses, stags, and goats. Griffins are typically shown attacking horses, deer, and humans in Greek art. Nomads were said to steal griffin-guarded gold according to Scythian oral traditions reported by Greek and Roman travelers. Several ancient mythological creatures are similar to the griffin. These include
10043-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
10164-525: The kingdom of Macedon or a personal emblem of Antipater , one of Alexander 's successors. A golden frontal half of a griffin-like animal from the Ziwiye hoard (near Saqqez city) in Kurdistan Province , Iran resembles the western protomes in style. They were of Urartian workmanship (neither Assyrian or Scythian), though the hoard itself may have represented a Scythian burial. The animal
10285-582: The last temple remain at the site. The earliest version of the temple (a Bronze Age temenos ) antedated the Ionic immigration by many years. Callimachus , in his Hymn to Artemis , attributed it to the Amazons . In the 7th century BC, it was destroyed by a flood. Its reconstruction, in more grandiose form, began around 550 BC, under Chersiphron , the Cretan architect , and his son Metagenes . The project
10406-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
10527-500: The later lore that griffins deposited agate stone among the eggs in their nest. Pliny placed the griffins in Æthiopia , and Ctesias (5th century BC) in greater India . Scholars have observed that legends about the gold-digging ants of India may have contaminated griffin lore. In the Christian era, Isidore of Seville (7th century AD) wrote that griffins were a great enemy of horses. This notion may have readily developed from
10648-562: The lion's ears, but are often elongated (more like a horse 's), and are sometimes feathered. The griffin of Greece, as depicted in cast bronze cauldron protomes (cf. below), has a squat face with short beaks that are open agape as if screaming, with the tongue showing. There is also a "top-knob" on its head or between the brows. There may also be so-called "tendrils", or curled "spiral-locks" depicted, presumably representing either hair/mane or feather/crest locks dangling down. Single- or double-streaked tendrils hang down both sides and behind
10769-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
10890-476: The modern Persian language , the griffin has come to be called šērdāl ( Persian : شیردال ), meaning 'lion-eagle'. However, the practice of referring to ancient Iranian griffin objects or monuments as sherdal , is not followed by other current archaeological scholarship (e.g., here ). Possible Old or Middle Iranian names for the creature have been discussed. Middle Persian Sēnmurw in Sasanian culture
11011-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
11132-499: The motive of Herostratus since he only divulged his purpose under torture, which does not fit a man seeking fame. Knibbe (1998) considers Herostratus a "useful idiot in the service of the priesthood". Alexander offered to pay for the temple's rebuilding; the Ephesians tactfully refused, saying "it would be improper for one god to build a temple to another", and eventually rebuilt it after his death, at their own expense. Work started in 323 BC and continued for many years. The third temple
11253-466: The museum has part of possibly the oldest cache of coins in the world (600 BC) that had been buried in the foundations of the Archaic temple. Today the site of the temple, which lies just outside Selçuk , is marked by a single column constructed of miscellaneous fragments discovered at the site. The archaic temenos beneath the later temples clearly housed some form of " Great Goddess " but nothing
11374-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
11495-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It
11616-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
11737-560: The physical descriptions are not very explicit. Thus even though they are sharp-beaked, their being likened to "unbarking hounds of Zeus" has led to the speculation they were seen as wingless. Pliny the Elder (1st century) was the first to explicitly state that griffins were winged and long eared. But Apollonius of Tyana wrote that griffins did not have true bird wings, but only membranous webbed feet that only gave them capability of short-distanced flight. Writers after Aelian (3rd century AD) did not add new material to griffin lore, except for
11858-728: The plain cauldrons imported from the Near East. Detractors (notably K. R. Maxwell-Hyslop ) believe that (early examples of ) the griffin-ornamented cauldron, in its entirely, were crafted in the East, though excavated finds from the Orient are scarce. In Central Asia , the griffin image was included in Scythian "animal style" artifacts of the 6th–4th centuries BC, but no writings explain their meaning. The Golden Pectoral from Tovsta Mohyla , interred in Scythian king's burial site, perhaps commissioned to Greek goldsmiths , who engraved
11979-445: The position that Luristan examples must be counted as developments of the "lion-griffin" type, even when it exhibits "stylization .. approaching the beak of a bird". The Luristan griffin-like creatures resemble and perhaps are descended from Assyrian creatures, possibly influenced by Mitannian animals, or perhaps there had been parallel development in both Assyrian and Elamite cultures. Bird-headed mammal images appeared in art of
12100-639: The pre-Ionic inhabitants of the city were Leleges and Lydians . Callimachus , in his Hymn to Artemis attributed the earliest temenos at Ephesus to the Amazons , legendary warrior-women whose religious practise he imagined already centered upon an image ( bretas ) of Artemis, their matron goddess. Pausanias believed that the temple pre-dated the Amazons . Pausanias's estimation of the site's antiquity seems well-founded. Before World War I, site excavations by David George Hogarth seemed to identify three successive temple buildings. Re-excavations in 1987–1988 and re-appraisal of Hogarth's account confirmed that
12221-405: The representation struck on the tetradrachm coinage of Attica. Apollo rode a griffin to Hyperboria each winter, leaving Delphi, or so it was believed. Apollo riding griffin is known from multiple examples of red-figure pottery . And Apollo hitched griffins to his chariot according to Claudian . Dionysus was also depicted on a griffin-chariot or mounting griffin; the motif was borrowed from
12342-576: The same text). Middle Persian Paškuč is also attested in Manichaean magical texts (Manichaean Middle Persian: pškwc ), and this must have meant a "griffin or a monster like a griffin" according to W. B. Henning . The griffin was given names which were descriptive epithets, such as tštš or tesh-tesh meaning "Tearer[-in-pieces]" inscribed on a griffin image found in a tomb at Deir El Bersha ; and sfr / srf "fiery one", attested at Beni Hasan . The descriptive epithet "Tearer"
12463-507: The site was occupied as early as the Bronze Age , with a sequence of pottery finds that extend forward to Middle Geometric times , when a peripteral temple with a floor of hard-packed clay was constructed in the second half of the 8th century BC. The peripteral temple at Ephesus offers the earliest example of a peripteral type on the coast of Asia Minor, and perhaps the earliest Greek temple surrounded by colonnades anywhere. In
12584-416: The site: The assertion that the Ephesians thought that their cult image had fallen from the sky, though it was a familiar origin-myth at other sites, is only known for the temple at Ephesus from Acts 19:35 : Lynn LiDonnici observes that modern scholars are likely to be more concerned with origins of the Lady of Ephesus and her iconology than her adherents were at any point in time, and are prone to creating
12705-512: The statue, the goddess' skin has been painted black, likely to emulate the aged wood of the original, while her clothes and regalia, including the so-called "breasts", were left unpainted or cast in different colors. Fleischer (1973) suggested that instead of breasts, the oval objects were decorations that would have been hung ceremonially on the original wood statue (possibly eggs, or the testicles of sacrificed bulls), and which were incorporated as carved features on later copies. The "breasts" of
12826-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
12947-465: The temple with the boys, and later deposited his writings there. In 356 BC, the temple burned down. Various sources describe this as a vainglorious act of arson by a man, Herostratus , who set fire to the wooden roof-beams, seeking fame at any cost; thus the term herostratic fame . For this outrage, the Ephesians sentenced the perpetrator to death and forbade anyone from mentioning his name , although Theopompus later noted it. Aristotle describes
13068-549: The temple's conflagration, but not its cause. In Greek and Roman historical tradition, the temple's destruction coincided with the birth of Alexander the Great (around 20–21 July 356 BC). Plutarch remarks that Artemis was too preoccupied with Alexander's delivery to save her burning temple; he does not specify a cause for the fire. Herostratus' part in the temple's destruction has been questioned in modern scholarship. Stefan Karweise notes that any arsonist would have needed access to
13189-469: The tradition that horseback-riding Arimaspians raided the griffin gold. The derivation of this word remains uncertain. It could be related to the Greek word γρυπός (grypos), meaning 'curved', or 'hooked'. Greek γρύφ (gryph) from γρύφ 'hook-nosed' is suggested. It could also have been an Anatolian loan word derived from a Semitic language; compare the Hebrew word for cherub כרוב kərúv . In
13310-509: The wooden roof framing; Knibbe (1998) writes of an "entire corps" of attested temple guards and custodians. The fire might even have been deliberately and covertly set by the temple's administrators, who were aware that the temple's foundation was sinking but were prevented from re-siting it elsewhere by religious constraints; Bammer has noted the conservation of the original sacred location throughout successive rebuildings, despite continued problems with flooding and foundations. Karwiese questions
13431-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
13552-447: Was a fabulous composite creature, and Russian archaeologist Boris A. Litvinskij [ ru ] argued for the possibility that the application of this term may extend to the griffin. The term Sēnmurw is recognized as the etymological ancestor of simurgh , which is generally regarded as a mythological bird (rather than a composite) in later medieval Persian literature, though some argue that this bird may have originated from
13673-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
13794-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
13915-477: Was funded by Croesus of Lydia , and took 10 years to complete. This version of the temple was destroyed in 356 BC by an arsonist , commonly thought to have been a madman named Herostratus . The next, greatest, and last form of the temple, funded by the Ephesians themselves, is described in Antipater of Sidon 's list of the world's Seven Wonders : I have set eyes on the wall of lofty Babylon on which
14036-406: Was larger than the second; 137 m (450 ft) long by 69 m (225 ft) wide and 18 m (60 ft) high, with more than 127 columns. Athenagoras of Athens names Endoeus , a pupil of Daedalus , as sculptor of Artemis' main cult image. Pausanias (c. 2nd century AD) reports another image and altar in the temple, dedicated to Artemis Protothronia (Artemis "of the first seat") and
14157-553: Was located near the ancient city of Ephesus, about 75 kilometres (47 mi) south from the modern port city of İzmir , in Turkey. Today the site lies on the edge of the modern town of Selçuk . The sacred site ( temenos ) at Ephesus was far older than the Artemision itself. Pausanias was certain that it antedated the Ionic immigration by many years, being older even than the oracular shrine of Apollo at Didyma . He said that
14278-604: Was nearly coeval with Pliny, gave a somewhat unique account of the griffin, claiming them to be lion-sized, and having no true wings, and instead had paws "webbed with red membranes", that gave them ability to makes leaps of flight of only a short distance. Pomponius Mela (fl. AD 43) wrote in his Book ii. 6: In Europe, constantly falling snow makes those places contiguous with the Riphaean Mountains .. so impassable that, in addition, they prevent those who deliberately travel here from seeing anything. After that comes
14399-413: Was overlord of Ephesus. It was designed and constructed from around 550 BC by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes . It was 115 m (377 ft) long and 46 m (151 ft) wide, supposedly the first Greek temple built of marble. Its peripteral columns stood some 13 m (40 ft) high, in double rows that formed a wide ceremonial passage around the cella that housed
14520-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
14641-621: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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