History of Ephesus

The oldest settlement in the Ephesus area is Çukuriçi Höyük, a low mound near the later city. Its first villagers lived there in the Neolithic, around 6700–5900 BC; the mound then stood empty for more than 2,500 years, was resettled in the Late Chalcolithic, around 3300–3000 BC, and was finally abandoned at the end of the first phase of the Early Bronze Age, around 2750 BC¹. At the time the coast lay only about 1.5 km away, which gave the settlers direct access to the Aegean²⁴.

What they did with that access shows up in the finds. Obsidian came by sea from the island of Melos, and the Early Bronze Age levels hold about 50 metallurgical furnaces, evidence of early copper and arsenical-copper working¹³. The Selçuk museum carried out the first excavations in the late 1990s; systematic research followed from 2006 to 2014, led by Barbara Horejs under the Austrian Archaeological Institute’s licence²⁵.

By the Late Bronze Age attention had shifted to Ayasuluk hill. Many scholars identify it with Apaša, the capital of the kingdom of Arzawa named in Hittite texts, though the case rests on the similar name and on Mycenaean finds, not on an inscription¹⁴. The annals of the Hittite king Muršili II record that in the third year of his reign he entered Apaša, the city of the Arzawan king Uhhaziti, who fled rather than fight; by the usual chronology that was in the late 14th century BC¹⁵.

The Greeks told their own foundation story. Androclus, a son of King Codrus of Athens, led the Ionian settlers who founded Ephesus, and his descendants were still honoured as “kings” in Strabo’s day²⁶. An oracle had promised him that a fish and a boar would show him where to build. A fish jumped out of a cooking fire, the brushwood caught, a boar broke cover, and the city was founded where Androclus killed it²⁷. The scene was still being carved in Roman times, on the frieze of the so-called Temple of Hadrian²⁸.

According to Strabo, Carians and Leleges held the site before Androclus drove them out and settled his people around the Athenaion, the Hypelaios spring and the slopes of Mount Koressos¹⁶. Another tradition said the city was once called Smyrna, after an Amazon who took it²⁹. Ancient writers also credited the Amazons with founding the cult of Artemis at Ephesus³⁰, though Pausanias disagreed: in his view the sanctuary was older, and the Amazons only came to it as suppliants³¹.

The archaeology is less colourful and more useful. The Ionian settlement is traditionally dated to the 11th or 10th century BC, and the earliest Iron Age Greek pottery found at Ephesus belongs to the late 11th century BC⁶. Greek pottery of that date also turns up in the terracing of the low hill where the temple of Artemis would later stand³².

In the mid-7th century BC Cimmerian raiders attacked Ephesus and the sanctuary of Artemis³³. The next threat came from Lydia. When Croesus besieged the city, the Ephesians dedicated it to Artemis by running a rope from the temple to the city wall, seven stades away, a little over a kilometre³⁴. Croesus took Ephesus around 560 BC¹⁷ and then paid for some of the columns of the great new temple; drums carrying his dedication survive³⁵.

That temple was the first of the two that made the Artemision famous. Ancient tradition said it took 120 years to build, with all Asia contributing to the Temple of Artemis³⁶. Croesus’s reign also moved the town. Strabo says the Ephesians had lived on the mountainside until then, and afterwards came down to live around the Artemision, where they stayed until Alexander’s time¹⁸.

After Cyrus of Persia defeated Croesus, the Persian general Harpagus brought Ephesus under Persian rule³⁷. In 498 BC, during the Ionian Revolt, the rebels marched inland from Ephesus to burn Sardis and were later beaten by the Persians near the city³⁸.

This is also the Ephesus of Heraclitus, the philosopher of flux and of the logos, active around 500 BC³⁹. He came from the old royal family, gave up his honorary kingship to his brother⁴⁰, and deposited his single book in the temple of Artemis⁴¹.

After the Persian defeat in 479 BC, Ephesus joined the Athenian-led Delian League⁴². Late in the Peloponnesian War, in 407 BC, the Spartan admiral Lysander made it his fleet base, raised his ships from 70 to 90, and in 406 BC defeated the Athenians off nearby Notium⁴³.

In 356 BC the Artemision burned down. The arsonist was Herostratus, who wanted to be remembered, and later tradition set the fire on the night Alexander the Great was born¹⁹. The Ephesians banned his name, and it survives only because the historian Theopompus wrote it down anyway⁴⁴. Some modern scholars doubt that he acted alone, or at all: one suggestion is that temple officials, knowing the foundations were sinking, were glad to see the building go⁴⁵. The exact day often quoted for the fire, 21 July, is a modern reconstruction from the Alexander story and should not be treated as a record¹⁹.

Alexander took Ephesus from the Persians in 334 BC, after his victory at the Granicus⁴⁶. He offered to pay for the rebuilding of the temple if his name were inscribed on it. The Ephesians declined; one of them answered that it was not fitting for a god to dedicate offerings to gods⁴⁷. They paid for it themselves, with women’s jewellery, private gifts and the sale of the old temple’s columns⁴⁸. Alexander did extend the temple’s zone of asylum, to one stade, a boundary that later rulers stretched and Augustus finally cut back because it sheltered criminals⁴⁹.

Lysimachus, one of Alexander’s successors, made the move that shaped everything visitors see today: he took the city away from the Artemision and rebuilt it inside new walls on the valley floor below two hills, Panayırdağ and Bülbüldağ³. The date is less secure than most books suggest. Lysimachus first seized Ephesus in 301/300 BC, but he held it firmly only from 287 BC until his death in 281 BC; the safest statement is that he refounded the city in the early 3rd century BC, often given as around 290 BC⁷.

He renamed it Arsinoeia after his wife Arsinoe II, but the name did not last; after his death at Corupedium in 281 BC the city was Ephesus again⁵⁰. The people did not want to move, according to Strabo. Lysimachus waited for a heavy downpour, blocked the drains and flooded the old town until its inhabitants were glad to leave⁵¹. Geoarchaeology suggests a more practical motive: the harbour by the Artemision was silting up, while the bay between the two hills still gave deep, good anchorage⁵². He also destroyed the nearby cities of Lebedos and Colophon and moved their people into his new Ephesus⁵³.

The new city was built to last. The wall circuit followed the crest of Bülbüldağ and took in ground over 4 km from end to end and 2 km across⁵⁴, and its streets were laid out on a regular grid⁵⁵. Not everything credited to Lysimachus was his, though. The Great Theatre, often said to be his work, was begun generations after him, in the 2nd century BC, according to the excavators’ final publication⁵⁶. The Magnesian Gate, too, dates from around 100 BC, not from his walls⁵⁷.

After Lysimachus the city was contested between the Seleucid kings and the Ptolemies of Egypt, and it was in Seleucid hands again by 196 BC, when Antiochus III used it as his base⁵⁸. Around 190 BC Livy describes its harbour as “like a river”, long, narrow and full of shoals, when the Romans considered trapping Antiochus’s fleet inside by sinking cargo ships in the channel⁵⁹.

Rome defeated Antiochus, and after the Peace of Apamea in 188 BC Ephesus was handed to the Attalid kings of Pergamon⁶⁰. One of them, Attalus II, made the silting worse. Strabo says his engineers narrowed the wide harbour mouth with a mole, expecting the channel to deepen; instead it trapped the river’s silt, and the whole harbour grew shallower⁶¹.

Attalus III died in 133 BC and left his kingdom to Rome; after the revolt of Aristonicus was crushed, the province of Asia was organised in 129 BC⁸. Ephesus became the seat of the Roman governor. Whether it was formally the capital, in place of Pergamon, is debated: the governor toured the province’s assize towns and landed at Ephesus, and “the governor’s seat and effectively the capital” is the fairest description⁴.

Roman rule was not popular at first. In 88 BC Ephesus welcomed Mithridates VI of Pontus and pulled down Roman statues⁶². In the massacre remembered as the Asiatic Vespers, the cities of Asia killed their Roman and Italian residents on his orders, and Appian says the Ephesians dragged fugitives away from the images of Artemis in her temple⁶³. Ancient writers put the dead at anywhere from 80,000 to 150,000, figures modern historians regard as exaggerated⁶⁴. By 86 BC the city had turned against Mithridates and was back under Rome after Sulla’s victory⁶⁵.

The late Republic brought its most famous visitors. Arsinoe IV, Cleopatra’s younger sister, was killed on Mark Antony’s orders in 41 BC; Josephus places the killing at the Artemision of Ephesus, where she had taken refuge, while Appian puts it at Miletus⁶⁶. When Antony entered the city that year, Ephesus greeted him as Dionysus, with women dressed as Bacchantes and men and boys as satyrs⁶⁷. In 33/32 BC he and Cleopatra wintered there while they gathered their fleet; Plutarch says 800 warships and transports assembled at Ephesus⁶⁸.

Octavian, the future Augustus, allowed the Romans living in Asia to set up a sanctuary of Rome and the deified Julius Caesar at Ephesus in 29 BC⁶⁹. Strabo, writing under Augustus or Tiberius, called Ephesus the largest trading centre in Asia this side of the Taurus mountains, and a city that grew by the day⁷⁰.

The first two centuries AD were the city’s grandest. After the earthquakes that struck Asia in AD 17 and later, Ephesus was among the cities thanked for Tiberius’s help on a monument set up at Puteoli in AD 30, though Tacitus’s list of the twelve cities hit in AD 17 does not include it⁷¹. Hadrian visited in AD 124 and probably again in 128/129, and was honoured as a founder⁷². Under him Ephesus became “twice neokoros”, twice the official keeper of a temple of the imperial cult; it was “thrice” from AD 211, and briefly “four times” under Elagabalus, a record in the Roman East⁷³.

Much of what stands in the ancient city today was built in these years. The Library of Celsus honoured Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, consul in AD 92⁷⁴, who was buried beneath it⁷⁵. Terrace House 2, the block of Terrace Houses climbing the slope over Curetes Street, covers about 4,000 m²⁷⁶. The Vedius Gymnasium, a bath-gymnasium of almost 13,000 m², opened between AD 147 and 149⁷⁷.

The harbour needed constant work. Under Nero the governor Barea Soranus tried to clear it; around AD 100 benefactors paid for its enlargement; in the mid-2nd century a governor banned dumping into the harbour canal; and further works followed in the 3rd century⁷⁸. As the delta advanced, the Romans cut a long canal west from the harbour basin to reach open water⁷⁹.

Christian Ephesus has its beginnings in the same years. Acts says Paul taught in the synagogue for three months and then daily for two years in the lecture hall of Tyrannus⁸⁰, and he wrote 1 Corinthians from the city⁸¹. Acts also tells how the silversmith Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, stirred up a riot against Paul’s preaching that ended in the theatre⁸².

The estimates are far apart: the highest is more than six times the lowest. The traditional figure, repeated in much of the older literature, is about 200,000 to 250,000 people, but no count from the excavations stands behind it⁸³. The historian T. R. S. Broughton suggested up to 225,000⁸⁴; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, working from density, arrived at 138,000 to 172,500⁸⁵. J. W. Hanson’s density-based estimate is far lower, at 33,600 to 56,000⁸⁶, and a 2017 demographic model by Hanson, Ortman and Lobo gives about 71,600⁸⁷.

The fairest summary, then, is that estimates range from roughly 34,000–72,000 in recent density models to the traditional 200,000–250,000⁸³. The popular claim that Ephesus was “the fourth-largest city of the Empire” is a modern commonplace; the historian Walter Scheidel counts it among the five largest cities of the Greco-Roman world by the 2nd century AD, alongside Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Carthage⁸⁸.

The good years ended in the 3rd century. A severe earthquake struck Ephesus in the reign of Gallienus (253–268) and was followed by raids from the sea by Gothic warriors²⁰. According to Jordanes, Goths led by Respa, Veduc and Thuruar burned the temple of Artemis; modern writers date the raid variously to 262/263 or 267/268, so “in the 260s” is as close as the evidence allows⁸⁹. The excavators date the destruction of Terrace House 2 to the third quarter of the 3rd century²⁰, and they now attribute the ruin of the Library of Celsus to an earthquake around AD 270⁹⁰.

The Terrace Houses were never rebuilt as luxury homes, and these disasters mark the end of the city’s imperial peak⁹¹. The temple of Artemis never regained its old state either; its cella seems to have been partly restored and stayed in use through the 4th century, before the ruins became a quarry⁹².

Constantine, Constantius II and Arcadius rebuilt and adorned the city after the 3rd-century damage. The colonnaded street to the harbour is still called the Arkadiane after Arcadius, who reigned from 395 to 408⁹³. The Artemision, meanwhile, was abandoned by about 400, and its marble was carried off for other buildings, much of it to the church of St John on Ayasuluk and later to the İsa Bey Mosque⁹⁴.

Ephesus hosted two church councils, in 431 and 449⁹. The first, now counted as the Third Ecumenical Council, opened on 22 June 431 under Cyril of Alexandria⁹⁵. It deposed Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople, and upheld the title Theotokos, “God-bearer”, for Mary⁹⁶. The second met in August 449 and restored Eutyches⁹⁷. Pope Leo I dismissed it as a “robber synod”. The Council of Chalcedon overturned its decisions in 451, but the Oriental Orthodox churches still accept it⁹⁸.

The 6th century brought plague and grand building in the same generation. The Justinianic plague, around 542, hit the population hard⁹⁹. Around the middle of the century Justinian replaced a small ruined church over the traditional grave of John the Apostle with the great domed Basilica of St John, taking Constantinople’s Holy Apostles as his model¹⁰⁰.

Around 614/616 large parts of the city were destroyed. The cause is disputed: most accounts blame the Persian war, others an earthquake. Afterwards a new wall enclosed less than half of the old city¹⁰¹.

From the mid-7th century Arab fleets raided the coast; in 654/655 they attacked Ephesus, and in 781 raiders carried off about 7,000 captives¹⁰². Earthquakes, fire and economic decline in the 7th and 8th centuries broke the city into smaller centres; one scholarly model sees three, around the old harbour, on fortified Ayasuluk and on the coast at Anaia¹⁰³. Settlement drifted towards Ayasuluk, which was refortified from about the 7th century¹⁰⁰.

The old city was not simply deserted, though. Austrian excavations south of the Church of Mary found people living there until the 12th century, then mainly farming, and the last signs of any activity date from the 14th century⁵. The hill town took its name from the church: Hagios Theologos, “the Holy Theologian”, became Altologo in Italian mouths and Ayasuluk in Turkish ones¹⁰⁴.

Ephesus belonged to the Thracesian theme, a Byzantine military province, from the 7th century, and in the 8th century it held a profitable annual fair¹⁰⁵. The Paulicians, led by Chrysocheir, attacked the city in the 860s¹⁰⁶. The Seljuk Turks took it in 1090, and a Byzantine army under John Doukas won it back in 1096/97²¹. The armies of the Second Crusade camped here and fought the Seljuks nearby in December 1147¹⁰⁷. After the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople in 1204, Ephesus belonged from 1206 to the Laskarid empire of Nicaea and became a centre of learning¹⁰⁸.

On 24 October 1304 the town surrendered to Turkish forces under Sasa Bey, allied with the Aydınid family, and much of its Christian population was expelled, killed or enslaved¹⁰. Under the Aydınid beylik Ayasuluk became a capital and a major trading port, dealing with Venice and Genoa¹⁰⁹.

Its finest building from those years, one of several medieval monuments around Ephesus, still stands below the castle. The inscription of the İsa Bey Mosque dates it to March 1375; it was built for the Aydınid ruler İsa Bey, and its architect was Ali ibn Mushaimish of Damascus²². İsa Bey reigned until about 1390, when the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I took Aydınid lands¹¹⁰. After Timur defeated the Ottomans at Ankara in 1402 he restored the Aydınid princes, and Ayasuluk suffered in the invasion¹¹¹. The Ottomans returned for good under Murad II, who ended the rule of the last Aydınid prince, İzmiroğlu Cüneyd, in 1425; some sources give 1426²³.

By the 15th century the ancient lower city was abandoned¹¹².

Visitors kept coming to the ruins. Cyriacus of Ancona, the Italian antiquarian, came in the 15th century, and the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi described Ayasuluk in the mid-17th¹¹³.

Modern archaeology began with a search for the lost temple. In 1863 the British railway engineer John Turtle Wood started looking for the Artemision on behalf of the British Museum, uncovering parts of the theatre and other buildings on the way¹¹⁴. The clue came in 1866, from an inscription in the theatre: it described statuettes carried in procession from the temple by way of the Magnesian Gate, so Wood looked for the road out of that gate and followed it¹¹⁵. He reached the temple’s remains on 31 December 1869, about 6 m down¹¹⁶.

The Austrians arrived next. Otto Benndorf of the University of Vienna proposed an excavation in 1893, digging began in 1895, and in 1898 he founded the Austrian Archaeological Institute¹¹. Finds from the early campaigns went to Vienna until 1906; exports ended with the Ottoman antiquities law of 1906/07¹¹⁷. Fieldwork stopped for more than a decade with the First World War, resumed in 1926, halted again in the Second World War and restarted in 1956 with annual campaigns under Franz Miltner¹¹⁸.

Some of the most visible results came later still. The façade of the Library of Celsus was re-erected from its own fallen blocks between 1970 and 1978¹¹⁹, and Terrace House 2 received its protective roof in 1999/2000¹²⁰. The work has never been free of politics: Turkey halted the Austrian excavation in 2016 and allowed it to resume in 2018¹²¹.

Selçuk, the town beside the ruins that visitors walk through today, was made a district of İzmir province in 1957¹²². In 2015 UNESCO inscribed Ephesus on the World Heritage List¹², as a property in four parts: the Çukuriçi mound, the ancient city, the House of the Virgin Mary, and Ayasuluk hill with the Artemision and what remains of the medieval town¹²³. The reasons UNESCO gave follow the story told above: the monuments of the Roman city, a landscape shaped by the shifting coast, and religious traditions reaching from the Anatolian mother goddess to Christianity¹²⁴.

In 2025 the ruins drew more visitors than any other museum or archaeological site in Turkey¹²⁵. The ministry’s count for that year: 2,550,458¹²⁶ (checked on 14 September 2026).

Popular accounts of Ephesus repeat a handful of dates and numbers that the evidence does not support. The main ones from its history:

• Lysimachus refounded the city in the 290s or 280s BC. He did not hold Ephesus securely before then, so the date “c. 320 BC” found in some popular histories cannot be right⁷.
• The theatre was begun long after Lysimachus. The excavators place its start in the 2nd century BC and date its marble stage front, by inscription, to AD 85¹²⁷.
• About 20,000 is the excavators’ figure for the theatre. The 24,000 and 25,000 found in many books come from older and official sources¹²⁸.
• 250,000 is the top of an old estimate, not a count. Recent models for Roman Ephesus are far lower⁸³.
• The council of 431 is counted as the third ecumenical council. Some tour sites call it the fourth⁹⁵.
• Finds stopped going to Vienna in 1906, not 1923. The later date is a mistake in a widely read online summary¹²⁹.
• The İsa Bey Mosque is Aydınid work of 1375. Calling it Seljuk puts it in the wrong dynasty²².

The monuments have their own crop of errors, collected in what guidebooks get wrong.