Live the Experiences of the Past Project Temple of Artemis
Live the Experiences of the Past Project Temple of Artemis
Live the Experiences of the Past Project Temple of Artemis
Live the Experiences of the Past Project Temple of Artemis
TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS
Arguably no other temple in the world has affected mankind so much as the Artemision of Ephesus by its mystery, inaccessibility, obscurity and exclusivity. Destroyed seven times yet to be rebuilt each time with greater magnificence and splendor than the former. The eighth temple(Classical Artemision) which is the subject of this project was the most glamorous of all; it was one and the most stupendous of the seven wonders of the world. Classical Artemision had taken a number of scientists, archeologists,travelers, architects and artists into its grip for centuries.
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No other temple of the Classical Age had vanished like it without leaving any trace; had it not been to the prints of the temple on the Roman coins, and the descriptions of the ancient authors like Pliny and Vitruvius, one would believe the world wonder in the books of Philon of Byzantium and the Antipater of Sidon was a figment of the imagination. On the last day of 1869, after seven years of effort, the temple which was so long lost, so long sought for, and almost despaired of was finally found by the English engineer J.T. Wood.
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Yet, today’s visitor to Ephesus is encountered with a frustrating scenery. Because, in 1873, after ten years of excavations, 60 tens of marble fragments remaining from the temple were transported from Ephesus to London and nothing was left to today’s visitor to conjure up its original magnificence.
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Richard Stoneman in his book Land of the Lost Gods writes about this as follows (See Literature Survey):
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.... but the temple itself will never stand again. The one re-erected column stands in a green pool, a forlorn reminder of the 127 columns there once were. Atop it nests a family of storks, the only inhabitants now who have replaced the Ephesian worshippers of Great Diana. Diana dwells now in the British Museum.
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Contrary to “....but the temple itself will never stand again.” prophecy of the author, thanks to latest developments in 3-dimensional volumetric visualization field, the technology is now available to resurrect the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, the birthplace of the goddess. The subject of this project is, with the advent of the latest technologies, to resurrect the most splendid shrine of our historical heritage with a virtual reality comparable to what the Ephesians of the Classical Age used to see.
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How to visualize this wonder of the Classical Age ? This conundrum has vexed many archaeologists, architects and artists since the commencement of the rediscovery of the Classical Age in the first years of the Renaissance. Reconstructions before the discovery of the temple in the 19th century were figments rather than resurrection of reality. Regrettably, neither the discovery of the temple, nor the excavations of the following 140 years sufficed to lift the cover of mystery enwrapping the temple, thus far no reconstruction has been achieved which has rooted from reality and has gained full academic acceptance.
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Ekrem Akurgal in his book Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey states that by setting off from the fragments in the British Museum, one can reconstruct the temple. However, A.S. Murray who had long worked on those parts had deduced that finding relations between them was not an easy task. A. Bammer also accepted that reconstruction was still an unsolved problem and he said “ …. There are many unknowns which preclude the reliable reconstructions of both [Archaic and Classical] temples.”
Whatever necessary has been done archaeologically for the reconstruction problem of the Artemision of Ephesus, excavations of one and a half century have left no fragments awaiting discovery. Hundreds of monographs and books have been written about the found parts. The barriers hindering the reconstruction despite all of these efforts can only be removed with the advent of the cyber technology.
New resources facilitated by cyber technology to the solution of the archaeological problems have recently been the focus of attention in the academic circles and Cyber Archaeology which merges archaeology with technology has gained acceptance as a new discipline. One of the prominent examples of this area is the Forma Urbis Romae project which has been undertaken by the Digital Michelangelo team from Stanford University with the aim of reconstructing a marble map of Rome from over 1000 fragments. Similarly, starting from over 1000 marble fragments in museums, this project undertakes the cyber reconstruction of the Artemision of Ephesus with the aim of resurrecting the temple for today’s visitors with a reality compared to that which was enjoyed by the visitors of the Classical Age. The project will also provide the facilities of visitor-temple interaction, interior and exterior promenading and web-based touring. The outcome of the project will open a window through which we can have a closer look to the antique world, and a wide angle view of a wonder of the Classical Age as well as its unequalled “cosmos”.
