![Ephesos Museum Vienna, Austria (21924743332)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Ephesos_Museum_Vienna%2C_Austria_%2821924743332%29.jpg)
The Ephesos Museum in
Vienna
en, Viennese
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displays antiquities from the city of
Ephesus ( gr, Έφεσος, german: Ephesos), in modern-day
Turkey
Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...
. Begun in the late 19th century, the collection includes original works of sculpture and architecture, and belongs to the
Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Since 1978 the Ephesos Museum has had its own rooms in the
Neue Burg. Before the museum was established, the present exhibits were provisionally displayed in various locations, including on occasion the Theseus Temple in the
Volksgarten.
[History]
Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Lying on the Turkish
Aegean coast, Ephesus was one of the largest cities of the ancient world and is now among the most popular tourist destinations in Turkey. The Austrian Archaeological Institute has been conducting research in the ruins of the city since 1895, interrupted only by the two world wars. The museum's collection began when Sultan
Abdul Hamid II donated some of the archaeological findings to Emperor
Franz Joseph I
Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I (german: Franz Joseph Karl, hu, Ferenc József Károly, 18 August 1830 – 21 November 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, and the other states of the Habsburg monarchy from 2 December 1848 until his ...
. Due to a change in Turkish law, no more artefacts have been sent to Vienna since 1907.
Many other Ephesus artefacts are on display in the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
in London as well as in the
Ephesus Archaeological Museum near the site of the excavation in
Selçuk.
The collection
![Partherdenkmal, Ephesos Museum Wien 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Partherdenkmal%2C_Ephesos_Museum_Wien_2.jpg)
Between 1896 and 1906 a total of seven expeditions transported findings from Ephesus to Vienna. In the early 20th century these findings were exhibited in various places, including
Belvedere Palace
The Belvedere is a historic building complex in Vienna, Austria, consisting of two Baroque palaces (the Upper and Lower Belvedere), the Orangery, and the Palace Stables. The buildings are set in a Baroque park landscape in the third district o ...
and the antiques collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. In 1911, a provisional exhibition in the Theseus Temple had to be discontinued because of damage to the exhibits. A selection of the items was once again exhibited in the Temple between 1934 and 1944. A number of Ephesean sculptures were displayed in the Neue Burg's colonnade from 1947 until 1978, when the entire collection finally received a permanent home in the newly founded Ephesos Museum.
The museum possesses remnants from the late-Classical
Altar of Artemis, including a sculpture of an
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
. Staircases lead from the entrance hall to a large chamber containing the
frieze
In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...
from the
Parthian Monument of Ephesus. Other major exhibits include a model of ancient Ephesus on a scale of 1:500, and numerous sculptures including a bronze statue of an athlete. Also in the museum are architectural and sculptural
cult relics from the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, on the Greek island of
Samothrace
Samothrace (also known as Samothraki, el, Σαμοθράκη, ) is a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea. It is a municipality within the Evros regional unit of Thrace. The island is long and is in size and has a population of 2,859 (2011 ...
.
Archaeological digs, with Austrian involvement, continue in Ephesus to this day. The scientific evaluation of the museum's stock is carried out in cooperation with the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...
, the
Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Archaeological Institute.
Major exhibits
![Bronzestatue des Athleten, Ephesos Museum Wien](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Bronzestatue_des_Athleten%2C_Ephesos_Museum_Wien.jpg)
Amazon from the Artemision Altar
The
Temple of Artemis
The Temple of Artemis or Artemision ( gr, Ἀρτεμίσιον; tr, Artemis Tapınağı), also known as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to an ancient, local form of the goddess Artemis (identified with Diana, a Roman go ...
, first built in the 6th century BC, was one of the
Seven Wonders of the World
Various lists of the Wonders of the World have been compiled from antiquity to the present day, in order to catalogue the world's most spectacular natural features and human-built structures.
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the o ...
. After being burned down in the 4th century BC, it was rebuilt, during which the sacrificial altar to
Artemis
In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Artemis (; grc-gre, Ἄρτεμις) is the goddess of the hunt, the wilderness, wild animals, nature, vegetation, childbirth, care of children, and chastity. She was heavily identified wit ...
was encircled with a spectacular surrounding wall. The sculpture of the upper part of a wounded
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
stems from this wall.
Parthian Monument
The Parthian Monument is one of the most important Roman-age
relief
Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces are bonded to a solid background of the same material. The term '' relief'' is from the Latin verb ''relevo'', to raise. To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...
s from
Asia Minor
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...
. In five thematic cycles it commemorates the Roman Emperor
Lucius Verus, who established a camp in Ephesus during his
Parthian Campaign of 161-165 AD. The individual pieces have been arranged in the form of a monumental altar, but this is only a guess at their correct arrangement, as they were not found in their original state.
Archiv: Ephesos, Partherdenkmal - Aspekte der Bauforschung
Institut für Kulturgeschichte der Antike. The friezes have a total length of about 70 metres, of which 40 metres are on display.
Bronze Statue of an Athlete
This Roman statue from the first century AD, copied from a Greek original from the fourth century BC, has been recreated from 234 fragments; it shows a young athlete cleaning his strigil, an implement used to wash the body after a contest. This motif was well-known and widely popular in the ancient world, and the statue cannot be attributed to any specific Greek artist.
Notes
Further reading
* ''Kunsthistorisches Museum: Führer durch die Sammlungen''. Brandstätter, Vienna, 1988, , S. 59–119 (editors Alfred Bernhard-Walcher, Kurt Gschwantler and Wolfgang Oberleitner).
* Ulrike Muss: ''Die Archäologie der ephesischen Artemis. Gestalt und Ritual eines Heiligtums''. Phoibos, Vienna, 2008, .
* Wolfgang Oberleitner: ''Funde aus Ephesos und Samothrake''. Vienna, 1978, (A guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, antiques collection no. 2.)
* Wolfgang Oberleitner: ''Schätze aus der Türkei'' Künstlerhaus, Vienna, 1987, .
* Wilfried Seipel (editor): ''Das Partherdenkmal von Ephesos. Akten des Kolloquiums, Wien, 27.-28. April 2003''. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2006, .
* Gilbert Wiplinger, Gudrun Wlach (editors): ''Ephesos. 100 Jahre österreichische Forschung''. 2nd edition. Böhlau, Vienna/Cologne/Weimar 1996, .
* Wolfgang Oberleitner: ''Das Partherdenkmal von Ephesos''. Schriften des Kunsthistorischen Museums 11, Vienna, 2009, .
External links
Home page in English
(from the Kunsthistorisches Museum)
{{Authority control
Museums in Vienna
Archaeological museums in Austria
Museums established in 1978
Buildings and structures in Innere Stadt
Museums of ancient Rome in Austria
Kunsthistorisches Museum