ARTEMIS and the essence of her mother divinity

    Man lives in a universe of symbols. Everything that surrounds us; numbers, colours, shapes are symbols.

    Human beings comprehend each historical phenomenon with symbols/symbols. It is undeniable that mankind has used symbols expressing this power on the way to a divine power and creation by concretising the events he has seen or perceived in nature since the Upper Palaeolithic Period. These symbols are the very essence of nature, the cycle of reproduction and death, and nature itself.

    The cult of the mother goddess is found in every region of Anatolia since Prehistoric times. The characteristics of this belief, which provides all kinds of abundance and fertility and has great power over plants and animals, have developed depending on natural conditions.

    God and idol are synonymous in Neolithic Period cultures. The idols created especially at Çatalhöyük in the Neolithic Age and at almost all settlements during the Chalcolithic Age and at Alaca and Kültepe in the following Bronze Age are the fruits of the Mother Goddess cult in Anatolia. With the Early Bronze Age; the Mother Goddess Wurushemu, who was perceived abstractly in Hatti, becomes the Sun Goddess of Arriana and Hepat in Yazılıkaya by becoming pictorialised in the Hittite Civilisation of the Middle and Late Bronze Age. Even the fall of the Hittites could not destroy this belief, which was worshipped in every region of Anatolia. Like ploughed soil, like a tree whose branches have been pruned, it continues uninterruptedly with the New Hittite Kubaba. This continuity affects Phrygian art and beliefs in sculpture and Cybele beliefs, and the 7th century BC Phrygian Cybele paintings shape the Ionian Goddesses. The Archaic Age shows the first signs of the golden age of Ionian art. After the Persian invasion, the belief in the Mother Goddess and the symbols expressing her have now left Anatolia and reached the opposite shore. All the goddesses known as "Greek" were born from her, only their names changed.

    Artemis emerged from this idea, daughter of Zeus and Leto, sister of Apollo. Even this mythos cannot tear her away from Anatolia, the arrival of the Achaeans in front of Troy binds her to her ancestral land and keeps the Trojans. He sits on the mountains and peaks again. He inhabits the forested valleys. All plants and animals are under her control.(Potnia Theron) According to another local rumour of antiquity, Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis not in Delos, but in Patara and Ephesus in the pains of holy birth, in the Anatolian Mother Goddess's own land.

    Artemis draws her essence from nature and the cult of the Anatolian Mother Goddess. So much so that she is symbolised by the very primitive image "xoanon", a statue of an almost unhewn tree. Artemidoros of Ephesus, who lived in the second century AD, recommends the worship of Artemis Ephesia and Eleuthera as well as the old abstract form of Artemis Pergaia.

    Artemis Eleuthera, Artemis Pergaia, Artemis of Ephesos, Phrygian Cybele and Neo-Hittite Kubaba share common characteristics.  It is known that the Goddess Artemis was worshipped in Myra with the epithet Eleuthera and festivals were held in honour of the Goddess. And this worship continued until the Roman Period. So much so that the depiction on the reverse side of one of the Myra city coins of the reign of Gordianus III (238-244 A.D.) is very interesting.

    While the goddess is depicted as a whole with the tree trunk, two snakes prevent two figures on her right and left from attempting to cut the tree with axes in their hands. It is interesting that this depiction appears on a coin during the Roman Period. In other words, by emphasising the identity of the goddess with nature, it is expressed that this belief and worship is protected by nature itself. The fact that the idea of perceiving the divine power in the tree goes back to the Bronze Age Beycesultan with concrete findings coincides with the fact that Eleuthera was "born" from the essence of the Anatolian Mother Goddess. Artemis Pergaia, locally known as Wanassa Periia, who was worshipped in Perge, is depicted in relief on a pillar belonging to the skene frons of the Perge Theatre; with her high calathos on her head and inside the temple.

    In Ephesos, the most important Artemis cult centre known, the goddess shows us her identity with nature with her high headdress, plant and animal ornaments, breast-like braids on her torso symbolising fertility and fertility, and deer figures on both sides. It is difficult to make a definite judgement whether the "stele" shaped abstract body of both goddesses and the Artemis of Kaumos symbolises the "tree" or the rock in which her power is perceived; what is known is that in every case the Mother Goddess exists in that essence.