What does Artemis mean in NASA’s Artemis II Mission Around the Moon?

I’m not the smartest tool in the shed, but the discernment THE LORD gives raised questions about that word “Artemis” and NASA’s Artemis II Mission Around the Moon heard so much about on the news today. And in my opinion much idol worship. That discernment the Lord gives, provoked me to investigate. Where have I seen that word? What does Artemis mean?

My preliminary investigation originally brought me to the Artemas in Titus 3:12. But that was the man Artemas (different spelling). The Artemis NASA is using is the pagan goddess Diana (aka a false deity), seen many times in Acts 19. The Greek word for Diana is Artemis (Strong’s 735). I have many Bible dictionaries. But my Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible has the most comprehensive definition of that false deity & false god called Artemis. With the pagan or perverted origins of many monuments in D.C., I shouldn’t be surprised at this.

Therefore, before you celebrate Artemis II, consider what the name symbolizes. I’ll stop here. The rest is the lengthy definition of Artemis.

ARTEMIS Ἄρτεμις

I. Artemis is the Greek virgin goddess originally of hunting and animal fertility. It occurs as a divine name in Acts 19 (in Jewish literature only Sib. Or. 5, 293–295); moreover one of Paul’s companions had the theophoric name Ἀρτεμᾶς, a hypocoristic derived from Ἀρτεμίδωρος ‘gift of Artemis’ (Titus 3:12). Being the divine huntress, her name, especially its Doric-Aeolian form ʼΆρταμις, has been connected etymologically with Attic ἄρταμος ‘butcher; slaughterer’, or else with ἄρκ(τ)ος ‘bear’, because the bear was one of the animals sacrificed to her, and her young priestesses were sometimes called ‘she-bears’. Both explanations fail, however, to account for the phonetic difference in Attic between her name and the adduced appellatives from that same dialect, unless one supposes that ʼΆρτεμις itself is not originally Attic but stems from yet another dialect. It has even been suggested, therefore, that the form ʼΆρταμις, the other way round, owes its existence to popular etymology on the basis of ἄρταμος. In the Linear-B tablets from Pylos her name occurs twice, as A-te-mi-to (gen. sg), and as A-ti-mi-te (dat. sg.). The alternative explanation, now generally adopted, is that her name is not Indo-European at all, but of pre-Greek origin, like those of so many other Greek gods and heroes. In Lydian she was called Artimus, in Etruscan Artumes (nom. sg.), Aritimi (dat. sg.), in Imperial Aramaic she appears as ארתמו (KAI 260B7) or ארתמוש (Fouilles de Xanthos VI, p 137 line 24). Unlike that of her brother →Apollo, the Romans and Latins did not take over her Greek name, but identified her, instead, with the indigenous Diana.

II. General Survey. In Greece Artemis is attested since 1200 BCE, and in Greek literature from Homer onward. According to the most current version of her myth she was the elder twin-sister of Apollo, the two of them being the offspring of →Zeus and his first cousin Leto, a daughter of the →Titans Coeus and →Phoebe. As the pregnant Leto had to roam in flight from →Hera, the jealous spouse of Zeus, she gave birth to Artemis in Ortygia or ‘quails’ land’, which some located near Ephesus. Subsequently she bore Apollo in the island of Delos, at this second birth being assisted according to some authors by her new-born daughter Artemis. Originally the realm of Artemis was the world of wild animals and natural vegetation. Homer summarizes her character as “Mistress of the Animals (πότνια θηρῶν), Artemis the Huntress” who uses “to kill the animals in the mountains” (Iliad 21, 470–471; 485).

Positively, therefore, she is the one who rules over fertility in general, in particular the fertility of women, over animals hunted by man such as the deer and the boar, and wild trees. She is also the one who keeps under control animals that are dangerous to mankind, such as the bear and the wolf. To a lesser extent cultivated trees, cereals and domesticated animals seem to have fallen under her sway as well. With the other gods she was entitled to the first fruits of the annual crops. At Patrae, in archaic times, the human sacrifices made to her wore on their heads garlands of corn ears (Pausanias 7, 20, 1). In Thasos she was venerated under the epithet of Πωλώ or ‘Protectress of Foals’, in other places as Δαφν(α)ία or ‘Goddess of the Laurel’. Normally, however, it was →Demeter who made the corn grow, →Poseidon who was the horse-god, and Apollo to whom the laurel was especially sacred. Moreover, she never competed with →Dionysus or →Athena as far as the vine or the olive tree were concerned.

Negatively, she could show her power by killing women in childbirth, by sending monsters by way of punishment, such as the ‘Calydonian’ Boar to Calydon in order to devastate the arable land and kill the cattle, because its inhabitants had forgotten to include her name in the invocations at the annual sacrifice. She changed her hunting companion Callisto into a she-bear, because she was found to be pregnant. When her temple at Patrae had been desecrated she caused the earth to yield no harvest and sent diseases as well (Pausanias 7, 19, 3). Being generally of a rather vindictive character, she had the hunter Actaeon killed by his own hounds for having seen her naked when bathing, and →Orion by a scorpion because he had tried to rape her; together with her brother she shot down six of the seven daughters and six of the seven sons of Niobe, who had insulted her mother Leto for having only two children.

Only seldom in myth does she help a human, one of the rare instances being little Atalanta who had been exposed on Mt. Parthenion by her father, because he only wanted sons. Her life was saved by a she-bear who suckled her. After that she grew up to be a swift-footed virgin huntress, who would only marry the man that could beat her in running. The bear, being one of Artemis’ sacred animals, had, of course, been sent by the goddess (Apollodorus, Libr. 3, 9, 2). For the rest her myths are concerned with killing, and, unlike the mythology of other goddesses, not at all with love.

Being a huntress, she is often depicted carrying bow and arrows. So is her brother Apollo, but in his case because his original function probably was to protect the herds from the attacks of wolves, hence in all likelihood his epithet Λυκεῖος. This is explained as ‘wolf-killing’ by Sophocles (Electra 6–7), but secondarily interpreted as ‘Lycian’ because his mother Leto was in reality a Lycian goddess. His Homeric epithet Λυκηγενής would then be the equivalent of Λητογενής. In Troezen, to match her brother in this respect, Artemis was venerated as Λυκεῖα, while Apollo in his turn was sometimes invoked as ‘the Hunter’ (Ἀγρεύς, Ἀγραῖος).

As Artemis had a special relation to women, presiding over their fertility and being called upon during the hours of labour (epithets: Λεχώ and Λοχεῖα, ‘protectress of the child-bed’, Σωωδίνα, ‘who saves from travail’), she was naturally in course of time also connected via the menstrual cycle with the →Moon. As a counterpart to this development, but for other reasons, her brother became the god of the sun. Here a third etymology of Λυκεῖος has played its part, the one which derived it from λύκη ‘morning twilight’ (cf. Macrobius, Sat. 1, 17, 36–41). In both cases the connections with the celestial bodies are clearly secondary; they are still unknown to Homer. For Hesiod, too, Selene and her brother →Helios are still the children of the Titans Hyperiōn and Theia (Theog. 371), but in later times Philo of Alexandria could simply say that some of mankind (i. e. the Greeks) “call the moon Artemis” (De decal. 54). A further parallelism between Artemis and Apollo is the unmarried status of both, Artemis being emphatically venerated as a virgin. This latter characteristic may be in accordance with the fact that the wild animals with whom she is often associated, the deer, the boar and the bear, do not live in pairs, the bear normally living solitary outside the mating season. The sacrifices made to her were the wild animals mentioned, also wolves, even a fox at Ephesus, goats, edible birds and the fruits of trees. There are several testimonies to earlier human sacrifices having been replaced by other rites. The most widely known reminiscence of the former practice is, of course, the story of king Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigeneia, who was sacrificed but in the last moment replaced by a hind or a she-bear. In spite of the OT instances of Isaac and →Jephtha’s daughter, pagan gods were readily criticized by Christian church fathers on the point of human sacrifices; Artemis, e.g., by Tatian (Or. 29, 2).

Artemis was depicted as wearing a short hunting tunic or a long robe (Ἀρτεμις κατεσταλμένη). In iconography she is often accompanied by a hind and carries bow and quiver, sometimes a torch. The latter attribute she assumed from the goddess Hecate, with whom she was often identified because the two shared a number of characteristics (such as her lunar associations). Her appearance in dreams of hunters or pregnant women was considered a propitious sign, but when she appeared naked it was an ill omen (Artemidorus, Onirocr. 2, 35).

She was widely venerated in Greece and more particularly in Asia Minor, sometimes together with Apollo (so e. g. at Mantinea, Daphne near Antioch, Syracuse). Pausanias, who describes many local varieties of the different deities, each with a distinctive surname, lists no less than 64 of such epithets for Artemis, many of which are, of course, only geographical, such as ‘Ephesia’. In this respect she was only marginally surpassed by Zeus (67 epithets); but she herself surpassed Athena (59), Apollo (58), →Aphrodite and Dionysus (both 27), and Demeter (26). Her great popularity was undoubtedly due to the fact that she was one of the rare goddesses who presided over the exclusively female aspects of life like pregnancy, child-birth and the rearing of infants. When boys and girls came of age they sacrificed a hair-lock to the goddess on the third and last day of the Apatouria or clan festival. A boy did so when his epheby ended and he was enlisted in his father’s phratry or clan, and became a full-fledged citizen himself; girls made this sacrifice before their marriage was solemnized, probably in the phratry of the future husband.

In various places the local calendar included a month named after Artemis: e.g. Artamitios at Sparta, Artemisiaon at Erythrae, and Artemisios in the Macedonian calendar used in the Hellenistic kingdoms. In Athens the month was called Elaphēboliōn after her epithet Elaphēbolos (‘deer huntress’); her festival, the Elaphēbolia, was celebrated in this month.

In Greece Artemis was at times conflated with other goddesses, mainly with Hecate, to whom she owed her association with magical practices. Abroad she was often identified with others, with several mother goddesses in Asia Minor, with the Near Eastern →Nanea (so 2 Macc 1:13, but Josephus’ version in Ant. 12, 354 has “Artemis”), with the Persian Anaitis, one of the three imperial deities of the later Achaemenids, with the Thracian Bendis, with the Italian Diana, and in Egypt with (Bu)bastis, i. e. →Bastet, the cat-goddess.

III. As there is no way of knowing which Artemis the parents of Artemas (Titus 3:12) had in mind when they gave a name to their son, the further NT references to the goddess are only to the Artemis of Ephesus. All the same it was this man who unwittingly retained the name of the goddess in Christian times, for in later tradition he was considered to have belonged to the seventy apostles, and to have become bishop of Lystra. As a consequence a festive day was devoted to him in the calendar on the 21st of June.

Artemis Ephesia was an early identification with one of the various Anatolian fertility and mother goddesses, an identification which may well go back to the very first Greek immigrants in the 11th century BCE. The name of the indigenous goddess was probably Upis (Callimachus, Hymn to Artemis 240) or ‘pis (Macrobius, Sat. 5, 22, 4–6). It was this particular cult of Artemis, which in the course of the ages, became more important than all her other local cults and was world famous by the time of Paul. Her temple, built by Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, was so imposing that it was the only one, so Solinus, that was spared by king Xerxes when he was setting fire to all the other Greek sanctuaries in Asia (Solinus 40, 2–4). In 356 BCE it nevertheless succumbed to the torch in the hand of Herostratus, whose sole purpose it was to become in this way as famous as the building itself; as a result his name is now better known than those of the architects. After it had been rebuilt by Dinocrates it was traditionally reckoned among the Seven Wonders of the World, and functioned not only as a sanctuary, but also as a place of asylum and as a bank of deposit. In the last mentioned capacity it had already been used by Xenophon in the period between his military expedition to Persia and the Spartan war against Boeotia, in which he also took part. Paul’s younger contemporary, Dio Chrysostom of Prusa, describes it as a place where people from all over the Roman empire, private persons, allied kings and townships, had deposited large sums of money (Or. 31, 54). Although Dio denies it, there are others who say that this money was also lent out (Nicolaus of Damascus frg 65). The area of the asylum had had different extents in the course of time, but was finally reduced by Augustus, because it attracted too many criminals (Strabo 14, 1, 23). The new area was probably marked by boundary stones like the one which carries this bilingual inscription: “Imp. Caesar Augustus fines Dianae restituit. Αὐτοκράτωρ Καῖσαρ Σεβαστὸς ὅ ρους Ἀρτέμιδι ἀποκατέστησεν” (IGLS 3239). The goddess, however, was also the owner of estates in the neighbourhood, marked by similar stones.

The regular cult as well as the festivals attracted many visitors from abroad for whom lodging and nutrition had to be provided. In addition to this there was a whole industry of miniature Artemis temples, which may have been both dedicatory gifts and souvenirs, and although they are known only from the 7th century, the silver pins carrying a bee, the sacred animal of Artemis Ephesia, were in all likelihood still fabricated in the Roman period as well. Altogether this means that the temple of ‘the Goddess’ was one of the major sources of wealth and prosperity for Ephesus, of which the economical importance can hardly be overestimated.

Although ‘Ephesia’ may have been in origin an Anatolian mother goddess, like the Phrygian Matar Kubileya (→Cybele), the identification with Artemis was carried through to the very point of virginity, so that the poet Antipater of Sidon around 125 BCE could call her temple a ‘Parthenōn’, like that of her virgin half-sister Athena. She was also a huntress, for hunting weapons were carried by those who formed her festive procession, in which horses and hounds paraded as well. The Ephesians maintained, however, that both Artemis and Apollo had been born on Asian soil. Another difference was that she always wore a long robe and a kind of apron covered with what were and are usually considered to be female breasts, a token of fertility. This interpretation as πολύμαστος goes back to Antiquity (e. g. Minucius Felix, Oct. 22, 5), but is certainly secondary, for a similar apron is worn by the male Zeus Labraundenus of Tegea. And as it is stated in so many words of yet another goddess, Berecynthia, that she was covered with testicles, what Ephesia was wearing were in all likelihood the testicles of the bulls sacrificed to her. The bee was her sacred animal, and as it does not itself procreate, it may have been a symbol of her chastity. It appears on the coins of Ephesus from the 7th to the 3rd centuries BCE, after that the image of the goddess herself begins to replace her emblem. The virgins, who served in her cult as priestesses, were also called μέλισσαι ‘bees’, and because the queen-bee, whose function was not understood in Antiquity, was mostly thought to be male and called ‘the king’, one of the titles of her priests was ἐσσήν, an indigenous word for ‘ruler’. According to Strabo those priests had to be eunuchs (14, 1, 23), but Pausanias states that they only had to abstain from sexual intercourse for a period of one year (8, 1, 3). The change may be due to the intervening edict of Hadrian, who forbade castration even if consent was given (Digestae 48, 8, 4, 2). Both priests and priestesses had to sacrifice their fertility to the goddess in their own way.

Without the slightest doubt it was Artemis who was the most important deity of the city. An inscription calls her “the goddess who rules (προεστῶσα) our city” (SIG 867,29). Other epithets, like Μεγίστη, as well as Μεγάλη (Acts 19:26; cf. Achilles Tatius 8, 9, 13) and Πρωτοθρονία, emphasize that she was first in rank, but certainly not the only deity venerated. No less than about twenty-five other gods were worshipped in Ephesus, among whom there were several Egyptian deities. This latter point is of some importance for the interpretation of Acts 19, because it underlines that the opposition described was hardly against the introduction of a foreign god as such.

As the bilingual boundary stone of Augustus shows, the Romans also referred to Artemis Ephesia as ‘Diana’. In fact the cult statue in her temple on the Aventine Hill in Rome was supposed to be the copy of the statue in Marseille, which, in turn, was a replica of the Ephesian statue (Strabo 4, 1, 5). Consequently, the Vulgate version also has ‘Diana’ in Acts 19, and this was then taken over by Luther’s version, the King James Version, etc.

The Ephesian goddess had filial sanctuaries all over the world, not only in nearby Greece (Alea; Scillus, founded by Xenophon), but also in Massalia (Marseille), and even as far away as Hemeroscopion in Spain (Denia). According to inscriptions the goddess communicated with her adherents and worked through oracles and epiphanies, and is reported to have effected healings. It is often stated by modern scholars that she was particularly connected with magic. This was indeed the case, but not particularly so, and she owed this connection mostly to her being identified with Hecate, the goddess of magic par excellence. That may explain why the Christian Tatian can say rather curtly: “Artemis is a magos” (Or. ad. Gr. 8, 2). The emphasis, therefore, which is laid on this aspect is hardly justified, and has probably been brought about by the simple fact that in Acts 19 the story of the burning of magic books at Ephesus is immediately followed by one about the riot of the silversmiths in favour of Artemis, but such a burning could easily have happened elsewhere, too. A second factor has undoubtedly been the fact that magical words and formulae were often called ‘ephesia grammata’ in Antiquity. Yet it is not at all certain that this means ‘Ephesian’ and a derivation from ἔφεσις (from ἐφίημι ‘send against; put on’) is quite possible. That such words were inscribed on the statue of Artemis Ephesia is stated only by Pausanias the Lexicographer (2nd cent. CE), but is not corroborated by others or by iconographical data. It is also true that the name of Artemis, or characteristic epithets of hers like Ἰοχέαιρα or Λυκώ are found in the magical papyri, in the hymns and prayers that form part of them, but here again, nearly always together with the name of Hecate or epithets of hers like Τρικάρανος, Τριοδῖτις, Κυνώ, etc. Only once does she occur here with her epithet Λύκαινα, and without Hecate, in a spell for procuring knowledge of future events in which now also →Isis, →Osiris, →Amun, →Moses, Iaō, and →Helios →Mithras play a part (PGM III 434). Finally, the collection of magical papyri contains a love charm which does not mention Artemis, but only her or Selene’s epithet Phōsphoros. The verso of this papyrus makes it clear, however, who this particular Phōsphoros is, as it carries a drawing which unmistakably depicts the ‘many-breasted’ Artemis Ephesia. Moreover, it makes mention of Phnun, here rather “the Abyss” than the Egyptian god Nun, and ends with a triple invocation of Iaō (PGM LXXVIII). The latter two instances may show how syncretistic magic could be: a situation in which the distinctive character of each individual deity is hardly highlighted.

In Ephesus the whole month Artemisiōn was sacred to her and all its days were holy days, which implied int. al. that all juridical activity had ceased. The main festival was the Artemisia during which sacrifices, banquets, processions and games took place. There were also mysteries and mystic sacrifices, but no further details are known about their character, except that they were performed by the college of six or more ‘curetes’, in the sacred grove ‘Ortygia’, or on Mt. Solmissos above it (Strabo 14, 1, 20). They were named after those ancient curetes or armed dancers who, at the birth of Artemis, had made such a terrible noise that they frightened away the jealous →Hera. This motif has undoubtedly been taken over from the story of the birth of Zeus in Crete, in which the curetes play a comparable role. The original function of these priests may have been to represent the Artemis temple and its estates in the city council of Ephesus.

IV. The presence of Jews in Asia goes back at least to about 345 BCE when the philosopher Aristotle met there with a Jew who had come from Coele-Syria and who could converse with him in Greek (Josephus, Apion 1, 176–182). King Seleucus I started to grant to the Jews who lived there civic rights in specific places, and so probably did his grandson Antiochus II (Josephus Ant. 12, 119; 125). These rights amounted at least to isonomia (ibid. 16, 160), which implied that Jews were allowed to live there in accordance with their own laws and customs, so that Jewish and Greek legislation were both treated as equally valid by the king. Such a construction harbours, of course, the seeds of conflicts, and these arose on several occasions during the first century BCE. The pagans asked whether Jews were not obliged to venerate their gods, too, and whether it was permissible for them to collect their own temple-tax and send it to Jerusalem. Both questions reveal that the Jewish practice was considered detrimental to the local economy, all citizens having to contribute to Artemis, for instance, instead of transferring large sums abroad. The Jews on their part objected against having to appear in law-courts on the →Sabbath, and also against military service. The Roman officials, however, repeatedly reinforced the principle of isonomy, so that the Jews could not be forced to transgress their own laws. It should be noted in this connection that, in general, Jews were not averse to bearing pagan theophoric names. As far as Artemis is concerned, this is confirmed by an Egyptian papyrus from the 2nd cent. BCE which mentions a “Dositheos, son of Artemidoros, Jew” (CPJ 30, 18); Dio Cassius, too, makes mention of an Artemiōn, who was the leader of the Jewish revolt in Cyprus around 117 CE (Roman Hist. 68, 32).

This unstable equilibrium was endangered when Paul, outside the synagogue, started to preach that man-made idols were not gods at all (Acts 19:9–10, 26; cf. 17:29). Apparently, this idea had thusfar never been propagated by Jews except within their own congregation. Earlier, persons who had insulted and violated the filial cult of the goddess in Sardis had even been sentenced to death (I. Eph. Ia,2; IVBCE). Quite understandably, since Paul was naturally to be considered as one of its members, the other Jews wanted to put things right by distancing themselves from him or even declaring him to be an apostate (Acts 19:33–34). This, however, did not help much. The motley crowd that flocked together in the theatre apparently knew quite well that the Jews, although they did not directly endanger the manufacture and sale of the silver Artemis temples, were not venerators of the goddess either. The core of Paul’s preaching against her, viz. that her statue was man-made and not divine, was dismissed by the ‘secretary’ of the city as incorrect by the use of one single word only. He simply reminded his audience of the fact that the statue was διοπετές, “fallen down from Zeus” or “from heaven” (Acts 19:35), and therefore of divine origin. In some cases this could imply that an image had been made out of a meteorite, but it is known for a fact that the statue of Artemis Ephesia was a rather dark wooden image (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 16, 213–214). Centuries earlier the Athenian audience of Euripides found nothing contradictory in the assertion that a wooden image of Artemis had as such fallen down from heaven (Iph. Taur. 87–88; 977; 1044–1045). In the 2nd century, Athenagoras wrote an apology for the Christian religion to Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus. It devotes a whole chapter to famous cult statues of the time and mentions the various sculptors who had carved them so as to show that they were man-made and not divine. It is certainly no coincidence that the statue of Artemis of Ephesus opens the enumeration because of its role in the NT. Athenagoras ascribes it to Endoeus, a pupil of the well-known Daedalus who was the architect of the Cretan labyrinth (Supp. 17, 4).

In the Letter to the Church of Ephesus in the Book of Revelation, the congregation is praised for not having yielded to the doctrine of the Nicolaitans (2:6), which held that Christians were allowed to eat meat sacrificed to idols (2:14–15). At Ephesus this would certainly have involved the Artemis-cult. Some forty years earlier Paul, likewise, had forbidden this practice as long as it more or less implied one’s partaking of a sacred pagan meal (1 Cor 8; 10:28). But if such meat had found its way from a temple to a market it was, according to Paul, sufficiently secularized for Christians to eat it (1 Cor 10:25–27).

The Jewish attitude towards the Artemis-cult can hardly ever have been much more positive than that of the Christians, and must have been comparable to some kind of armistice. The 5th book of the Sibylline Oracles, written under Marcus Aurelius, openly predicts her downfall, saying that her temple “by yawnings and quakes of the earth” will fall into the sea (293–297). Ironically, the temple survived vandalization by the Goths in 263 CE and ended up as a Christian church; it was rather the retreating sea, which, through the silting up of the estuary of the river Cayster, ultimately caused Ephesus to become desolate with temple and all.

V. Bibliography

F. GRAF, Nordionische Kulte (Rome 1985) 227–249, 410–417; K. HOENN, Artemis. Gestaltwandel einer Göttin (Zürich 1946); M. P. NILSSON, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, vol. I (Munich 1955) 483–500; vol. II (Munich 1961) 368–369 Artemis Ephesia); H. J. ROSE, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (London [6th ed. 1958] 1965) 112–119; E. SIMON et al., LIMC II.1 (1984) 618–855; H. WALTER, Griechische Götter. Ihre Gestaltwandel aus den Bewusstseinsstufen des Menschen dargestellt an den Bildwerken (Munich 1971) 203–216; R. FLEISCHER, Artemis von Ephesos und verwandte Kultstatuen aus Anatolien und Syrien (EPRO 35; Leiden 1973); NewDocs 4 (1987) nrs 19 and 28; 5 (1989) nr 5 (pp. 104–107); 6 (1992) nrs 29 and 30 (Artemis Ephesia).

G. Mussies, “Artemis,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 91–97.