Artemis's temple at Ephesus contained an old wooden image of her. Inside its headdress was an object known as the diopet, said to have fallen from the sky - perhaps a Neolithic implement, perhaps a bronze pestle. There is a scriptural reference to it in Acts 19:35, where the phrasing has perplexed translators. The Revised Standard Version hesitantly makes it a "sacred stone." Legend declared that the original shrine and image were set up by Amazons, the matriarchal warrior women of Greek mythology. Before the siege of Troy they made war on Athens. Marching through Asia Minor on their way to Greece, they paused at Ephesus and founded the temple of Artemis as their patroness, dancing to the music of pipes.

For Amazons she was the natural goddess. Greek authors speak of them early and revert to them often but remain uncertain about their homeland. According to the oldest accounts they lived in the Thermodon Valley near the southern coast of the Black Sea. It was reported that men were tolerated among them only for breeding purposes, or even that they had no men at all but made an annual visit to the Caucasus for temporary mates. Girl children that resulted were kept, boys were sent back to their fathers. When Greeks explored the Thermodon Valley and found no Amazons, they inferred that they had been exterminated by enemies or driven out. Herodotus favors the latter version. He says the uprooted Amazons wandered for some time and finally settled in what is now southern Russia.

He may have picked up a morsel of fact. Burials in that region - the Pontic-Caspian - show that women sometimes were interred with weapons and presumably were warriors. It is a fair guess that such women would have had a divine patroness, a prior form, credibly, of the goddess who reached Hellas as Artemis. The Amazons' shifting locations, in the Caucasus and Asia Minor, may even reflect the progress of her cult toward Greece, bringing stories of her Amazon worshippers.

Dawn Behind the Dawn
A Search for the Earthly Paradise
by Geoffrey Ashe
A John Macrae Book / Henry Holt and Company
New York. 1992