Voice Of Ruins

Abandoned Pantheons

Ashes over the Altar

You stand in a city where the stones once breathed. Everything is silent now, yet something still seems to wait. The temple no longer accepts offerings, but it hasn’t been forgotten—it simply slipped beyond the reach of time.

Here, prayers once pulsed. Here, the goddess’s gaze slid over the earth—she who had too many faces to be recognized and too few to be understood.

Artemis no longer answers. But look closer: she is still here—in the twisted shadows of the portico, in the dust of columns, in the crack where grass has grown.

Or in you.

Temple in Ruins

Perge is not just an ancient city in Pamphylia. It was once the heart of a feminine cult, where the goddess of the hunt became mistress of a different order.

Here, Artemis is not Diana with a bow. She is law, mother, guardian of thresholds—between nature and man, between birth and death. She is the temple itself.

The Temple of Artemis of Perge stood south of the agora, beyond the tourist trails. Now it’s just a heap of stones—uncleared ruins, avoided even by those seeking antiquity. No signs, no fences. Only remnants of columns, overgrown and forgotten.

Archaeologists say: 2nd century BCE, possibly rebuilt in Roman times. But before that? Who knows what stood here, when the land still remembered the voices of gods.

This Artemis was not gentle. Her priestesses in Perge could be both servants and keepers. Were there secret rituals? No one knows. By the Roman era, her cult had almost vanished, absorbed into the official pantheon. Some artifacts made it to the museum. Some were looted. And some… are still waiting.

Faces of Forgetting

Artemis is a goddess of paradox. Forever young, yet guardian of childbirth. She avoids men, yet kills for a glance. She is moonlight, but harbors a feral darkness.

In Perge, she was something else—local, weighty, closer to the chthonic. Sometimes she was depicted with animal heads. Sometimes with an unreadable face and many breasts (or were they bird eggs? or bull testicles?—who can tell now).

There was something of the eastern fertility goddesses in her. Something of ancient dread—of motherhood, of death, of the forest.

She does not speak the tongue of Olympus. Her voice is the rustling of grass you never noticed.

Shadows on the Edge of the Mind

Why do we still remember gods that no longer exist?

Because they don’t die. They slip into the shadows of our subconscious, become archetypes, fears, dream-figures.

Artemis is not just an ancient deity. She is our inner predator and savior, our fear of the wild and our longing for it. Her temple lies in ruins, but the idea remains.

We are still afraid to cross the forbidden threshold—because out there, she waits.

When civilization begins to crack, they return. Silhouettes that once were gods. And maybe will be again.

How We Got Here

The Temple of Artemis in Perge isn’t on posters. It hasn’t been “restored.”

To find it, you have to step off the main street—the one leading from the south gate to the agora. Walk past the columns, veer slightly to the side. There, in the overgrowth, begins a place without explanations.

That’s it.

Don’t climb the stones—they’re unstable. Don’t make noise—the place breathes, but not through you.

Perge lies about 18 km from Antalya. The easiest way to get there is by metro-tram to Aksu station. Alternatively, take bus No. 519 (20–30 minutes from city center), a minibus from Aksu district, a taxi, or drive. The site is guarded, entry is ticketed (€15, but check the museum website for updates).

Echo in the Void

I stood where people once prayed.

Birds didn’t sing. Dogs kept their distance. Even the ants took a different path. A fallen column stared at the sky like it was waiting for an answer—or a goddess who had left, but not died.

You can’t call to Artemis.

But she can still find you.

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