| Goddess of the Hunt, Forests and Hills, the Moon, Archery |
| The Diana of Versailles, a Roman copy of a Greek sculpture by Leochares (Louvre Museum) |
| Mount Olympus |
| Bow, arrows, stags, hunting dog and moon |
| Zeus and Leto |
| Ares, Athena, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus, Hebe, Hermes, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Hephaestus, Perseus, Minos, the Muses, the Graces |
| Diana |
| This article contains special characters. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. |
| Part of a series on | |||
Features
| |||
Godheads
| |||
Ethics
| |||
Practices
| |||
Sacred places
| |||
Texts
| |||
History and organisation
| |||
| Hellenismos portal | |||
|
Artemis /ˈɑrtɨmɨs/ was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals". The Arcadians believed she was the daughter of Demeter.
In the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis (Ancient Greek: Ἄρτεμις) was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and protector of young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women; she often was depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her. In later Hellenistic times, she even assumed the ancient role of Eileithyia in aiding childbirth.
ContentsThe name Artemis (noun, feminine) is of unknown or uncertain origin and etymology although various ones have been proposed.
For example according to Jablonski, the name is also Phrygian and could be "compared with the royal appellation Artemas of Xenophon. According to Charles Anthon the primitive root of the name is probably of Persian origin from *arta, *art, *arte, all meaning "great, excellent, holy," thus Artemis "becomes identical with the great mother of Nature, even as she was worshipped at Ephesus". Anton Goebel "suggests the root στρατ or ῥατ, "to shake," and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter". Babiniotis while accepting that the etymology is unknown, states that the name is already attested in Mycenean Greek and is possibly of pre-Hellenic origin.
The name could also be possibly related to Greek árktos "bear" (from PIE *h₂ŕ̥tḱos), supported by the bear cult that the goddess had in Attica (Brauronia) and the Neolithic remains at the Arkoudiotissa Cave, as well as the story about Callisto, which was originally about Artemis (Arcadian epithet kallisto); this cult was a survival of very old totemic and shamanistic rituals and formed part of a larger bear cult found further afield in other Indo-European cultures (e.g., Gaulish Artio). It is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshiped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, Britomartis. While connection with Anatolian names has been suggested, the earliest attested forms of the name Artemis are the Mycenaean Greek
Tags:Adonis, Anatolian, Artemis, Artemisia, Caria, Delos, Greek, Hellenism, Hermes, Ionia, Iranian, Moon, Nike, Olympic, Pahlavi, Persian, Polytheism, Roman, Sacred, Salamis, Troy, Uranus, Versailles, Wikipedia, Xenophon, Xerxes