This is one of 3 marble statues of the goddess Artemis found at Ephesus and carved in the 2nd century AD. Fragments of gold found on her neck indicate that the entire statue was once gilded.The breastlike swellings were first thought to be breasts, but modern scholarship suggests that they were the testes of bulls sacrificed to the goddess. At her feet on both sides are her most sacred animals, the deer.The Greek Temple of Artemis was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it was completely rebuilt three times before its eventual destruction in 401 AD. After six years of searching, the site of the temple was rediscovered in 1869 by an expedition led by John Turtle Wood and sponsored by the British Museum. Only foundations and sculptural fragments of the later temples at the site remain.