The Melissae Earrings are set with two silver drachms struck at Ephesos in Ionia between 202 and 150 BCE. While Artemis was honoured across the Greek world, one of her most renowned sanctuaries stood at Ephesos. Counted among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the Artemision rose within a vast sacred complex that had shaped the life of the city for centuries. Pilgrims travelled from across the Mediterranean with offerings and valuable gifts, seeking the goddess’s favour and protection in some of life’s most decisive moments, particularly in matters of fertility, childbirth, and the passage from girlhood to womanhood.
The priestesses of this immense sanctuary were known as the Melissae, the bees in the service of Artemis. Their emblem was stamped on the coinage of the city. Within a sanctuary of such scale, wealth, and prestige, they belonged to the sacred order through which the cult of Artemis was maintained.
On the obverse of each drachm, the bee appears between the letters Ε–Φ, abbreviation of Ephesos. On the reverse, a stag stands before a palm tree, accompanied by the magistrates’ names ἈΝΤΙΦΙΛΟ[Σ] and ΠΑΡΡΑΣΙΟΣ. The stag belongs to Artemis, while the palm recalls the landscape associated with the birth of Artemis and Apollo. In these concentrated signs, the coin carries the sacred identity of Ephesos.
The drachms are framed in 18-carat yellow gold. The coin of Parrasios, struck on a 12 h axis, has been mounted to turn on itself, allowing either the bee or the stag to face outward while preserving the balance of the jewel. Above each coin, a honeycomb openwork holds a heliodor cabochon, chosen for its honeyed golden light and for the solar association carried in its name, a distant echo of Apollo beside Artemis.
These earrings draw together the world of the sanctuary, the presence of its priestesses, and a luminous contemporary form.
