phesus was refounded in various different places in the extensive area at the mouth of the Little Meander. There were geographical and geological reasons for this; the continuing silting up of the Kaystros (Ephesus is now 5 km away from the sea), the marshiness of the site and the associated danger of disease, and political reasons; rebuilding after destruction when conquered, and belonging to a new sphere of political influence.

The "Star of Asia" was a traffic centre; because of its protected harbour and as a starting point for the royal road via Sardes to Nineveh. It was also a cult centre for traditional worship of the female, first Cybele, then Artemis, and finally Mary in the Christian epoch.

Ephesus I: Selçuk acropolis, 2nd millennium BC; inhabited by ancient Anatolians, Carians and Leleges, associated with a shrine for their fertility goddess, Cybele of Asia Minor.

Ephesus II: Panayir Dagi. Achaeans settled on the Kurutepe hill, 1250 BC, then still an island.

Ephesus III: The Lydian king Croesus besieged and conquered the city in the context of his expansionist policies in the mid-6 BC, and compelled it to be refounded without walls. After his death Ephesus again became a member of the Delian League, but this city which lived on trade and was dominated by a few trading families (oligarchy) exercised diplomatic skills reminiscent of Venice, even managing to avoid war with the Persians.

Ephesus IV: In the 4C BC the harbour threatened to silt up completely. For this reason Lysimachus, the friend and successor of Alexander the Great in West Asia Minor, with Pergamon as his residence, established a fourth Ephesus 3??. further up the long valley between Bülbül Dagi and Panayir Dagi and on their foothills. He forced the inhabitants to move by flooding the former Ephesus by blocking the drainage channels during the rainy season. Under the Romans, Lysimachos Ephesus was capital of the province of Asia Minor and had a quarter of a million inhabitants in the imperial period.

Ephesus V: Persistent silting up of the harbour and repeated raids by Arabs who wished to conquer Constantinople in the 7C AD led to the establishment of a new, smaller fortified settlement: Ephesus returned to the acropolis hill, where from the mid-6C AD the basilica of St.John stood, now the center of the city, as had been the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus III.