The excavations conducted by Theodor Wiegand on behalf of the Berlin Museums in Milet in Asia Minor rank among the great archaeological achievements at the beginning of the 20th century. In less than 15 years, Wiegand succeeded in bringing to the light of day again a whole city from antiquity with its streets and squares, its sacred sites and market-places, public buildings, sports facilities, baths and technical infrastructure. Wiegand also extended his researches to the surrounding countryside and neglected no epoch of the city's history. In 1906 he established the series publication Milet - Results of the excavations and investigations since 1899. The individual volumes - each complete in itself - deal with the buildings and monuments uncovered by the excavations; the studies also deal with the landscape of Milet and the surrounding countryside. While the series opened with details of the architectural monuments excavated, future volumes will focus on the individual finds from Milet, from the inscriptions to the lamps and the sculptures. The series is arranged by systematic criteria, and thus the volumes do not appear in chronological sequence.

The volume presents some 300 inscriptions from a period of one millennium, from the 6th century BC to the 6th century AD which provide manifold insights into the history of the Oracle in Didyma, which was transformed into a Christian site after the end of the pagan cult. Numerous testimonia reflect the entire spectrum of the sanctury: detailed accounts of the building activities show the progress of the construction of the temple itself, inventories are evidence of the administration by Miletus, and dedications and oracle inscriptions document the communication with the God as well as the religious phenomena concerning the sanctuary as a place of worship also of other gods and godesses. Finally, the social structures of the milesian elite, to which the ministrants of Apollon and Artemis (prophetes, hydrophorai) belonged, are revealed by the reports of honours which they received and by their self-testimonies in the inscriptions through the centuries.