Dura-Europos
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dura-Europos ("Fort Europos")[1] was a Hellenistic and Roman walled city built on an escarpment ninety meters above the banks of the Euphrates river. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in today's Syria ().
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[edit] Hellenistic Era
It was founded in 303 BC by the Seleucids on the intersection of an east-west trade route and the trade route along the Euphrates. The new city, commemorating the birthplace of Alexander's successor Seleucus I Nicator, controlled the river crossing on the route between his newly-founded cities of Antioch and Seleucia on the Tigris. Its rebuilding as a great city built after the Hippodamian model, with rectangular blocks defined by cross-streets ranged round a large central agora, was formally laid out in the 2nd century BC. The traditional view of Dura-Europos as a great caravan city is becoming nuanced by the discoveries of locally-made manufactures, and traces of close ties with Palmyra (James).
During the first century BC it became a frontier fortress of the Arsacid Parthian Empire. It was captured by the Romans in 165 and abandoned after a Sassanian siege in 256-257. After it was abandoned, it was covered by sand and mud and disappeared from sight.
[edit] Archaeology
Although the existence of Dura-Europos was long known through literary sources, it was not rediscovered until British troops under Capt. Murphy made the first discovery during the Arab Revolt in the aftermath of World War I. On March 30, 1920, a soldier digging a trench uncovered brilliantly fresh wall-paintings. The American archeologist James Henry Breasted, then at Baghdad, was alerted. Major excavations were carried out in the 1920s and 1930s by French and American teams. The first archaeology on the site, undertaken by Franz Cumont and published in 1922 - 23, identified the site with Dura-Europos, and uncovered a temple, before renewed hostilities in the area closed it to archaeology. Later, renewed campaigns directed by Michael Rostovtzeff funded by Yale University continued until 1937, when funds ran out with only part of the excavations published. World War II intervened. Since 1986 excavations have resumed in a joint Franco-Syrian effort under the direction of Pierre Leriche.
Not the least of the finds were astonishingly well-preserved arms and armour belonging to the Roman garrison at the time of the final Sassanian siege of 256. Finds included painted wooden shields and complete horse armours, preserved by the very finality of the destruction of the city that journalists have called "the Pompeii of the desert".
[edit] Culture
Dura-Europos was a cosmopolitan society, controlled by a tolerant Macedonian aristocracy descended from the original settlers. In the course of its excavation, over a hundred parchment and papyrus fragments and many inscriptions have revealed texts in Greek and Latin (the latter including a sator square), Palmyrenean, Hebrew, Hatrian, Safaitic, and Pahlavi. The excavations revealed temples to Greek, Roman and Palmyrene gods. There were mithraea, as one would expect in a military city.
[edit] Dura-Europos synagogue
The world's oldest preserved Jewish synagogue was dated by an Aramaic inscription to 244. It was preserved, ironically, when it had to be infilled with earth to strengthen the city's fortifications against a Sassanian assault in 256. It was uncovered in 1935 by Clark Hopkins, who found that it contains a forecourt and house of assembly with frescoed walls depicting people and animals, and a Torah shrine in the western wall facing Jerusalem. At first, it was mistaken for a greek temple. The synagogue paintings are conserved at Damascus, together with the complete Roman horse-armour.
[edit] Dura-Europos house church
There was also the earliest identified Christian church. "Their evidently open and tolerated presence in the middle of a major Roman garrison town reveals that the history of the early church was not simply a story of pagan persecution" (Simon James). In 1933, among fragments of text recovered from the town dump outside the Palmyrene Gate, a fragmentary text was unearthed from an unknown Greek harmony of the gospel accounts -- comparable to Tatian's Diatessaron, but independent of it.
[edit] Notes
- ^ The compund Dura-Europos was not employed in Antiquity (James).
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: |
- CAIS at SOAS: "Dura Europos: its archaeology and history"
- Simon James, "Dura-Europos, the 'Pompeii of the Desert'"
- Illustration of the tomblike baptistry of the Christian church
- Pierre Leriche, co-head of excavations describes the site (in French)
- The Dura-Europos Gospel Harmony
[edit] References
- Dirven, L.A. 1999 The Palmyrenes of Dura-Europos : a study of religious interaction in Roman Syria (Leiden: Brill)
- Hopkins, C., 1979 The Discovery of Dura Europos, (New Haven and London).
