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Dura-Europos was a Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman border city built on an escarpment 90 metres (300 feet) above the southwestern bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in present-day Syria. Dura-Europos was founded around 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, who founded the Seleucid Empire as one of the Diadochi of Alexander the Great.
In 113 BC, the Parthians conquered the city, and held it, with one brief Roman intermission (114 AD), until 165 AD. Under Parthian rule, it became an important provincial administrative centre. The Romans decisively captured Dura-Europos in 165 AD and greatly enlarged it as their easternmost stronghold in Mesopotamia, until it was captured by the Sasanian Empire after a siege in 256–257 AD. Its population was deported, and the abandoned city eventually became covered by sand and mud and disappeared from sight.
Dura-Europos is of extreme archaeological importance, and was called the "Pompeii of the Desert". As it was abandoned after its conquest in 256–57 AD, nothing was built over it and no later building programs obscured the architectural features of the ancient city. Its location on the edge of empires made for a commingling of cultural traditions, much of which was preserved under the city's ruins. Some remarkable finds have been brought to light, including numerous temples, wall decorations, inscriptions, military equipment, tombs, and even dramatic evidence of the Sasanian siege.
It was looted and mostly destroyed between 2011 and 2014 by the Islamic State during the Syrian Civil War.
Originally a fortress, the city was founded around 300 BC as Dura ("fortress" in Aramaic) at the intersection of an east–west trade route and the trade route along the Euphrates. The city was called Europos by Greeks in honor of the origin of Seleucus Nikator, who founded it and was born in Europos in Macedonia. In ancient times, either designation stood alone; the combination of "Dura-Europos" is modern and was coined by Franz Cumont in 1922.
The city was probably built on the site of a previous town; a clay tablet dating to King Hammurabi of Hana's times, 1900 BC, refers to the place as Da-ma-ra. It is the only cuneiform writing found at Dura; no other evidence has been found. The ancient settlement had probably been deserted for a long time when Dura was founded. The earliest mention of Dura-Europos can be found in the Parthian Stations by the geographer Isidore of Charax (c. 26 BC).
Dura controlled the river crossing on the route between Seleucus's newly founded cities of Antioch and Seleucia on the Tigris. Its rebuilding as a great city after the Hippodamian model, with rectangular blocks defined by cross-streets ranged round a large central agora, took place in the 2nd century BC. The traditional view of Dura-Europos as a great caravan city is modified by the discoveries of local manufactures and traces of close ties with Palmyra. Dura-Europos is now seen as owing its development to its role as a regional capital.
After the siege and destruction of the city its names were forgotten by local people, and the site was known as Salihiyeh, "a name thought to refer to Saladin". In Ottoman times the ruins were known as Qan Qal'esi, "Castle of Blood". Pierre Leriche, excavations director of the site in the early 2000s, opposes the name Dura-Europos, because it "obscures what he sees as the fundamental Greekness of the city" and proposes to use "Europos-Dura" instead.
ἔνθεν Δοῦρα, Νικάνορος πόλις, κτίσμα Μακεδόνων, ὑπὸ δὲ Ἑλλήνων Εὔρωπος καλεῖται.[Then comes Dura, the city of Nicanor, a foundation of the Macedonians, called Europos by the Greeks.]
Isidore is the only ancient historian who mentioned that the city had two different names. Isidore's account helped to identify the site, because both "Dura" and "Europos" were not unique names for that region.
When the town was founded, agricultural land was allotted to the members of the garrison, the size and quality of the allotments according to military rank. As the historian Paul Kosmin wrote, during its early history Dura-Europos was neither entirely a military outpost nor a polis, but something in-between:
Out of this meager evidence, the early settlement of Europos emerges as an entity ambiguously situated between a simple fortress and a full polis. The absences are striking. As far as can be perceived, in terms of civic architecture and urbanism, third-century Europos lacked a temple, gymnasium, theater, and a "Hippodamian" street plan. In terms of sociopolitical phenomena, it lacked a developed epigraphic habit, representative civic government, sophisticated bureaucracy, and its own mint (bar one short episode). The administrative center ("palace"), patterns of land ownership, royal cult, and state officials show, however, it was more than a fortified army community, isolated from its local and imperial environments. Its location and dependent territory gave Europos a dynamic and self-generating potential to expand and develop into the important, wealthier, and more complex settlement it would become.
In 113 BC, the Parthian Empire conquered Dura-Europos, and held it, with one brief intermission, until 165 AD, when it was taken by the Romans. The Parthian period was that of expansion at Dura-Europos, an expansion that was facilitated by the town losing its function as a military outpost. All the space enclosed by the walls gradually became occupied, and the influx of new inhabitants with Semitic and Iranian names alongside descendants of the original Macedonian colonists contributed to an increase in the population, which was a multicultural one, as inscriptions in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, various Aramaic dialects (Hatran, Palmyrene, Syriac), Middle Persian, Parthian, and Safaitic testify. In the 1st century BC, it served as a frontier fortress of the Parthian Empire.
The entirely original architecture of Dura-Europos was perfected during the Parthian period. This period was characterized by a progressive evolution of Greek concepts toward new formulas in which regional traditions, particularly Babylonian ones, played an increasing role. These innovations affected both religious and domestic buildings. Although Iranian influence is difficult to find in the architecture of Dura-Europos, in figurative art the influence of Parthian art is felt.
In 114 AD, the Emperor Trajan occupied the city for a couple of years: the Third Cyrenaica legion erected a "Triumphal Arch" west of the Palmyrene Gate. Upon the death of Trajan in 117, Rome relinquished Mesopotamia to the Parthians, but Dura was retaken by the Roman army of Lucius Verus during the Roman–Parthian War of 161–166.
The townspeople, however, retained considerable freedom as inhabitants of the regional headquarters for the section of the river between the Khabur River and modern Abu Kamal. The historian Ross Burns states that, in exchange, the city's military role was abandoned. Its original Greek settler population was increasingly outnumbered by people of Semitic stock; and by the first century BC, the city was predominantly eastern in character.
The city regained its importance as a military outpost, when the Romans established it as a starting point for the conquest of the territories of Osroene, and as an outpost for expeditions against the Parthian empire and their capital on the Tigris in 198 AD. The city was later a border post of the Roman "Kingdom of Palmyra".
In A.D. 194, Emperor Septimius Severus divided the province of Syria to limit the power of its previously rebellious governors. As a result, Dura became part of the new province of Syria Coele. In its later years, it also attained the status of a Roman colonia, which, by the third century, was what James (Henry Breasted) calls an "honorary title for an important town." He suggests that the "Roman authorities wanted to present Dura as an important city of the Roman province."
— Dura-Europos: Crossroad of Cultures by Carly Silver
The military importance of the site was confirmed after 209 AD: the northern part of the site was occupied by a Roman camp, isolated by a brick wall; soldiers were housed among civilians, among others, in the so-called "House of Scribes". Romans built the palace of the commander of the military region on the edge of a cliff. The city then had several sanctuaries, beside the temples, dedicated to the Greek gods Zeus and Artemis. There were shrines, dating from the 1st century AD, dedicated to Mithra, to Palmyrene gods, and to local deities.
In 216 AD, a small amphitheater for soldiers was built in the military area, while the new synagogue, completed in 244 AD, and a house of Christian worship, were embellished with frescos of important characters wearing Roman tunics, caftans, and Parthian trousers. These splendid paintings, which cover the walls, testify to the richness of the Jewish and Christian communities. The population of Dura-Europos is estimated at 10,000–15,000 people, at the most; more conservative estimates say that the agriculture of that region could only support a population of about 5,000–6,000 people.
The city received the status of "colonia" after the year 254 AD; official documents called the city "the 'colony of the Europeans of Seleukos Nikator' (κωλονεία Εὐροπαίων Σελεύκου Νεικάτορος)."
The good state of preservation of these buildings and their frescoes was due to their location, close to the main city wall facing west, and to the military necessity of strengthening the wall. The Sassanid Persians had become adept at tunneling under such walls in order to undermine them and create breaches. As a countermeasure, the Roman garrison decided to sacrifice the street and the buildings along the wall by filling them with rubble, to bolster the wall in case of a Persian mining operation. So, the Christian chapel, the synagogue, the Mithraeum, and many other buildings were entombed. The Romans also buttressed the walls from the outside with an earthen mound forming a glacis, sealed with a casing of mud brick to prevent erosion. As J.A. Baird writes, "the threat by the Sasanians was keenly felt by the Roman military, and what had been a walled city became a fortress—literally, in that it became a defensive place. A huge embankment was built against the interior of the city walls to hold back the Sasanian incursion, deliberately and with great effort involving the methodical destruction of buildings and the moving of many metric tonnes of earth, ruining a huge swathe of the site".
There is no written record of the Sasanian siege of Dura. However, archaeologists have uncovered striking evidence of the siege and how it progressed.
The buttressing of the walls would be tested in 256 AD when Shapur I besieged the city. True to the fears of the defenders, Shapur set his engineers to undermine what archaeologists called Tower 19, two towers north of the Palmyrene Gate. When the Romans became aware of the threat, they dug a countermine with the aim of meeting the Persian effort and attacking them before they could finish their work. The Persians had already dug complex galleries along the wall by the time the Roman countermine reached them. They managed to fight off the Roman attack, and when the city defenders noticed the flight of soldiers from the countermine, it was quickly sealed. The wounded and stragglers were trapped inside, where they died. (It was the coins found with these Roman soldiers that dated the siege to AD 256.) The countermine was successful, for the Persians abandoned their operations at Tower 19.
Next, the Sassanids attacked Tower 14, the southernmost along the western wall. It overlooked a deep ravine to the south and it was from that direction that it was attacked. This time the mining operation was partially successful, in that it caused the tower and adjacent walls to subside. However, Roman countermeasure bolstered the wall and prevented it from collapsing.
This brought on a third attempt at breaching the city wall. A ramp was raised, attacking Tower 14; but, as it was being built and the garrison fought to stop the progress of the ramp, another mine was started near the ramp. Its purpose was not to cause a collapse of the wall—the buttress had been successful—but to pass under it and penetrate the city. This tunnel was built to allow the Persians four abreast to move through it. It eventually pierced the inner embankment and, when the ramp was completed, Dura's end had come. As Persian troops charged up the ramp, their counterparts in the tunnel would have invaded the city with little opposition, as nearly all the defenders would have been on the wall, attempting to repel the attack from the ramp. The city was then abandoned, its population deported.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Dura-Europos”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.