Monuments and Memory at Dura-Europos

معالم وذكرى في دورا-أوروبوس

Ted Kaizer

This paper will focus on the creation of various kinds of memories at Dura-Europos through monuments that are mainly preserved from the Parthian and Roman periods. Together, they have built up modern notions of culture and society at the Euphrates small town. But different monuments create different memories for different groups of people at different moments in time. Thus, memory creations regarding a Macedonian foundation (through the relief of the Gad of Dura, crowned by Seleucus Nicator), Trajan’s conquest (through the arch located outside the city walls), religious benefactions (through dedicatory inscriptions and murals in the temples), the Palmyrene homeland (through reliefs depicting Palmyrene deities), or the Jewish past (through the painted walls of the synagogue), will have acted as catalysts in different degrees. This paper will therefore ask questions as to the way in which these and other instances served to exhibit perceptions of the town’s historicity, in recognition of the fact that not all memory creations will have had similar impact on Durene society.

Staying at Home or Taking Away: Palmyrene Priestly Iconography as Expressions of Local Traditions

البقاء في المنزل أو الابتعاد عنه: الأيقنة الكَهَنوتيّة البالميريّة باعتبارها تعبيرًا عن العادات المحلّيّة

Rubina Raja

Within the corpus of the Palmyrene sculpture, consisting of about 4,000 objects, more than 350 objects depicting priests or their attributes are known. Only four objects depicting Palmyrene priests, however, have been found outside of Palmyra, all of them in Dura-Europos. Three of these objects are today in the collection at Yale University Art Gallery. This paper will focus on the overall consistent iconography used to represent Palmyrene priesthood across almost 300 years, but will also delve into the changes encountered over time, changes which underline the high awareness of trends and fashions and shifting attitude in Palmyrene elite society. The few objects depicting Palmyrene priests found in Dura-Europos enter the discussion as such outliers, symbolising that despite a strict focus on local religious practices in Palmyra, the depiction of priesthood could in some cases travel – at least as far as Dura-Europos – most likely since priesthood was as much a status symbol underlining high social standing as it was an actual office.

Local, Regional, and Long-Distance Economic Activity in Dura

النشاط الاقتصاديّ المحلّيّ والإقليميّ والنشاط الاقتصاديّ عن بُعد في دورا

Sitta von Reden

The role of Dura-Europos in long-distance trade has been debated since Michael Rostovtzeff’s influential description of Dura as a “caravan city” located at a strategic position on the Euphrates. More recent research has questioned this role by pointing to the almost complete absence of explicit evidence for the city’s involvement in long-distance trade. In 2016, Kai Ruffing established a middle ground by arguing that, in the third century at least, some Roman landowners of Dura with considerable spending power were involved in regional exchange that might have been interconnected with long-distance networks extending to the Gulf, and beyond.
This paper will aim to take the discussion further by analysing the evidence of the economic connectivity of Dura into the concepts of globalisation theory. This might help to break down unhelpful distinctions between local, regional, and long-distance economic activity in a cosmopolitan city like Dura-Europos.

The Problem of the “Semitic” World at Dura and in Ancient History

مشكلة العالم “الساميّ” في دورا وفي التاريخ القديم

Kevin van Bladel

A pervasive theme throughout the modern historiography of Dura is a putative enduring contrast between colonizers and natives, conceived as Greek and Semitic respectively. One finds, for example, historians writing about the Semitic speech of Dura, the Semitic gods of the place, the Semitic alphabets in use there. Although more recent scholars rightly distance themselves from the explicitly racial approaches of research on Dura of one half-century ago, some of the terms in use have endured sometimes without reflection. Without tedious scolding about Orientalism, this paper will investigate and historicize the term Semitic and other key-terms by which modern scholars have sought to answer the question, “Who were the people of Dura?” (and other inhabitants of Syria under Roman rule).

 

Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art A Hundred Years Later

دورا ومشكلة الفنّ البارثيّ بعد مئة عام

Henry Colburn

In 1935 Mikhail Rostovtzeff published his now classic essay ‘Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art.’ Written in the midst of the excavations of Dura-Europos, the essay was an attempt to define the characteristics of Parthian art. Although the details of his argument have not held up to critical scrutiny, his overall approach remains quite valuable. In particular, there are three elements of Rostovtzeff’s essay that are still especially relevant today. The first is his view that Parthian art was a cogent phenomenon, not the naïve eclecticism of imperial parvenus. The second is that the style of Parthian art was a deliberate choice, rather than a result of the gradual degradation of a Greek aesthetic. In other words, Parthian art looked the way it did for a reason. Third, Rostovtzeff used what might be termed a ‘black hole model’ of Parthian art. He believed that even in the absence of an excavated Arsacid imperial center, Parthian art could nevertheless be studied through its effect on adjacent artistic traditions, such as at Dura-Europos. Based on these three factors, Rostovtzeff’s essay remains the best lens through which to view the problem of Parthian art.

Rostovtzeff’s Dura

دورا في عين روستوفتسيف

Jaś Elsner

This paper explores Mikhail Rostovtzeff’s engagement with Dura Europos in the context of his larger range of intellectual projects both in America and beforehand. It examines what the special case of Dura brought to the bigger picture of Rostovteff’s scholarly programme and what he personally brought to the interpretative nexus that controlled the Preliminary Reports as well as the earliest of the Final Reports. That contribution moulded the interpretation of the site for ever, and not necessarily for the best, since it was tendentious in the extreme.

The Ruins that Remain: Remembering Dura-Europos in Salihiyeh

الآثار المتبقّية: استرجاع دورا-أوروبوس في الصالحيّة

Jennifer A. Baird

The legacy of Dura-Europos is well-known through hundreds of scholarly publications and continuing work in the archives of the excavations held by Yale University Art Gallery. The absences in the traditional accounts of Dura’s excavation history are also increasing evident, including the role of local archaeological labour, and the relationship between local Syrian communities such as that of Salihiyeh—the settlement on the Euphrates immediately beneath the plateau on which Dura sits—and the archaeological site. This talk will present preliminary results of oral history research conducted in partnership with Syrian colleagues which attempts to address such archival absences and speaks to alternative legacies. That research examines the relationship between local people of Salihiyeh and al Athar (‘the ruins’), including local responses to the catastrophic destruction in the years since the Syrian conflict began, and asks whether digital platforms might provide opportunities for 21 st century Syrian voices to become part of Dura’s continuing history.

The Bloody Genesis of Dura-Europos Studies: Colonialism and Violence at Salihiyeh 1916-1920

النشأة الدمويّة لِداراسات دورا-أوروبوس: الاستعمار والعنف في الصالحيّة 1916-1920

Simon T. James

Identification in 1920-22 of Salihiyeh as ancient Dura-Europos was an outcome of Anglo-French carve-up of the Middle East following collapse of Ottoman power in 1918. The first archaeological discovery in March 1920 was accidentally made by British Indian troops (sepoys) from Iraq, who had seized temporary control of the region during negotiation of the border line between future Iraq and Syria. Archaeologist James Breasted worked at Salihiyeh for a single day, when the sepoys revealed another painting, attesting the name ‘Doura’. This, 4 May 1920, is the symbolic birthday of Dura-Europos Studies. Breasted’s accounts record recent British fighting with Arab insurgents, but suggest uneasy peace during his visit. However, British military archives reveal a shockingly different picture. Transformation of Salihiyeh into a globally important archaeological heritage site began amidst prolonged and bloody fighting, involving pitched battles, shelling of villages, bombing of tented camps, and probably hundreds of deaths. The origins of Dura studies lay in the midst of a small colonial war, in which the people of the Middle Euphrates fought for an independence doomed, for decades to come, by the British and, soon after, the French. Archaeology at Dura was, then, from the outset morally compromised by entanglement with violent Western colonial domination of the region, and direct dependence on Imperial military power, also characterising Cumont’s work in 1922-3, and, slightly less blatantly, the Yale expedition. This stark reality has to be acknowledged. Yet there is more to the dark tale of violence at early twentieth-century Salihiyeh than a simplistic good guys vs bad guys narrative of Arab nationalist freedom fighters heroically resisting evil empires. Other evidence indicates that the people of the Salihiyeh region had been actively involved in far greater, almost unimaginably horrific acts just a few years before, in 1916. Modern scholarship, with Western roots but today increasingly global, reveals a recent history of the region in which few actors had clean hands…

New trends in Mithraic studies: Experiencing the Dura-mithraeum

اتّجاهات جديدة في الدراسات الميثرائيّة: خوض تجربة دورا-ميثرايوم

Lucinda Dirven

Since its discovery in 1934, the Dura-mithraeum has played a central role in studying all aspects of the cult of Mithras in the Roman Empire. Recently, a paradigm shift occurred in this field of study. An important aspect of this new approach is the trend to interpret material remains as evidence of individual religious experience and practices, instead of illustrations to religious ideas and theological concepts. The present paper sets out to interpret the rich archaeological record of the Dura-mithraeum in this light. Once more, this unique monument makes an important contribution to the discussion.

Carving, Writing, Touching, Gouging: Tactility and Interactivity in the Dura-Europos Synagogue

النحت والكتابة واللمس والتجويف: حاسّة اللمس والتفاعليّة في كنيس دورا-أوروبوس

Karen Stern Gabbay

Paintings from the Dura-Europos synagogue have dominated scholarship of the building since its discovery. Reasons for this are abundant and include the murals’ striking depictions and interpretations of biblical stories, which retain rare information about Jewish culture and ritual life in third-century Syria. Yet disproportionate attention to these paintings, in aggregate, has prioritized the ocular dimensions of synagogue life, re-inscribing visuality as the primary medium for historical engagement with the space. But seeing was not the only means of experiencing devotional landscapes in Dura. Indeed, there were other sensory means by which visitors to the Dura synagogue meaningfully engaged with their elaborately decorated surroundings to perceive, encounter, and interact with the holy and with each other. This paper re-imagines this reality, by considering the significance of additional types of sensory experiences historically conducted in the Dura synagogue, as mediated through properties of touch. It argues that the reconsideration of archaeological evidence for ancient peoples’ interfaces with the walls and architecture of the synagogue, as documented by unofficial inscriptions, drawings, and modifications to the paintings, allows us to theorize, in new ways, about ancient relationships—not only between visitors and the paintings they regarded— but also between visitors and the tactile dimensions of their built environment.

Debating the Domestic at Dura-Europos: The Christian Building in Context

مناقشة المسائل المحلّيّة في دورا-أوروبوس: العمارة المسيحيّة في السياق

Camille Angelo and Joshua Silver

At the ancient city of Dura-Europos, private homes were architecturally adapted across the late second and third century by different religious groups to serve the needs of their communities. Although the Christian Building, Synagogue, and Mithraeum all began as domestic structures and share a similar architectural development, the former’s domestic origins have received unique attention and ongoing emphasis. This has been cultivated and maintained across decades of scholarship, both through the use of terminology that presupposes a quasi-domestic character for the building, and in the efforts to situate the structure within a model of Christian architecture that endorses a direct progression from house-church to basilica. Through a critical reexamination of the archeological and material evidence for the architectural adaptations made to the building by a Christian community in the third century, this paper argues that the emphasis does not align with material reality, but is a product of modern assumptions about ancient space. A quantitative analysis of the architectural adaptations indicates that, following its renovation to accommodate Christian community use, the building did not bear a material relationship with the specific domestic structure that had preceded it. Comparison of three-dimensional reconstructions and daylight simulations of the structure before and after renovation reveal that the architectural adaptations reconfigured the space such that visitors could use and experience it in ways that were categorically different from its domestic antecedent and, importantly, effectively divested it of the key architectural features that constituted Durene household space. Disentangling the material reality of the structure from modern imaginings, the Christian Building emerges a product of its unique built environment. The long-held view of the structure as occupying a pivotal place in a seamless trajectory of Christian architectural development is thereby shown to be untenable, while the contextual approach emerges as fruitful not only for fresh consideration of early Christianity and ritual space, but for understanding religion and the built environment at Dura-Europos more broadly.

Military Communities from East to West: Understanding Local Contexts and Responses at Dura-Europos and Vindolanda

المجتمعات العسكريّة من الشرق إلى الغرب: فهم السياقات المحلّيّة والتجاوبات في دورا-أوروبوس وفيندولاندا

Elizabeth M. Greene and Craig Harvey

Through decades of exploration, both Dura-Europos and Vindolanda have offered unique and extraordinary opportunities to understand better the Roman army and the lives of soldiers serving Rome. From the Vindolanda tablets to the Dura papyri, together with dozens of exceptional artifacts practically unknown elsewhere, the sites have pushed scholars to reconsider how the Roman military operated in both war and peace. At the same time, the sites are extraordinarily different, which allows a robust comparison and the possibility to see a range of responses to community organization in the military environment. While Vindolanda was a purpose-built fort and extramural settlement on the northwest frontier in Britannia, Dura was a multicultural city on Rome’s eastern frontier with an urban military base, which integrated the army into the fabric of the city in a way that was mostly unseen in the western empire. Nevertheless, the two sites speak to the same questions concerning the composition of the extended military community and how that population supported the Roman army and its soldiers. This paper looks at the comparable archaeological evidence from both sites to understand how their unique situations directed the organization and composition of the communities that surrounded the Roman army. The differences between the two sites highlight the necessity to incorporate local contexts and responses into our understanding of life in the empire, while the similarities may reveal uniformity in military organization and social reality.

Amr Al Azm

Amr Al Azm is Professor of Middle East History and Anthropology at Shawnee State University and currently teaches in the Gulf Studies Program at Qatar University. He was educated in the UK, reading Archaeology of Western Asiatics at the University of London, Institute of Archaeology. His doctoral degree was awarded in 1991. Dr. Al Azm’s experience is varied. He has excavated a number of sites, including Tell Hamoukar in Syria and one possibly associated with Ghengis Khan’s final resting place in Mongolia. He also served as the Director of Scientific and Conservation Laboratories at the General Department of Antiquities and Museums (1999-2004) and Head of the Centre for Archaeological Research at the University of Damascus (2003-2006). He has taught at the University of Damascus (1999-2006) and served as Dean of University Requirements at the Arab European University (2005-2006). Additionally, he is a keen observer of Middle East events, particularly in Syria and its neighbors.

Camille Angelo

Camille Angelo is currently a doctoral candidate at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies. Her work examines the body and sexuality in late antique Christian cultural discourse using an interdisciplinary approach drawn from art history, archaeology, social history, and gender and sexuality studies. Currently, she is analyzing the archaeological remains of several early Christian sites in the eastern Mediterranean to elucidate patterns of ritual movement and embodied worship in late antiquity. Camille is a field archaeologist and has excavated in the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus.  In 2018, she launched the Late Antiquity Modeling Project (LAMP), a digital humanities collective dedicated to creating three-dimensional reconstructions of late antique ritual spaces. The same year, Camille received a grant from the DigitalGlobe Foundation and was appointed to the Society of Biblical Literature’s Graduate Student Advisory Board. She is also a graduate associate at the Center for the Study of Material and Visual Cultures of Religion at Yale University.

Jennifer A. Baird

Jen Baird is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her research has focussed on the site of Dura-Europos, including extensive work in Yale University Art Gallery’s Dura archive and archaeological fieldwork at Dura before the start of the Syrian conflict. That work centered initially on the many preserved houses of the site, the topic of her PhD and first monograph (The Inner Lives of Ancient Houses, Oxford University Press, 2014). She has also written on a range of topics related to Dura, including archaeological photography and ancient graffiti. Among her recent publications are Dura-Europos (Bloomsbury, 2018), and a co-edited special issue of The Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies entitled Remembering Roman Syria.

Henry Colburn

Henry Colburn is adjunct faculty at New York University and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Dr. Colburn earned his Ph.D. in classical art and archaeology from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the art and archaeology of ancient Iran and on the regions of the Near East, Eastern Mediterranean, and Central Asia that interacted with Iran prior to the advent of Islam. His first book on this subject, Archaeology of Empire in Achaemenid Egypt, was published in 2019. He has held fellowships at the Bard Graduate Center, Harvard Art Museums, the Getty Research Institute, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and taught at the University of California, Irvine; the University of Southern California, and the University of California, Riverside. He is also a research associate of the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan by virtue of his ongoing work on the seals of the Persepolis Fortification Archive. His current project is to create a new edition of Mikhail Rostovtzeff’s 1935 essay Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art.

Lucinda Dirven

Lucinda Dirven is a Professor of Antique Religions at Radboud University. She earned degrees in Art History and Theology from Leiden University in 1990 and 1992, respectively. In 1999, she obtained her Ph.D. at Leiden University with her dissertation ‘The Palmyrenes of Dura-Europos. A Case Study of Religious Interaction in Roman Syria’. She has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam and as an assistant professor in the history departments at both Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam. She has published on a variety of topics related to antique religions, especially during the Hellenistic and Roman periods in Syria and Iraq (Palmyra, Dura-Europos, Hatra) and the Roman West (especially the cult of Mithras). Her focus is on transitory periods, such as the transition from the traditional Mesopotamian and Egyptian to the ‘global’ Graeco-Roman world and the transition from a religious pluralistic world to a Christian world.

Jaś Elsner

Jaś Elsner works on art and its many receptions (including ritual, religion, pilgrimage, viewing, description, collecting) in antiquity and Byzantium including into modernity. He has strong interests in comparativism, global art history and the critical historiography of the discipline. He is Professor of Late Antique Art at Oxford University and Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Art at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was Senior Research Keeper in the Empires of Faith Project on art and religion in late antiquity, at the British Museum from 2013 to 2018. He has been a Visiting Professor in Art History at Chicago since 2003, and since 2014 also at the Divinity School. Since 2009 he has been an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. He is currently a member of the overseeing committee of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. He was trained in Cambridge, Harvard, and London, before working at the Courtauld Institute and then Oxford.

Elizabeth M. Greene

Beth Greene is currently Canada Research Chair in Roman Archaeology and Associate Professor of Classics at University of Western Ontario. Her research focus is on Roman Provincial material culture and history, with a specialty in the Roman military and the role of women, children and families in frontier military communities. She excavates at the Roman fort at Vindolanda with the The Vindolanda Trust (since 2002) and has worked in Italy on Roman and Etruscan sites and elsewhere in Britain on Hadrian’s Wall. She is co-director of Western’s Vindolanda Field school, as well as the principal investigator for the Vindolanda Archaeological Leather Project.

Craig Harvey

Craig Harvey is a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Western Ontario. He received his Ph.D. from the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan in 2020. He is a Roman provincial archaeologist focusing on the interplay between imperialism and the environment, particularly as it is manifested though building materials and techniques. His research also extends to the formation of identity along the Roman frontiers, with particular interest in the economic and cultural relations between the Roman military and indigenous communities. Craig’s previous research and archaeological field work has largely centred on the Roman East and especially in Jordan, where he is associate director of the Humayma Excavation Project.

Simon T. James

Simon James is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester. He read archaeology at the London Institute of Archaeology, where he also took his Ph.D., by which time the Institute had become part of University College, London. He moved to the British Museum, first as an archaeological illustrator and then as a museum educator, responsible for programs relating to the later prehistoric and Roman collections. After a decade at the British Museum, he decided to seek a career in research and teaching. Having held a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship at the University of Durham, he joined the University of Leicester School of Archaeology & Ancient History in January 2000. He was promoted Senior Lecturer in 2002, Reader in 2005 and Professor in 2012. He is currently Director of the Ancient Akrotiri Project, Cyprus, while also continuing research on the Hellenistic-, Parthian- and Roman-era Syrian city of Dura-Europos, its Roman garrison, and its exploration since 1920.

Ted Kaizer

Ted Kaiser

Ted Kaizer is a Professor of Roman Culture and History in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. He was educated at Leiden (MA, 1995) and Brasenose College, Oxford (DPhil, 2000), and held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (2002-2005) before coming to Durham. His main research interest is the social and religious history of the Near East in the Late Hellenistic and Roman period. He is the author of The Religious Life of Palmyra (Stuttgart, 2002) and has written articles on various aspects of religion and history of the Classical Levant. He is the editor of Blackwell’s forthcoming Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East. His present research project concerns a study of the social patterns of worship at Dura-Europos, and in this context he has also produced the historiographical introductions to two volumes in the Bibliotheca Cumontiana for the Academia Belgica in Rome.

Rubina Raja

rubina-Raja

Rubina Raja is professor of classical archaeology at Aarhus University, and director of the Danish National Research Foundation’s centre of excellence Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet). She heads several further collective research projects: Archive Archaeology, the Palmyra Portrait Project, as well as Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability in Antiquity. Recently, her project Ceramics in Context, came to an end after four years of intense research and publications. She was co-PI of the ERC Advanced Grant project ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ (2012–2017). Raja is an experienced fieldwork archaeologist and co-directs fieldwork projects in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, most prominently the Danish-Italian Caesar’s Forum Project, as well as the Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project. Raja’s research focuses on urban and landscape archaeology, on sites and their multiple networks from the Hellenistic to the medieval periods as attested through empirical evidence and sources. She is also an expert on iconography and portrait traditions in the Roman world as well as religious life in Antiquity – all topics on which she has published extensively. While being a classical archaeologist, she also works in the fields intersecting traditional archaeology and natural sciences, bringing high-definition studies of the past to the forefront – an approach, which has most prominently been pioneered through the work done within the framework of UrbNet.

Karen B. Stern Gabbay

Karen Stern Gabbay is a Professor of History at Brooklyn College. She conducts research across disciplines of archaeology, history, and religion, and teaches courses on Mediterranean cultural history and material culture of Jews in the Greek and Roman worlds. She has conducted field research throughout the Mediterranean and has excavated in Petra (Jordan), Sepphoris (Israel), and ancient Pylos and the Athenian Agora (Greece). Having taught at Dartmouth College, USC and Brown University, she served as a research fellow of the NEH, Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (Jerusalem), Getty Villa and Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. She has been invited to speak at universities including Tel Aviv University, Boston University, Oxford University, Columbia University and Bard Graduate Center. Her recent book with Princeton University Press considers ancient graffiti and daily lives of Jewish populations in late antiquity; the Daily Beast, Atlas Obscura, NPR, Guardian, Ha’aretz, and Chinese CCTV have featured her work.

Kevin van Bladel

Kevin Van Bladel

Kevin T. van Bladel is a Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University. A philologist and historian, he studies texts and societies of the Near East of the period 200-1200 with special attention to the history of scholarship, the transition from Persian to Arab rule, and historical sociolinguistics. His research focuses on the interaction of different language communities and the translation of learned traditions between Arabic, Iranian languages, Aramaic, Greek, and Sanskrit. He is the author of The Arabic Hermes, which investigates the figure Hermes Trismegistus in its Arabic reception and transformation, showing how the ancient Egyptian sage of legend came to be considered a prophet by medieval Muslims, and From Sasanian Mandaeans to Sabians of the Marshes, which sheds light on the early history of the Mandaean religion and its origins in Sasanian Iraq. Among his published articles there are studies of Qur’anic cosmology, the history of the eighth-century Arabic translations of Sanskrit texts commissioned by Bactrian patrons, Zoroastrian Middle Persian lore in Arabic reception, language shift and conversion in the wake of the Islamic conquests, and other subjects.