Session 3: Sat. April 2, 9:15-11:30 am EST

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.

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…

نهب دورا-أوروبوس: داعش والتجارة غير المشروعة في القطع الأثريّة

Amr Al Azm

Syria’s cultural heritage has been an early casualty of this conflict through the systematic looting and deliberate destruction of many of its archaeological sites and monuments. So, when ISIS began to occupy large swathes of territory in Syria in the latter half of 2013 and early 2014, it came upon an already-thriving trade in looted antiquities.

Recognizing that as a potential source of income, ISIS institutionalized and intensified this process of looting in areas under its control at sites like Dura-Europos, and Mari. This coincided with an exponential increase in popularity of social media platforms like Facebook in the region which became one of the main routes to sell and traffic looted antiquities.

Then 2015 heralded a darker and more sinister manifestation of ISIS’s control and exploitation of cultural heritage, which can only be described as cultural atrocities. This included the destruction of numerous religious sites and monuments most famously, temple of Bel at Palmyra. This paper aims to trace the evolution of the systematic looting and destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage by ISIS and other groups through the site of Dura-Europos and the role of social media like Facebook in facilitating and amplifying this phenomenon.

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.