DURA-EUROPOS (Gr. Δοῦρα Εὐρώπος). - On the right bank of the Euphrates, halfway between Baghdad and Aleppo, on a rocky plateau, where the locality of aṣ-Ṣāliḥijjah stands today, there arose in the pre-Seleucid age an ancient Assyrian fortress that bore the Semitic name of D. Ca. In 280 B.C. a satrap named Nicanor, who had been a general of Alexander the Great, founded there a colony
Graeco-Macedonian, to which the name Europos was given. The city thus came to be called D. E., and to identify it better it became customary to add to its name the designation πρὸς Ἀραβίαν or also ἐν Παραποταμίᾳ.
Situated between Palmyra and Ctesiphon, between Syria and the Persian Gulf, that is, at a point through which the most important caravan routes of Mesopotamia passed, the city was not long in flourishing through commerce and in becoming very important for its strategic position. Around 120 B.C. it passed from the Seleucids to the Parthians and was transformed into a veritable commercial emporium. After two centuries of Parthian rule it was conquered by Trajan in A.D. 116. In commemoration, the Roman soldiers erected in honor of the Emperor, more than 1 km. from the city, a triumphal arch, whose dedication, written in Latin, has been recovered. Two years later Hadrian abandoned it; but in 165, following the victory of Avidius Cassius over Vologases III, won right beneath the walls of the city, D. E. was incorporated by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus into the province of Syria. From then on it was garrisoned by the Romans, who made it one of the most important fortresses of the Euphrates limes, since the site was like an advanced sentinel in the desert. In the time of Alexander Severus, however, D. was attacked by the Persians, who shortly after 256 penetrated into the city, fortified though it was, by means of three underground tunnels, in one of which skeletons of Roman and Sassanid soldiers who died fighting have been found. Having occupied the city, the Persians destroyed it, killed or scattered or enslaved the inhabitants, and shortly afterwards, once the Roman danger had been definitively removed, abandoned it. Then the sands of the desert invaded it and little by little covered it completely. In 1920, while a British colonial detachment was digging trenches amid some ruins, Captain Murphy noticed a room decorated with many frescoes. The direction of the archaeological office of 'Irāq having been immediately informed, the American Egyptologist J. Breasted was commissioned to make an inspection. He photographed the paintings and recorded the plan of the excavated building, which was the great temple of the Palmyrene deities, and traced roughly the outlines of the city and of the fortifications. Breasted reported the discoveries to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris, which decided to undertake a systematic campaign of excavations on the spot, the zone having meanwhile passed under French mandate. The excavations were carried out in 1922-23 under the direction of F. Cumont and were then resumed in 1927 by a joint mission of the American University of Yale and the French Academy until 1937.
From the excavations it has emerged that the Mesopotamian town was very soon, perhaps from the first period of the Graeco-Macedonian colony, completely surrounded by a high circuit of walls, which on some sides has a saw-toothed course. The Romans made the position stronger by means of two sloping earthworks. Enclosed within the circle of these fortifications, on one side of which - the one toward the desert - a grand gate opened, D. E. appears, from the town-planning point of view, laid out according to the Hippodamian scheme, with streets intersecting at right angles. The center was occupied by the agora and by various public buildings. The blocks, formed by the intersection of the streets, sometimes flanked by columns, were occupied by private houses, often vast and richly decorated, of Oriental type, or else by great temples, in most cases of Babylonian type, with broad courtyards and small chapels.
During the Roman occupation about a quarter of the built-up area, that of the north-western part, was transformed into a military camp: there arose some barracks, a monumental praetorium, a castrensian amphitheater, sumptuous baths and several military sanctuaries, among them a Mithraeum decorated with paintings found almost intact, which are particularly important from the thematic point of view, since there are represented the two figures, unknown to the decoration of the other military temples, of Zoroaster and of Ostanes, as well as that of Mithras on horseback as a hunter. Among the numerous temples dedicated to the deities of the four Olymposes, Babylonian, Syrian, Greek and Roman, worthy of note are that of the warrior god Aphlad; that of a perhaps local deity, Artemis Azzanathkona; that of Zeus Kyrios; that of Artemis Nanaia; and that of Bēl, Jarhibol and Aglibol, which was frescoed in the Parthian age with paintings representing scenes of sacrifices made by the faithful in the presence of the family offerant, and in the Roman period, toward the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd century, with a large scene depicting the Roman tribune Julius Terentius, who, accompanied by eight officers, a standard-bearer and the twentieth cohort of native archers, performs a rite-sacrifice both to the Palmyrene triad and to the Tychae of D. and of Palmyra.
Among so many buildings of worship there are also a Christian church and a synagogue, which are of particular importance because the first has preserved the oldest baptistery frescoes with scenes drawn from the Old and New Testaments, while the second constitutes the only example of a Jewish temple with pictorial decoration. The building in which the Christian church with its adjoining baptistery found a place does not differ in any way, as regards its plan, from the other civil constructions of D. It is a large dwelling house (18 × 20 m) built in the 1st or 2nd century, which, in order to be adapted for use in worship, subsequently underwent transformations. At the center of the building there was a large square courtyard.
A door opening on the south side led into a large rectangular hall, whose length of 12 m results from the union of two rooms, as is shown by traces still preserved of an ancient dividing wall, which was demolished when it was desired to form a single vast space. This transformation must probably have taken place in 232-33, that is, at the time of an inscription scratched with this date into the still fresh stucco of this hall. Near the back wall the remains of a broad podium have been found, on which in all likelihood the altar or the bishop's chair must have stood. In this hall one must recognize a liturgical room. From the north side of the courtyard one enters a small rectangular room, which was transformed into a baptistery with the addition of a pool, which was covered by a kind of fully decorated baldachin, supported by two pillars and two columns. The walls of this room were frescoed with scenes of the Good Shepherd, of Adam and Eve beside the tree of the earthly paradise, of the struggle of David with Goliath, of the Samaritan woman at the well, of Christ walking on the waves, of the healing of the paralytic. The other rooms on the ground floor and on the upper floor, which were reached by means of a staircase built next to the baptistery, must have served for the ecclesiastical administration of the Christian community of D. E. and as the dwelling of the bishop or of a presbyter.
The Jewish synagogue, brought back to light in the excavation campaign of 1931-32, likewise stood within a building complex partly used for administration and partly as the rabbi's dwelling. After passing through a large atrium, one entered the great hall, where the Tórāh was read. The main door opened, according to Eastern custom, onto one of the long sides directly opposite the center of worship, that is, a horseshoe-shaped niche surmounted by a shell-shaped pediment: this was the place reserved for the archisynagogus. The front of the niche contains on the left sacred emblems, the seven-branched candelabrum, a citron, a palm; in the center the chest of the lex, of which the ark is the prototype; it is shaped like a temple with a door framed by four columns, on the right the sacrifice of Abraham with Isaac stretched out on the altar, from above the divine hand protrudes, which stops Abraham as he stands ready with the knife for the sacrifice. The vast hall, rebuilt in larger form in 245, as is learned from an inscription in Aramaic painted on a roof tile of the ceiling, had — a most exceptional thing for Jewish places of worship — its walls completely covered with paintings, overlapping up to four zones. The subjects represented are drawn mainly from the Old Testament, as for example the stories of Ezekiel and Elijah, of Esther, of David, of Samuel, etc.; nor are those inspired by post-biblical tradition lacking, as is shown by the picture representing Moses dividing the waters of the spring into twelve branches, each of which runs toward the twelve tents of the twelve tribes. In
In these frescoes Rostovtzeff recognized the different hand of local artists, followers of different pictorial schools, in whose style, however, Semitic and Iranian elements are evident.
Together with the buildings, the reliefs and the paintings, D. E. brought to light, perfectly preserved, many objects of material in itself perishable, such as for example those of wood and leather, textiles, parchments and papyri. Among these was found the oldest fragment of the Diatessaron of Tatian, in the original which was composed in Greek, not in Syriac, in characters dated to 220 A.D. (M.-J. Lagrange, Un fragment grec du Diatessaron de Tatien, in Revue biblique, 44 [1935], pp. 321-27). - See plate CXXVI.
Bibliography2 works
Cumont Mission: F. Cumont, Le sacrifice du tribunal romain. Terentius et les palmyreniens à Doura, in Monuments Piot, 26 (1923), pp. 1-46; id., Fouilles de Doura Europos, 1922-1923, Paris 1926.
Mission of Yale University and of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris: P. V. C. Baur-M. I. Rostovtzeff, The excavations at Dura-Europos. Preliminary report of first season of work, spring 1928, New Haven 1929; P. V. C. Baur-M. I. Rostovtzeff, Preliminary report of second season, ibid. 1931; P. V. C. Baur-M. I. Rostovtzeff-A. R. Bellinger, Preliminary report of third season, ibid. 1932; P. V. C. Baur-M. I. Rostovtzeff-A. R. Bellinger, Preliminary report of fourth season, ibid. 1933; M. I. Rostovtzeff, Preliminary report of fifth season, ibid. 1934; M. I. Rostovtzeff-A. R. Bellinger-C. Hopkins-C. B. Welles, Preliminary report of sixth season, ibid. 1936; M. I. Rostovtzeff-F. E. Brown-C. B. Welles, Preliminary report of seventh and eight seasons, ibid. 1939.
For a work of a general character cf. M. I. Rostovtzeff, D. E. and its art, Oxford 1938 (there ample bibl.).
Particular questions. Synagogue: M. Aubert, Le peintre de la synagogue de Doura, in Gazette des beaux arts, July-Aug. 1938, pp. 1-24; Du Mesnil du Buisson, Les peintures de la synagogue de Doura Europos, Rome 1939; H. F. Pearson, Guide de la synagogue de Doura-Europos, Beirut 1940; A. Grabar, Le thème religieux des fresques de la synagogue de Doura (245-256 après J.-C.), in Revue de l'histoire des religions*, 123 (1941), pp. 143-92; 124 (1941), pp. 1-35.
On the domus Ecclesiae and the baptistery see: C. Hopkins, The christian chapel at Dura-Europos, in Atti del III Congresso internazionale di Archeologia cristiana, Rome 1934, pp. 483-92; A. Von Gerkan, Die frühchristliche Kirchenanlage von D., in Römische Quartalschrift, 42 (1934), pp. 219-32; G. P. Kirsch, La «domus ecclesiae» cristiana del III sec. a Dura-Europos in Mesopotamia, in Studi dedicati alla memoria di Paolo Ubaldi, Milan 1937, pp. 73-82; W. Sexton, L'église et le baptistère de Doura Europos, in Annales de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes de Gand, 1 (1937), pp. 161-77; H. Grégoire, Encore les baptistères de Cuicil et de Doura, in Byzantine, 14 (1939), p. 317; A. Grabar, Les fresques de Doura-Europos, in Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscript. et Belles lettres, 1941, pp. 77-90; C. Hopkins, The architectural background in the paintings at Dura-Europos, in American Journal of Archaeology, 45 (1941), pp. 18-29.