Dura-Europos

The Dura-Europos, located near the village of Salhiyé, in today’s Syria is a Hellenistic , Parthian and Roman border city that was founded in 303 BC by Alexander the Great’s successors, known as the Seleucids. It’s really significant for archeological reasons as it was abandoned after it’s conquest in 256–57 AD. It was never rebuilt again and there was nothing built over it. Its ruins were buried by desert sands and was later discovered in 1920 by British soldiers digging a trench. The book Dura-Europos: Crossroads of Antiquity was edited by Lisa R Brody and Gail L. Hoffman. In this book, there are 18 scholarly essays written by a wide range of specialists (archeologists, art historians, linguists, historians, and theologians) and spans the Hellenistic to the Islamic period. The Dura-Europos was studied by a group of archeologists that are; James Henry Breasted, Franz Cumont, Micheal Rostovtzeff, and Pierre Leriche. The Dura-Europos church is the earliest identified christian house church and one of the earliest surviving Christian churches. There was a Jewish synagogue in Dura-Europos that was best preserved from many ancient synagogues of that era that have been uncovered by archeologists. 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), Palmyrene, Hebrew, Hatrian, Safaitic, and Pahlavi. The excavations revealed temples to Greek, Roman and Palmyrene gods. There was a Mithraeum, as one would expect in a Roman military city.