Dura-Europos

The city was founded around 300 BC under Seleucus I Nicator as a fortress where the Euphrates route met the road between Antioch and Seleucia on the Tigris. Greeks called it Europos after Seleucus's Macedonian birthplace, while “Dura” means “fortress” in Aramaic; the combined form “Dura-Europos” is modern, coined by Franz Cumont in 1922. A cuneiform tablet naming a place Da-wa-ra may point to an earlier settlement, though no buildings from that time are known. In the 2nd century BC the city was rebuilt on a Hippodamian grid.

The Parthians took Dura around 113 BC (German Wikipedia: c. 114 BC), and it became a regional administrative centre with a mixed population. After a brief occupation under Trajan, the Romans captured it decisively in 165 AD (Hopkins's timeline: 164) and made it their easternmost stronghold, with a military camp. Before the Sasanian attack the defenders filled the buildings along the western wall with earth. In 256–257 Shapur I took the city and deported its population; according to German Wikipedia it was probably finally abandoned in 273.[1][2][4]

The city area is given as 45 hectares for the flat part (English Wikipedia), about 50 hectares (Arabic Wikipedia) and about 75 hectares (UNESCO); German Wikipedia states that roughly 40 per cent has been excavated. The wall with the Palmyrene Gate survives in elevation except for parts of the north and south ramparts. Buildings include numerous temples – among them those of Artemis, Bel, Atargatis, Zeus Theos and the Gadde – a Mithraeum, the Palace of the Strategos, the Roman principia, baths, shops and a necropolis with tomb towers.

The embankment along the western wall preserved in particular the synagogue, with its large cycle of figurative wall paintings (last phase dated 244), and the house church, considered the earliest known Christian church building. The synagogue is covered in a separate record.[1][2][3][4]

Inscriptions and papyri in Greek, Latin, Palmyrene, Hebrew, Hatran, Safaitic, Middle Persian and Parthian attest a multilingual society, and the archive of the Cohors XX Palmyrenorum documents the Roman army on the eastern frontier. The traces of the siege – mines, countermines and finds such as painted shields and complete sets of horse armour – are a unique record of ancient warfare. Excavation history: wall paintings uncovered by British troops in 1920, campaigns under Cumont, Yale and the Académie des inscriptions in 1928–1937, and from 1986 a Franco-Syrian mission under Pierre Leriche (Arabic Wikipedia: 1980), ended in 2011.

According to English Wikipedia, Dura-Europos was placed on the UNESCO Tentative List in 1999 and included again in 2011 together with Mari.[1][2][3][4][5]

According to German Wikipedia, satellite images of 4 August 2011 and 2 April 2014 document systematic looting; by November 2013 the city area resembled a landscape of craters, and the site museum was reported by an ICOM task force as “completely looted”. English Wikipedia states that satellite imagery in 2015 showed more than 70 per cent of the site destroyed by looters, chiefly by the Islamic State.[1][2]