ABSTRACT
Dura Europos, a military and commercial center in east-central Mesopotamia, that thrived and grew throughout successive occupations by Seleucid, Parthian, and Roman invaders, was buried from 256 when it was destroyed by the Persians, until 1920 when it was discovered by British troops fighting a guerrilla war with Bedouin tribes in the desert north-west of Baghdad. When a team of French and American archeologists excavated this important site in the 1930s they found an unparalleled colonial city (the ‘Pompeii of the Syrian Desert’ according to Michael Rostovtzeff) within whose walls were a Christian house church, a Jewish synagogue, a Mithraeum, pagan temples dedicated to Zeus, Artemis, and Adonis, and such local Semitic deities as Bel and Atargatis; as well as baths, a palace for the local governor, caravansary, and forum. The religious buildings, including the Christian church and Jewish synagogue, the two structures of most relevance to this discussion, were richly decorated with colorful frescoes. Not only is Dura’s synagogue (Figure 10.1) the unique example of such a building decorated with narrative (and figurative) paintings, but this excavation presents the earliest, and onlyknown, direct chronological and geographical juxtaposition of Jewish and Christian painting from late antiquity.
