Even if the Syrian civil war seems to have reached a truce, the debate on the damages suffered in the war by Syrian cultural heritage has continued and forced first scholars, then the general public to acknowledge and mourn the loss of a relevant and irreplaceable portion of human cultural heritage. Now that the images of Palmyra's destroyed temples after much dismay and indignation have been forgotten, only scholars and experts of the Near Eastern archaeological sites and history remain to keep alive the memory of what people have lost and, in many cases, did not even know they owned.
Among Syrian sites, the caravan city of Palmyra has enjoyed most attention due to its role in long-distance trade, its spectacular ruins and impressive destructions. Other less imposing, but no less important, sites for the study of the ancient world, sites whose devastation was conducted in more subtle, concealed but systematic ways, were overshadowed by the ‘Venice of the Sands’. This volume is dedicated to one of them: Dura Europos, the ‘Pompeii of the East’, a less picturesque place but of incalculable value for the study of the ancient world due to the quality, quantity and variety of the findings the excavators brought to light from the site.
The history of the town and its exceptional preservation characterise it as a unicum in the history of the ancient Near East. Dura, in fact, is the only site that experienced in its history a Greek/Seleucid, Parthian and Roman occupation providing at the same time detailed information and data for each of its three periods of life. Founded by king Seleucus in the late fourth century bce as a small military post on the western bank of the Euphrates, Dura underwent Parthian domination like the whole of Mesopotamia in the second half of the second century bce to be included among the Roman newly conquered territories after Verus’ Parthian war (161–166 ce). This later and highly debated period constitutes the primary subject of J.'s imposing volume. According to the communis opinio, between the end of the second century and the first quarter of the third century ce, a few decades before the Sassanid conquest and its final abandonment, the Roman leadership decided to exploit Dura's strategic position for military purposes and substantially increased the presence of military personnel at the site. The northern part of the city was chosen as the military quarter, where most of the army installations and service buildings were concentrated. New facilities for the garrison profoundly transformed this part of the settlement while pre-existing structures were modified according to their new functions. Parallel to these transformations, the original Dura's civic component left fewer traces of its existence through time, apparently phagocytised by the military base.
J. takes readers by the hand, proposing to lead them through a virtual tour of the Dura military quarters. All the data collected through decades of excavations and research are systematically gathered, presented and discussed, in the course of an incredibly detailed itinerary through Dura's northern portion. Thanks to a magnificent set of maps and building plans enriched by photos taken during the various periods of excavation, readers are invited to follow J. step by step while he presents and discusses every building, every structure, sometimes room by room, corridor by corridor. The experience is suggestive and rich in interesting elements of reflection even for scholars not familiar with archaeological investigations, thanks to J.'s ability to clarify his research methods, results and interpretations.
J.'s itinerary unfolds itself through space and time, or better through the transformations and the changes the urban space underwent through time. The data the excavations have provided are used to reconstruct the different phases of the structures, thus making the chronological evolution of the city's facies clearly readable. Buildings expand, shrink and change through their various stages of existence, rooms’ aspects and functions change, streets are modified to connect better with the new facilities in front of the readers’ eyes, thanks to the competent and continuous reference to the rich iconographical apparatus. J. focuses on the period immediately after the Roman conquest to gather new elements to shed light on the passage from the Parthian Greek city to the Roman military base.
Once the itinerary through space and time is over, and J. has explained how the data provided by the excavation of the single structures have been obtained, these same results are gathered together to draw general conclusions able to change established historical convictions on Dura's past.
The Roman military presence was spatially and presumably demographically more relevant than previously thought. The military sector extended itself widely outside the already individuated walled area in the north-western portion of the city. A distinct military zone existed between the walled sector to the north-eastern edge of the Durene plateau along the Wadi Ascent Road, including dwelling blocks and part of the Hellenistic citadel, which were converted to host the soldiers of the garrison. A military population including soldiers’ families and servants of about 3,000/6,000 people occupied roughly 30% of the town's area.
This community, according to J., was in place earlier than previously thought. According to his interpretation of the archaeological data, a relevant military presence shaping the urbanistic aspect of the city is already attested at least in the 180s of the second century. This leads to dismissing the hypothesis of a sudden militarisation of Dura starting from 211 ce. The supposed later primary phase of militarisation was only an improvement of a situation already consolidated, which added new structures and facilities like the principia.
J.'s new reconstructions are based on the investigation and the new interpretation of the data collected during the bath E3 excavation. The bath was built for the first time and then completely rebuilt on a new alignment before the principia and the supposed hard militarisation phase (211 ce). Also, the F3 bath underwent at least two building phases before going out of use in 216 ce. According to J., the intensive building works on both baths datable before the supposed military base indicate a relevant military presence that implied a takeover of a large portion of the city by the garrison troops long before the Caracalla period.
From a strictly historical point of view, such conclusions imply as a consequence the demonstration that the odd theories recently formulated suggesting a Palmyrene unofficial control of the city under the formal Arsacid rule to fill some sort of local ‘political vacuum’ just after the Parthian wars, were of course totally unfounded.
Finally, J.'s investigation on the ground reveals an interesting aspect of the relationship between soldiers and civilians. Many base structures, like the border wall, separating it from the city, were built respecting previous civil property lines and preserving earlier sanctuaries. In some cases, as in that of the Temple of Azzanathkona, when sanctuaries had become part of the military quarter, surrounded by base buildings, urbanistic solutions were conceived to facilitate the civilians’ access. In other cases, former sanctuaries were partly preserved, and the local population was granted access to the new facilities designed for the soldiers, like the amphitheatre and the baths.
The overall impression concerning the two populations of Dura offered by J. is that of cohabitation through the forms of a Concordia policy, a gradual development of the military base respectful of the local population aimed at limiting the impact of the army presence on the local life, the urban town system and the areas not directly occupied by military personnel. This marks a substantial difference from the previous idea of a brutal and conflictual occupation of part of the city, which existed urbanistically separated from the rest of the settlement.
The most appreciable aspect of the work is how J. manages to substantially change the knowledge of Dura's social and political history using the data collected through accurate and painstaking investigation of the base buildings, room by room, square metre by square metre. J.'s work constitutes, for the historian, a fantastic lesson on the enormous potential for historical knowledge, which is enclosed in a correctly interpreted set of archaeological data, the famous archaeological sources sadly so often neglected by classical colleagues.
