Gods Across Empire Boundaries

By Sandra C Brown

Europos Dura was an ancient fortress city on the Euphrates River in modern Syria. Founded in 303 BCE as part of the growing, post-Alexandrian, Seleucid Empire, over the next 550 years, Europos fell from Macedonian, to Parthian, and then Roman control as it grew from a small fort ("dura" in Aramaic) protecting a river crossing, to a 50-hectare regional capital. In approximately 257 CE, the city was besieged and sacked by Sassanian forces who chose to abandon the city rather than re-populate it. Europos sat gathering sand for some 1,600 years until archaeologists rediscovered the site in the 1920s. Excavations lead by Yale University and the French Academy were conducted until 1937. In the 1980s, French excavations began at the site again and continued until the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. Along with an unparalleled cache of Roman military documents, evidence of siege warfare (and chemical warfare), and almost two-dozen temples to Greco-Roman, Syrian and Mesopotamian gods, also uncovered was what is nowrecognized as the oldest extant Christian ritual space known archeologically

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 5759743082
• ISBN13: 9785759743088
• Release Date: August 2023
• Publisher: Sandra C. Brown
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"