Opening Doors to Jewish Life in Syro-Mesopotamian Dura-Europos

Abstract

Analyses of the synagogue discovered in the ancient town of Dura Europos commonly emphasize connections between the construction and decoration of the building and aspects of Jewish life along the Roman eastern frontier. By focusing on lesser-known data from the synagogue, including burial deposits found inside its doorways, as well as examples of non-monumental writings and art (graffiti) from its interior, this article offers distinct insights into the cultural horizons of those who used and visited the structure. Closer consideration of the locations and contents of associated finds and their comparisons with analogues discovered in Dura and throughout the Syro-Mesopotamian world collectively advance new hypotheses about how visitors to the synagogue behaved inside its varied spaces and used acts of object-burial and writing to manipulate and reshape its walls, doorways, thresholds, and floors. The impetus to reconsider deposits of writing and objects from the Dura synagogue from this vantage, in its Syro-Mesopotamian context, owes to the recent publication of additional finds from other parts of the town. These augmented local comparisons for the synagogue evidence particularly reveal dynamic and otherwise unidentified continuities between devotional behaviors and spatial practices conducted by local and regional Jews and Christians, neighboring Durenes, and other inhabitants of Syrian, Mesopotamian, and Persian cities. These similarities, at times, can overshadow connections traditionally emphasized between daily life in Dura and the provincial world of Rome. Working outwards from the synagogue evidence, this approach ultimately demonstrates that many Durenes, whether Jews or their neighbors, engaged in daily devotional acts, in distinctive locations, which reflected, transformed, and responded to their local Syrian, Mesopotamian, and Arsacid cultural orbits.