Strange Meeting at Salihiyeh: Who Discovered (or Encountered, or Identified, or Invented) Dura-Europos, and When?

Abstract

The centenary of the establishment of the Department of Classics at the University of Kraków coincides with that of the beginnings of the study of the ‘Pompeii of the Syrian Desert.’In spring 1920, British Indian soldiers digging in the ruins known as Salihiyeh overlooking the Euphrates accidentally revealed ancient paintings. Recorded by archaeologist James Henry Breasted, these discoveries would soon lead to further excavations by Franz Cumont (1922–1923), and eventually to the great Yale-French Academy expedition under Mikhail Rostovtzeff (1928–1937). By then the site was famous as ‘Dura-Europos,’giving us remarkable insights into Hellenistic Greek, Parthian, Roman, early Christian and Jewish life in the Middle East. Not the least of the discoveries related to the soldiers of Dura’s Roman garrison. This paper traces the history of the revelation—and, in part, invention—of Dura-Europos in the 1920s. It is a story of eminent scholars, but also of others who actually revealed the evidence: soldiers, both officers and men, of the armies of the British and French empires which dominated the region at the time. Today, at a time of ‘decolonisation’of scholarship, the very formulation ‘Dura-Europos’itself is a subject of contention.