This volume advances our understanding of the religion, society and culture of Dura-Europos, the small town on the Euphrates known since the 1930s as the 'Pompeii of the Syrian desert'. Several features make the site potentially our best source for day-to-day life in a small town situated on the periphery of the Roman world: inscriptions and graffiti in ten ancient languages; sculptures and frescoes combining elements of Classical and Oriental art; the most important papyrological dossier of any military unit in the Roman world; documents relating to the local economy; over a dozen pagan sanctuaries; plus a famously painted synagogue and the earliest Christian house church, all set in a gridiron city plan and surrounded by well-preserved fortifications. Dura's unique findings facilitate the study of life in a provincial small town to a degree that archaeology and history do not usually allow.

'… the individual contributions … are characterized by a thorough and critical stance, and form a prime example for the re-assessment of faulty interpretations of the archaeological material made in the past, based not only on the original artefacts, but also on secondary archaeological archives, to which the contemporary scholar will unfortunately too often be confined when it comes to studying Dura-Europos, like many other sites in Syria, following the tragic events of the last decade.’

Nolke Tasma Source: Bibliotheca Orientalis