During the late Roman Empire, the city of Dura Europos possessed some extremely interesting examples of temple paintings. The painted rooms are located along the city wall on the town's land side. They were backfilled during the final years of Dura's existence, when the city defences had to be enlarged, thereby ensuring their preservation. Like the Mithraea in Dura itself and also in Rome and Ostia (see Chapter 7), the synagogue and the church are architecturally modest rooms integrated into existing houses and constructed of local materials. The mudbrick walls are covered with lavish images which illustrate or emphasize the building's function. The decorations can be characterised as local products because of their style and their chronology is thus difficult to establish. The human figures stand in a frontal and stiff position and are set against a coloured background. The paintings lack the ordinary subdivision of walls into three horizontal and three or more vertical zones characteristic of Roman wall painting and are replaced by various panels in the form of friezes. Janine Balty argues that these murals neither constitute examples of real Roman painting, nor are they representative for the whole of Syria and are instead a unique example.

The following discussion is based on excavation reports, the well-known monograph on the art of Dura Europos by Ann Perkins and overviews of Palmyrene art and painting by Balty and Nicole Kaminski-Gdalia. The more recent contributions to the discussion by Jaś Elsner, Lucinda Dirven and Michael Sommer considerably enhance our understanding of the decorations.

BEL OR ALLAT ?

I will start, however, with a rather recent find made during excavations in 1993. French archaeologists unearthed plaster fragments from the south wall (the only decorated one) in a small shrine along the main street (Block M5). After painstakingly lifting and preserving the pieces, Claudine Allag presented a partial reconstruction. Several persons were depicted on a white surface: two standing men in Parthian dress, a person wearing a helmet and another 30 cm painting of a human figure (fig. 106). The background was embellished with trees and garlands, many elements of which have been recovered.