Europos-Dura Overview

Pierre Leriche

Discovered in March 1920 by British soldiers, the ancient town of Europos-Dura has been explored by three successive Expeditions:

• During two seasons (1922-23) by a French military detachment under the Pr F. Cumont’s scientific authority on behalf of the French Academy of Inscriptions.
• During ten seasons (1928-38) of six months a year, the site has been explored by a powerful American-French Expedition under Pr M. Rostovtzeff’s authority (University of Yale). This Expedition obtained brilliant results and Europos-Dura became (and still remains) the most important reference for history of the Near East, from Alexander the Great to the Sasanians. But the Crisis and the 2nd World War stopped the works.
• After a gap of fifty years, researches on the site started again in 1986 under the impulsion of a new joint French-Syrian Expedition (MFSED). This new Expedition was created for resuming archaeological studies, completing the publication of monuments formerly excavated and rescuing the nearly collapsing monuments.

This work has evidenced that only a small part of monuments discovered at this time has been properly published. This fact was due to the World War that broke up the Dura-Europos American team, to Rostovtzeff’s death in 1952 and to the abundance of field results. Moreover, the historical informations and conclusions that have been elaborated on the ground of the Yale Expedition field work were dependent of the scientific context of the Thirties and Forties and, of course, they could not take in account the considerable development of the research about Hellenistic and Roman Orient during the last half century.

The purpose of the project presented here is to obtain a help for publication of new historical synthesis and of unpublished, practically unknown, monuments which have been excavated by Rostovtzeff’s Expedition.