12 Facts About Dura-Europos

1.

Dura-Europos was a Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman border city built on an escarpment 90 metres (300 feet) above the southwestern bank of the Euphrates river.

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2.

Dura-Europos was founded around 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, who founded the Seleucid Empire as one of the Diadochi of Alexander the Great.

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3.

Dura-Europos is of extreme archaeological importance, and was called the "Pompeii of the Desert".

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4.

Dura-Europos is seen as owing its development to its role as a regional capital.

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5.

Dura-Europos'storians argue whether Dura-Europos was completely abandoned after the siege of 256.

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6.

Lucinda Dirven wrote that, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, Dura-Europos was a deserted town when Julian's army passed there in 363.

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7.

Dura-Europos was a cosmopolitan society, ruled by a tolerant Macedonian aristocracy descended from the original settlers.

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8.

Dura-Europos stood next to a chariot and was crowned by two Nikes.

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9.

Dura-Europos's sits between two figures, wearing a mural crown and Greek clothing.

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10.

The founder, Seleukos, was practically a governor in Dura-Europos and belonged to a Greek family who held this office for several generations.

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11.

Between 2011 and 2014, during the Syrian Civil War, Dura-Europos was looted and mostly destroyed by the Islamic State.

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12.

These chronicles have, as their central fictional character, Pacorus I, King of Dura-Europos, who lived at the same time as the rebel Roman gladiator Spartacus and was part of Spartacus's army before being freed in Italy and then returning home to Parthia, where he became the most feared warrior in the empire.

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