The scutum from Dura-Europos is the only surviving semi-cylindrical shield ( scutum ) from Roman times. It is now in the Yale University Art Gallery (inventory number 1933.715). The shield was found in the excavation campaign of 1928/37 on Tower 19 of Dura-Europos (in present-day Syria). [1] The city was besieged by the Sassanids in 256, eventually captured and destroyed. The dry climate enables very good conservation conditions for organic materials such as wood. Since the city housed a Roman garrison and was lost during a siege, a particularly large number of weapons were found during the excavations.
The scutum is a rectangular arched shield that measures 105.5 by 41 cm and is mainly made of wood. It was found broken up into thirteen parts. It is made from strips of wood that are 30 to 80 mm wide and 1.5 to 2 mm thick. They are put together in three layers, so that the total thickness of the wood layer is 4.5 to 6 mm. In the center of the shield is a hole that was probably cut in the wood after the board was made, the umbo (central boss) is missing. The shield hump that was once there is missing. The back of the shield was provided with reinforcing strips of wood, but they weren't found. There appears to have been a red covering of skin on the back. It is mentioned in the preliminary report of the excavation, but later was lost. The surface of the front was covered with fabric and then with skin or parchment, with a painting on it. There are several decorative ribbons around the central hole. Decorations include an eagle with a laurel wreath, winged Victories, and a lion. [1]
The shield has been heavily restored several times. The main aim of these earlier restorations was to preserve the paintings, while the restorers did not care about the construction of the shield. Many technical details can only be traced today using old descriptions. The shield is now more rounded than in its original state.
The shield was found during excavations in 1932/1933 in tower 19 of the city wall that is on the west side of the city. The events that took place during the siege could be reconstructed. The city appears to have been under constant attack by the Sassanids since the 220s. Shortly after 250 it even fell into the hands of the Sassanids, but was recaptured by the Romans in 254. During this time, the western side of the city was reinforced. The east side, on the other hand, is on a steep slope and did not need a city wall, but here it appears to be a gateway to the Euphrates. Adjacent houses were incorporated into the west wall and filled with clay bricks, so that a massive wall was created. This was fortunate for archeology: the structures incorporated into the wall were in excellent condition.
In 256 there was a major attack by the Sassanids. A camp larger than the city was set up west of Dura. A major operation during the siege was the excavation of the city wall to bring it down at one point. This action was not hidden from the Romans, and they dug their own tunnel to meet the enemies underground and to fight them. What exactly happened next is controversial in research. Remains of twenty Roman soldiers with full equipment were found in the tunnel, but only one corpse of a Sassanid. In the preliminary report of the excavations it was assumed that the tunnel simply collapsed and buried the soldiers. More recent considerations come to a different scenario. Accordingly, the Sassanids noticed that the Romans were digging a counter tunnel and waited for it to break through. When the Romans broke through the tunnel of the Sassanids, they were "received" with a fire reinforced by naphtha. The Roman soldiers burned or suffocated. [2] The Sassanids then continued to build the tunnel until tower 19 and the wall partially collapsed, probably only a few hours, at most a few days later. Numerous objects were buried inside the tower, some of which were burned and fell from the upper part of the tower, and which were stored here. They are mostly weapons that have been remarkably well preserved, including the scutum. The operation as a whole failed, however, as the tower and the wall only partially collapsed and no breach was created in the wall. [3]
Dura-Europos was a Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman border city built on an escarpment 90 metres above the southwestern bank of the Euphrates river. It is located near the village of Salhiyé, in present-day Syria. 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. In 113 BC, Parthians conquered the city, and held it, with one brief Roman intermission, until 165 AD. Under Parthian rule, it became an important provincial administrative centre. The Romans decisively captured Dura-Europos in 165 AD and greatly enlarged it as their easternmost stronghold in Mesopotamia, until it was captured by the Sasanian Empire after a siege in 256–257 AD. Its population was deported, and the abandoned city eventually became covered by sand and mud and disappeared from sight.
The Dura-Europos synagogue was an ancient synagogue uncovered at Dura-Europos, Syria, in 1932. The synagogue contains a forecourt and house of assembly with painted walls depicting people and animals, and a Torah shrine in the western wall facing Jerusalem. It was built backing on to the city wall, which was important in its survival. The last phase of construction was dated by an Aramaic inscription to 244 CE, making it one of the oldest synagogues in the world. It was unique among the many ancient synagogues that have emerged from archaeological excavations as the structure was preserved virtually intact, and it had extensive figurative wall-paintings, which came as a considerable surprise to scholars. These paintings are now displayed in the National Museum of Damascus.
The scutum was a type of shield used among Italic peoples in antiquity, most notably by the army of ancient Rome starting about the fourth century BC.
Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, or Rostovtsev, was a Russian historian whose career straddled the 19th and 20th centuries and who produced important works on ancient Roman and Greek history. He was a member of the Russian Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
The Dura-Europos church is the earliest identified Christian house church. It was located in Dura-Europos, Syria, and one of the earliest known Christian churches. It is believed to have been an ordinary house that was converted to a place of worship between 233 and 256, and appears to have been built following the Durene tradition, distinguished by the use of mud brick and a layout consisting of rooms encircling a courtyard, which was characteristic of most other homes built in the Dura-Europos region. Prior to the town being abandoned in 256 during the Persian siege, the Romans built a ramp extending from the city wall which buried the church building in a way that allowed for the preservation of its walls, enabling its eventual excavation by archaeologists in 1933. It was less famous, smaller, and more-modestly decorated than the nearby Dura-Europos synagogue, though there are many similarities between them.
Clark Hopkins was an American archaeologist. During the 1930s he led the joint French-American excavations at Dura Europos. In later years he was professor of art and archeology at the University of Michigan.
Parthian art was Iranian art made during the Parthian Empire from 247 BC to 224 AD, based in the Near East. It has a mixture of Persian and Hellenistic influences. For some time after the period of the Parthian Empire, art in its styles continued for some time. A typical feature of Parthian art is the frontality of the people shown. Even in narrative representations, the actors do not look at the object of their action, but at the viewer. These are features that anticipate the art of medieval Europe and Byzantium.
The Temple of the Gadde is a temple in the modern-day Syrian city of Dura-Europos, located near the agora. It contained reliefs dedicated to the tutelary deities of Dura-Europos and the nearby city of Palmyra, after whom the temple was named by its excavators. The temple was excavated between 1934 and January 1936 by the French/American expedition of Yale University, led by Michael Rostovtzeff.
The Temple of Bel, also known as the Temple of the Palmyrene gods, was located in Dura Europos, an ancient city on the Euphrates, in modern Syria. The temple was established in the first century BC and is celebrated primarily for its wall paintings. Despite the modern names of the structure, it is uncertain which gods were worshipped in the structure. Under Roman rule, the temple was dedicated to the Emperor Alexander Severus. In that period, the temple was located within the military camp of the XXth Palmyrene cohort.
The Temple of Zeus Cyrius stood in the city of Dura-Europos (Syria) and The construction of the original temenos is dated by the inscriptions above its altar and on its cult reliefs to the end of the second decade of the first century after Christ. It was excavated in 1934 by a joint French-American expedition.
The Temple of Zeus Theos at Dura Europos was built in the second century AD and was among the most important sanctuaries of the city. The structure was located in the centre of the settlement. It had an area of around 37 m2 and took up half an insula. It was excavated by an American-French team between December 1933 and March 1939.
The Temple of Adonis in Dura-Europos was discovered by a French-American expedition of Yale University led by Michael Rostovtzeff and was excavated between 1931 and 1934.
The Statue of Hercules was discovered in the Temple of Zeus Megistos in Dura-Europos during the 1935–1937 excavations undertaken by Yale University and the French Academy. The statue dates from the period of Roman rule at Dura-Europos. It is now in the possession of the Yale Art Gallery.
The Palace of the Dux Ripae was the largest and most important building in Dura-Europos during the period of Roman rule. According to the inscriptions, the Palace was erected under Elagabalus and it seems to have survived until the Sassanid conquest of Dura-Europos in AD 256.
The so-called Dolicheneum is a temple in Dura Europos in the east of today's Syria, where Jupiter Dolichenus and god called Zeus Helios Mithras Turmasgade may have been worshiped. The remains of the temple were excavated in 1935/36, but results were never fully published.
The Mithraeum of Dura Europos was found during excavations in the city in 1934. It is considered to be one of the best-preserved and best-documented cult buildings of Mithraism.
The Temple of Aphlad was an ancient temple located in the southwestern corner of Dura Europos, and dedicated to the god Aphlad. Aphlad was originally a Semitic Mesopotamian god from the city of Anath, and presence of his cult in Dura is revealing of its religious and cultural diversity. The temple itself consists of an open courtyard with multiple scattered rooms and altars, similar to the Temple of Bel, which was located in an analogous position in the northwestern corner of Dura.
The Temple of Artemis Azzanathkona was a sacred space located in block E7 at Dura Europos dedicated to a syncretic belief of Artemis and the Syrian deity named Azzanathkona. While established as a religious structure, portions of the temple were requisitioned by the Roman military after the Romans captured the city in 165 CE.
The Homeric shield is one of three figural painted shields found together in an embankment within a Roman garrison during the excavations of Dura-Europos. Dura-Europos was a border city of various empires throughout antiquity, and in modern archaeology is noteworthy for its large amount of well-preserved artifacts. Having been virtually untouched for centuries, and with favorable soil, an unusual amount of organic material has been preserved at Dura-Europos. This shield and those found alongside it date from the middle of the 3rd century CE, a period in which a large portion of the city was co-opted as a Roman military base. The shields were deliberately discarded unfinished during the Sassanian siege of Dura Europos. It is widely believed to depict two scenes from the Trojan war: the admission of the Trojan horse into Troy, and the subsequent sack of the city. It is one of few examples of Roman painting on wood, and one of very few Roman painted wooden shields to have survived from antiquity. The shield has now deteriorated beyond most detail being discernible to the naked eye. This is due to the unintended adverse effects of a binding agent applied to the shield in the 1930s in the hopes of preserving the pigmentation.
The building that is referred to as the Priests' House, or House of Priests, at Dura-Europos near the village of Salhiyah in eastern present-day Syria, is one of three buildings that was excavated in block H2. It is hypothesized to be the home of priests from the Temple of Atargatis based on its proximity to the two neighboring temples and graffiti found in the third Excavation season.