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Monday, February 28, 2011

Review of Dura Europos exhibit at McMullen Museum

THE DURA EUROPOS EXHIBITION at the McMullen Museum is reviewed in Wicked Local Dover:
Dura-Europos: A buried city unearthed

By Chris Bergeron
wickedlocal.com

Posted Feb 25, 2011 @ 10:01 AM

Around 165 A.D., Christians, Jews and pagans lived and worshiped side by side in a cosmopolitan city called Dura-Europos by the Euphrates River on the frontier of the Roman Empire.
Located in modern-day Syria, it housed a Roman military garrison of more than 10,000 soldiers and civilians whose lives reflected the hopes and dangers of those uncertain times.
A couple exchanged an engagement ring engraved with the word “Omonoia,” or “concord.” Soldiers dallied in a brothel adorned with a statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. A man named Tiro sold a 28-year-old female slave Math-Sin for 700 denari, worth about two years of unskilled labor.
Then sacked by invading Sasanians and abandoned in 256, the city lay covered by earth and lost for 16 centuries.
Through serendipity and determined archaeology, the city has come alive again through a remarkable exhibition at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College.

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I have already noted the exhibition here. Lots more links on Dura Europos are given here.