The Urfa Mosaic Museum

SYRIAC WATCH: Urfa mosaic museum reflects ancient history of the Turkish city. Roman, Christian and unique Seleucid-period mosaics in Turkey’s third-largest mosaic museum (Judith Sudilovsky, Jerusalem Post).

In 2006 when the southeastern Turkish city of Urfa, officially known as Şanlıurfa, was undertaking a construction project next to renovation work on the Şanlıurfa Archaeological Museum, workers unearthed sections of such Roman mosaics. Work was halted and in the subsequent three years of excavations, the spectacular mosaic floors of an entire Roman villa were revealed.

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In antiquity, Urfa was known as Edessa, and it is believed that as early as 190 AD Christianity had taken root among the people of Edessa and its surroundings, and was soon made the official religion by King Abgar IX. It became a prominent center of Christian learning but under Roman rule, many Christians were martyred. Following numerous changes of rulers, the area adopted Islam as the official religion.

Cross-file under Decorative Art.

As the article notes, the Aramaic dialect spoken at Urfa in the early centuries CE became known as Syriac. It became the religious language of the eastern church for many centuries. It is still the liturgical language of the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church today.

For more on the Agbarid dynasty and the apocryphal Syriac correspondence between King Abgar V and Jesus, see here, here, here, and here. For some other PaleoJudaica posts on ancient Edessa, modern Urfa, see here, here, here, here, here here and links.

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