Syria - Dura Europos

The location chosen for Dura Europos is due to its strategic position at the point where the road that goes from Antioch, the Mediterranean capital of the Seleucid Empire, to Seleucie-du-Tigre, the Babylonian capital, descends from the plateau to go along Euphrates. The interest of such a position had not escaped the masters of the region in the periods before the foundation of the city around 300 BC. J.C. by Seleucos I. who had inherited all the Asian part of the empire of Alexander and had conducted a rigorous policy of urbanization on all territories under his rule. The city has undergone a remarkable development despite a tormented history that saw it go from the domination of the Greeks to that of the Parthians and those of the Romans before being conquered in the third century of the Christian era by the Sassanids, emptied of all its population and definitely deserted. Dura Europos, the regional capital at the heart of the Seleucid Empire, which has become an advanced post on the shifting border of the two Parthian and Roman empires, bears the imprint of the Greco-Roman and Persian civilizations on a population whose component and Semitic traditions are very quickly have become dominant. This makes it a remarkable and exceptional witness of the evolution of the Mesopotamian Orient over five centuries from the Conquest of Alexander.