Jews and Others
not gain any evidence of the relevant administrative or military functions of
these officials. But the presence of the Arsacid empire is none the less very
evident, as is a penalty in the form of a payment ‘‘to the royal treasury’’ (to
basilikon, line ). Like the two probable references to a ‘‘royal court’’ (basili-
kon dikastērion) in the latest of this series of documents, of../,^27 this
allusion coheres with the entire framework presented by the group of ten
parchments in making quite explicit the fact that private legal transactions
in Dura, while conducted entirely in Greek, functioned within the context
of the Parthian royal administration. This administration, however, is itself
represented in entirely Greek terms, save only for the single appearance of
the transliterated Iranian term,arkapatēs, known also at Palmyra.
This accidentally preserved evidence does not allow any conclusions about
the real degree of independence enjoyed by Dura, or as to whether this in-
dependence increased or decreased with time.^28 It does however strongly
confirm the impression provided by the inscriptions of Dura in the Parthian
period (whether inscribed, painted, or scratched) that the normal language
of the city was Greek. Moreover, since one of the functions of this paper is to
point to directions for further research, it might be suggested that this series
of ten documents, all written within three-quarters of a century, could be
re-studied and re-edited as a group, and would provide uniquely coherent
evidence of a legal system functioning in Greek within the Parthian Empire.
We might have expected the presence of one or more Semitic languages
in ‘‘Parthian’’ Dura; but, Palmyrene apart, these, as we saw, appear in the sur-
viving evidence only in the Roman period. Or there might have been in
the town Parthian-speaking officials, soldiers, traders, or settlers. That possi-
bility can certainly not be ruled out. But the positive evidence for the use of
Parthian is almost non-existent, and it is particularly significant that Greek
predominates even in the most casual of graffiti.
The fact that Frye and others,^29 collecting up the as yet unpublished in-
scriptions of Dura, were able to add to their list of inscriptions in Greek
and Latin, along with one new Palmyrene one (no. PAT, no. ), also
two brief and enigmatic Parthian dipinti on sherds (nos. –) gives a fair
idea of the balance of the material. So far as language use goes, we have to
conclude that the evidence does nothing to suggest that Dura was in any
sense a ‘‘Parthian’’ city. However, the extensive documentation in other lan-
.P. Dura(n. ), no. Cotton, Cockle, and Millar (n. ), no. .
. Arnaud (n. ); Dabrowa (n. ).
. R. N. Frye, J. F. Gilliam, H. Ingholt, and C. B. Welles, ‘‘Inscriptions from Dura-
Europos,’’YCS (): –.