Dura-Europos under Parthian Rule period.^35 The book includes a section on Aï Khanum in Afghanistan, as well
as two sections on sites in Iran, not to speak of its detailed treatment of
Dura itself. So questions of definition become crucial. How are we to define
or identify those types of cult building of the Parthian period which come
from the vast zone traversed and colonised by Alexander, and which are not
temples in ‘‘Greek’’ style, with a pillaredpronaossurmounted by a pediment,
and an oblongcellasurrounded by columns? This much at least is clear: that
though Dura was a Hellenisticapoikia(settlement), and remained Greek-
speaking, the excavations there have so far revealed no examples of the stan-
dard Greek temple. There is therefore a real question about the origins and
nature of the types of cult building which have been found there.
These public, or communal, buildings will form the main focus of what
follows, not least because they raise in acute form the questions both of how
the deities worshipped in them were identified and of what constitutes ‘‘a
temple’’ as a distinct architectural entity. Both questions depend very largely
on inscriptions, mainly in Greek, but in a couple of cases also in Palmyrene.
When an inscription names a god, under what conditions are we entitled to
identify the context in which it was found as ‘‘a temple of ’’ that god? And
where (as they frequently do) inscriptions record explicitly the structures or
architectural elements which a donor, or group of donors, has put up, how
certain can we be as to which structures are referred to by the Greek (or Pal-
myrene) terms used? The relationship of epigraphy to the building history
of Dura is one of the main reasons why a complete revision of the inscrip-
tions, as of the whole archaeological record, is really required before we can
be sure of what we really know of the city under the Parthians. So, equally,
is the question of what terms are in fact used of the gods concerned. Who,
for instance, would guess that the temple now identified as that ‘‘of Bel’’ (or
formerly ‘‘of the Palmyrene gods’’) owes its identity to the discovery there
of Greek graffiti and an inscription which names ‘‘Zeus,’’ ‘‘Zeus Megistos’’
(‘‘the greatest Zeus’’) or ‘‘Zeus Sōtēr’’ (‘‘Zeus the Saviour’’)? (See below.)
The brief notes which follow are of course no substitute for such a fun-
damental revision, and cannot deal with all the possible cases. Those that
seem most worth-while to discuss will be considered briefly in chronologi-
cal order, that is to say, in the sequence suggested by those dated inscriptions
which refer to them. Therefore, except in those cases where the inscription
makes it unambiguously clear that what is involved is the construction of an
entirely new temple, the dates are not necessarily those of the creation of the
temple; very often indeed, as will be seen, the inscriptions are either dedica-
. S.B.Downey,MesopotamianReligiousArchitecture:AlexanderthroughtheParthians().