The Excavations at Dura-Europos. Preliminary Report of the Seventh and Eighth Seasons of Work, 1933–1934 and 1934–1935
The Excavations at Dura-Europos. Preliminary Report of the Seventh and Eighth Seasons of Work presents the results of the Yale University and French Academy excavations carried out at Dura-Europos during the 1933-1935 seasons. Edited by Michael Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, Frank Edward Brown and Charles Bradford Welles, the volume documents many of the site’s principal discoveries, including temples, inscriptions, paintings and domestic architecture.
For the study of Mithraism, the report is particularly significant because it contains Franz Cumont’s first detailed publication of the Mithraeum of Dura-Europos. The sanctuary’s architecture, paintings, inscriptions and sculptural remains are presented together with an analysis of its successive phases of construction and use. The volume established the archaeological record upon which nearly all subsequent studies of the Dura Mithraeum have been based, although many of Cumont’s interpretations have since been revised in the light of later research.
Although designated a preliminary report, the work remains one of the principal primary sources for the archaeology of Dura-Europos and continues to be cited in studies of the Roman frontier, Near Eastern archaeology and the cult of Mithras.
