"Durra Europus" Church

Dura Europus

      The city of Dura Europus sitiuated in the syrian desert close to the river Euphrates, it  founded Originally at the end of the fourth century BC by the Seleucids on the intersection of an east-west trade route and the trade route along the Euphrates, the town was occupied  by the Romans in 165 AD. It prospered as a frontier garrison, but fell after a siege by the Persians in the year 257 and was abandoned.
مدونة سياحة.كوم

      The church began as a respectable middle-class home built of   unbaked brick on rough stone foundations, with carved blocks of gypsum set round the doors .The rooms were   arranged, in conventional Asiatic fashion, around  a paved court to which a narrow vestibule gave access. Inside the walls were covered with thick plaster. An inscription, apparently scratched while the plaster was still wet, gives the date 232 AD.
     The church was originally a house that transformed to a church.The Christian assembly-room of this house-church is of  very plain construction. Tow rooms on the south side were combined, by the removal of a wall, to form one substantial assembly-room, 13.1 meters in length. A low platform on which the bishop could stand or sit is the only piece of liturgical equipment occupied the short east wall of this assembly-room. This room would have seated a congregation of fifty or sixty
     At right angles to the place of assembly was another room half as large. It is entirely featureless, it served as a school, a place of instruction for the (catechumens), who were not yet full members of the church,who hear but not see the Mass of the Faithful, to receive the instruction, and to prepare themselves for baptism. This room ( 4 by 7 m.) offering space for roughly thirty.

The decoration:

        The north wall displays three examples of the Saviour‘s power. The first of the healing of the paralysed man. Most examples of this theme, in the compressed, almost shorthand style of early Christian art, show the ‘ sick of the palsy ‘ walking away with his bed on his back, thus indicating his cure, while the Healer himself is either absent from the scene or stands on one side.
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