ancient sites of the world dura Europos which is in modern-day syria we're going to want you to be able to describe the diverse multicultural people living in this city and explain how the environment as well as the social political constructs of Duryea ropa assisted in its preservation will want you to be able to read the iconography of a house church and the murals found inside in detail so let's take a look at where we are here's the mediterranean modern-day Turkey Iraq Iran and this is the Tigris Euphrates right so this is the Mesopotamia the Fertile Crescent and here you see it in a larger detail this city is extremely well preserved it was created about three hundred and three BCE by a successor of Alexander the Great in fact the name is made to honor Alexander Europos to honor Alexander of Macedonia and dura as fortress this site was a crossroads for trade along the Euphrates and on to the west it had a high bank which made it inaccessible from the east and there will be lots of migration coming from different regions paul Myron's from the west Mesopotamians from the east counting down now to 165 c e roman emperor lucius various controlled it all and this led to one hundred years of Roman rule just like every Roman town we've studied it was set out on a grid it was a heavily guarded place with about 3,000 Roman soldiers there were archers from pom Nepal miny they were diverse speakers of different languages different ethnicities and different religion so this meant that here in dari Europa's the gods of Greece Rome Judea Syria and Persia were all accepted in this small environment this tells us that there was religious tolerance which is something that we don't always have to this day so this red X shows us the site of the earliest known synagogue in the Jewish world and two blocks away from it is the very first church that we know of in the Christian world so let's take a look at an old photo and then we'll take a look at a newer photo shortly you can see here these high banked walls they were somewhat naturally occurring and then they were reinforced here is the Euphrates River that's how close it is you know you're gonna need a water source right things were made of a sun-dried brick and as time went by the Roman Empire is going to fall and by 256 C II it was really the final siege the Romans had been resisting for a long time and when they were captured by the sasanian 's which are the late Persian culture they physically undermined the city walls they made them collapse but that collapse of those city walls which was very sad for the Romans living there was good fortune for historians of the 21st century sand hid most of the ruins and it was buried very deeply it was air quotes rediscovered during World War one and in 1920 the wall paintings were cited by British patrols who are going up and down the Euphrates River which led to academics from two different groups once from Yale and the other from the French Academy sending archaeologists to the dig and guess what they did they decided it would be a good idea to divide up their findings so they did not leave the objects in situ they did not take them all to one place or the other but they are divided to this day between Yale and the French Museum setting this synagogue is the earliest to date and we can see in the true wet fresco that there are definitely symbols of people so this disputes the concept of there being an icon ism of this being an anti icon period of time this set of wall murals will set forward the study for Jewish art across time then it all begins right here so what you're seeing here is the walls that have been removed and in a museum environment some of the things to point out are here is a modern-day podium that has information about the murals and it gives you a sense of the scale so podium is usually about chest high so this lets you know that this was a huge structure fortunately at the time of excavation people took careful notes about what they saw about what was missing about the narrative and these are things that are very helpful to us to this day we've got different kinds of schematic and I love this stylized art deco-style schematic of something that was made in the 300s but it gives us a sense of proportion of scale and you can see that they have reconstructed the niche to look like it did as close as possible here is in a photo at the time of the discovery during during the 1920s so here is a close-up of just one of the frescoes and I chose the anointing like King David because of its significance going forward here we see annointing David as the king of Israel from the book of Samuel 'he's anointing body-parts has a diverse function depending on where you are so it means something different anointing means putting oil on pouring oil on so it could we see it in Greek Jewish Roman culture we see it in the Mesopotamian culture the fundamental idea is that oil brings health to the body through the consumption of topical application oil is going to stand out calling to mind rituals by which powerful leaders are inaugurated priests and prophets and above all Kings are marked during their anointing and this is something if you go to youtube and pull up the anointing of queen elizabeth ii you can see it on film and that's what's happening here so let's move now to the second religious structure that we study at the dura Europa which we recall which we call the house church the original housing unit it was just a single-family home was built about 323 C E but by 240 it was constructed reconstructed to accommodate many people so on the right here you see a large group of worshippers in an isometric drawing does this mean they had to worship in secret initially yes but as we go towards the 300s no it was just the habit they didn't have a structure of purpose-built structure they'd been worshipping secretly originally and then it changes into this environment what we're very interested in is what's happening right there and we're gonna zoom in there in just a moment quite simply the this Christian house church from dura europas is the only extant non funeral ritual space from pre Constantinian Jannetty we've got no artistic cannon no artistic rules for Christianity in 200c II this was a commercial a converted domestic space that was no longer used as a home after it was converted it was in use for about 15 years before the walls were intentionally collapsed by thus insane Ian's conquest and about 75 people fit inside of course a lot of the art was lost when the building was collapsed but what was retained is very important and it is the baptistry and that's what you see right here baptistry baptism one of the most important of the sacraments in the Christian religion that would have taken place here and so they've got a wall nish and a big tub that will be filled with water there's a pillared canopy over it and the walls are painted with thematic images we see images of David and Goliath Adam and Eve a procession of women a series of Christ's miracles an image of the Good Shepherd watering his flock and so on the right is a reconstruction so here is the tub the water basin so whoever was being baptized would get in there remember we've got full-body immersion baptism and then we've got these frescoes along the wall you can see there is a lot of paint loss but they've made some educated guesses about what the narrative of the paint cycle was all about here is a schematic then showing what I just showed you so there's this white tent structure there women in procession and then here are miracles from the life of Christ but all of this is missing all of this is missing we have a figure over here but it's very telling because right across the bottom here you see a set of feet and they're all headed in the same direction as these women are going so probably there was a full set of people in procession going around the perimeter of the room you can see the polychrome true wet fresco here and it is the figure of these two women that present us with the core artistic program a procession towards a white structure they're all in the lower register of the wall and it was supposed to be the most important thing you saw why are they in white what is the tent about where are they processing to why are they carrying torches what is this star like image do they mirror the processional figures from the rest of the room we know that human beings are obsessed with processing aren't they we've seen a long history from the Persepolis to the Parthenon frieze these are images that remind us of this human procession and still lots of questions about what it all means here's what we know for sure it is a procession of a group of women they are carrying bowls both inside and outside of the door so that's what's going on over here they're carrying torches and they are approaching this white tinted structure with a light this might have to do with a story from the Bible about females going to empty the tomb of Christ to anoint his corpse the white tent might represent a sarcophagus we are in a baptismal font though so this is sort of the beginning of faith and then the sarcophagus would be the end of faith so lots of images that we don't know a lot about but we get a rough idea and then we're gonna focus in now on some of these other first examples of Christian art Christ healing the paralytic so Christ conducts miracles and this is a double narrative we see the person who is paralyzed on their bed and here is a figure of Christ and he waves his arms he makes a gesture and then you see the paralyzed person standing and you know it's that person because he's carrying his own bed this is all part of that visual procession that we see so here is an artist's reconstruction so that we get a better look at going on now you would never see this and think oh yes that is an image of Christ because when I say pull up an image of Jesus Christ in your head you're gonna pull up a tall skinny guy in white robes with dark hair and a dark beard and big sad eyes and that's not quite what's going on in this image another important image we see for the very first time is the image of Christ as the Good Shepherd so sheep and shepherds are an important part of early Christian iconography this particular image is located within a painted arch and is in the natural focal point of the room this theme of the Good Shepherd is something we see throughout the early Christian world in frescoes sculpture glass mosaics in gemstones pottery lamps bowls it's also seen in non-christian art remember that the God hair maze excuse me Hermes air maze is the handbag you can't afford Hermes is the sheep Bearer so here at dura europas we see Jesus Christ carrying a ram around his neck and you see the flock at his right so as Christ the Good Shepherd he's watching over his flock the flock are the faithful those who follow the teachings of Christ Christ the Good Shepherd and these then show us sheep who are being led to clean water to drink and the image of Christ is a good shepherd the lamb the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world icons that show it whoops icons that show up throughout the history of Christian art and so this is the excavation photo of that baptistry niche where the image of Christ was found as we finish our conversation about Duryea ropa and figures in procession I want to remind you all of the cathedral of los angeles in downtown LA it is an exquisite piece of contemporary architecture and I encourage you all to go and visit you just walk in anytime if you're quiet and sit down it doesn't even matter if there's a mass going on when you sit inside the cathedral the walls are flanked by these beautiful tapestries which are in lieu of stained glass windows they add a sound cushioning effect but more importantly they tell a wonderful story of people of faith going forwards towards the altar they were created by the contemporary artist Nava and what you see down here are the names of all the faithful Christians of faithful Catholics across time who are moving forward to the altar these are all well known people but they're they're not in time order they're all mixed up so you might see st. Teresa of ávila standing next to st. Francis standing next to a more modern day Christian martyr maybe like Teresa of Calcutta Saint Teresa of Calcutta but what he's done is he's put the face of contemporary people from Los Angeles on the figures of these saints and martyrs so when you go you can look carefully and see things like famous Los Angeles basketball players and other folks of notoriety it's a good field trip you should go