|
Another 85 km from Deir-Ezzor by the good road to Abou
Kamal, a dirt track to the left leads to the ruins of this fortified
city. It was a guardian of a ford on the Euphrates holding against
incursions of the Parths and of the Sassanides from the Hellenistic
epoch when it was founded in about the 4th century B.C. until 272, when
it was destroyed by Emperor Aurelian.
For about 150 years the guardsman-ship of this part of the Roman "Lines"
was entrusted to the plamyranians.
Aurelian snatched it from them after the first occupation of Palmyra by
the legions of the emperor. When Emperor Julian The Apostate carried out
his march on Ctesiphon in 363, he found only the remains of what had
formerly been a city.
You will see, barring the fortifications which are Hellenistic, an
interesting group of constructions of Palmyranian, Parth or Roman type.
Among those, one notices the existence of sixteen sanctuaries of various
religions, among which a place of cult dedicated to the god Mithra, a
synagogue reconstituted partly in the National Museum of Damascus, a
church said to be the most ancient, temples dedicated to gods of the
Palmyranians and the Romans.
|
|
