Odeon (bouleuterion) at the Temple of Artemis Nanaia

23 September 2010 | Andrew Wilson/Manar al-Athar (Resource ID: 92194)

This photograph of the Odeon was taken six months before the conflict in Syria began in March 2011: subsequently, Dura has been devastated by intensive looting. Occupying an entire city block, the Temple of Artemis is one of Dura’s largest and played an important civic role as well as a religious one. The Odeon, located on the south side of the temple’s courtyard, was cleaned and consolidated by the Mission Franco-Syrienne d’Europos-Doura (MFSED), whose site preservation program between 1986 and 2011 restored numerous structures that had been excavated during the Yale-French Excavations decades earlier and, in the case of the Temple of Artemis, by during the French-Syrian excavations led by Franz Cumont between 1922-24. Inscriptions indicate a boule (civic council) was active at Dura during the Roman period. A third-century inscription discovered by MFSED in the Odeon indicates that the structure was used as its meeting place (bouleuterion), and the boule dedicated a statue of the Roman empress Julia Domna, the Syrian wife of Septimius Severus, in the temple. 

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