The project concerns a comprehensive study, to be published as a monograph, of the religious life of Dura-Europos, a small-town on the Euphrates river in the Parthian and Roman periods known amongst scholars as the ‘Pompeii of the Syrian desert’ for the richness of its finds.
A detailed and systematic study of the various temples, cults, deities and worshippers in Dura will have invaluable implications for our understanding of religious life outside the main cult centres and will provide a methodological framework for the study of cultural life in the small towns of the Roman provinces more generally.
As a side-project, Dr Kaizer is also contributing to the international project on the Bibliotheca Cumontiana (the republication of all works by the Belgian scholar Franz Cumont, in which context two volumes will be published on Dura-Europos, where Cumont excavated in 1922 and 1923). This will provide the best possible historiographical foundation for research on Dura’s religious life.
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