Metal Altars In Palmyra And Dura-Europos.

Abstract

The altars dating back to the Roman era are considered one of the most frequently discovered ritual tools during excavations in various Syrian regions. All of them, despite their different shapes, are classified as stone altars. However, the appearance of several scenes within the sculptural and fresco of the of Palmyra and Dura-Europos depicting several models of altars, which can be inferred from their shape and colors especially in the fresco that they are metal altars, of which no real examples have been found to date, raises a few of questions.

This paper discusses the formal details of these altars and attempts to answer the problem posed by the failure to find this type of altars during the excavations, unlike the case of stone altars, for which examples have appeared that are identical in some cases to their images in these artworks, in addition to the problem of the appearance of this type of altars in the artworks of the eastern region only. This paper concludes that this type of altars may have been imported and fall within the Parthian artistic influences that appeared in the arts of these two cities more strongly than in the rest of the regions due to their geographical location on the trade routes coming from Mesopotamia to the Levant.