'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎168v] (341/862)

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HISTORY
the ruins of Dura-Europus (wo^. Salahiyeh), a town of mixed popula
tion on the right bank of the Euphrates, which acted as the out-port
of the caravan city of Palmyra. 1
The old Semitic civilization reasserted itself and competed on even
terms with the Hellenistic, because the now universal medium of
Aramaic language and script freed it from the fetters of cuneiform
and eventually enabled a popular Aramaic literature to be created.
The Babylonian cults of Bel Marduk, Ishtar, and Adad were strong
throughout the land and practised with the full ancient ceremonial
at Babylon and Uruk. Babylonian thought, particularly astrology,
radiated with these gods from Mesopotamia into the Roman Empire.
There was also another and more recent Semitic force at work in
Mesopotamia: Judaism. The Jews of Mesopotamia had been
numerous since the Captivities and were steadily increasing in
numbers by successful proselytism. Fresh drafts arrived from Judaea
after the unsuccessful Jewish rebellions of a.d. 66-70 and 132-135.
It was largely Jewish opposition which made Mesopotamia so
uncomfortable a field of operation for the Roman emperors. This
Jewish community, which was mainly urban, prepared the ground
for the rapid spread of Christianity, but was itself a potent rival of
other religions.
The Iranian element in Parthian Mesopotamia was considerable
and destined to increase in the next period. Its chief centre was the
new capital of Ctesiphon, opposite Seleucia on the Tigris, and its
main contribution was in the arts of architecture, relief-sculpture,
and painting, and in the religion of Mithras. This off-shoot of
Mazdaeism inculcated the soldierly virtues and also a belief in
spiritual regeneration through a series of initiatory processes. The
architects of the Parthian period built great domed and arched halls
known mainly from the ruins of Hatra and Ashur, which anticipated
the ‘Liwan’ palaces of the Sassanids (photo. 116). In graphic art—
painting and sculpture—a formal frontal treatment of portraiture was
introduced, very different from the profiles of the Assyrian bas-
reliefs, and an exaggeration of the length of human limbs and a
linear treatment of the body, tendencies which helped to form the
style of Byzantine painting. But, at most, the Parthian period was a
compromise between the European civilization of the Seleucids
which preceded and the oriental influences of the Sassanid Persians
who followed them.
Politically Parthian Mesopotamia was a strange medley. In the
1 See Geographical Handbook of Syria, B.R. 513, p. 114.