Dura is one of the buried cities which has swum into our ken since the end of the Some paintings accidentally uncovered by a British officer first led D Breasted to the site. He was followed by Cumont and in 1928 a large expedition under Professor Rostovtzeff was sent there by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions. By 1937 about one third of the site had been excavated and work was suspended through lack of funds.

Dura has been compared with Pompeii but it would be hard to imagine two places more dissimilar in appearance and history. Unlike Pompeii, Dura is a grim looking site : its most striking features are the west wall on the desert side and the citadel above the Euphrates, both built of dull grey gypsum blocks : between them stretches a waste of mud brick walls. And its history covers a far longer period. Once the site of a small oriental village, it was converted by the Macedonians into a strong-point on the road between Antioch on the Orontes and Seleucia on the Tigris ; the date of its foundation is not known, but Seleucus I was regarded as the founder and it must have been about 300 B.C.