Dana (South)
Coordinates: 35 ° 42 ′ 33.7 " N , 36 ° 41 ′ 6.4" E
Dana , also ad-Dana, Dana (south) in contrast to Dana (north) ; is a village in northwest Syria and was a settlement in the area of the Dead Cities in early Byzantine times . On the outskirts, the area's earliest tomb with a pyramid roof from the beginning of the 4th century is almost completely preserved.
location
Dana is located at an altitude of about 550 meters in the Idlib governorate in the Jebel Zawiye area, the southern part of the northern Syrian limestone massif. In late antiquity the place belonged to the Apamene district, named after Apameia , the administrative capital at the time at the southern end of the mountainous region. The name Dana (south) is used to distinguish it from Dana (north), a small town in the north of the region with a preserved Roman grave pavilion on four columns from the 2nd century AD.
Two kilometers from the expressway that leads north from Maarat an-Numan towards Aleppo , a secondary road branches off to the west, which after another two kilometers reaches the modern village. It lies on a gently undulating, partially karstified plain, on which olive trees thrive between grain fields . The road leads two kilometers northeast to the ancient settlement of Jerada and on to Ruweiha . There the landscape is almost treeless and arable farming is only possible in isolated cases on the stone-strewn hills.
Ancient remains
The pyramid tomb can be seen from a distance on the eastern edge of the village. It consists of a square room, walled with limestone blocks in even rows, which is crowned by a steep pyramid roof. The wall corners are emphasized by fluted , flat pilasters with capitals . In a bead-shaped ornament Fries extends just below the groove formed by a roof cornice . The building is inscribed and dated 324. In front of the entrance is a portico that originally rests on four columns and is open at the side, which stands on the same continuous platform. The drawings by Melchior Comte de Vogüé, who thoroughly examined Dana for the first time in the 1860s, show the building in a completely preserved condition and inside the opening to an underground burial chamber ( hypogeum ). In a photograph by Gertrude Bell from March 1905, three of the four columns are upright. They have Corinthian capitals moving in the wind . Today two columns with an architrave above and three stone beams of the canopy are still preserved.
The Greek mausoleum of Halicarnassus is considered to be the original form of the funerary monument with a pyramid roof . In the area of the Dead Cities it was a rare design for a stately family grave. In Kyrrhos in the north near the Turkish border, a hexagonal tower tomb with a pyramid roof from the Roman period of the 2nd or 3rd century has been preserved. Two other such grave structures with a square floor plan in the Jebel Zawiye area are in al-Bara and one each in Ba'uda and Khirbet Hass. The first three are late forms from the 6th century. In contrast to the closed tower tombs in the south, in the northern area of the Dead Cities, where the cult of the pillar saints had its center, open pillar pavilions were common in early Byzantine times as markings for the underground burial chambers.
Nearby on the eastern edge of the village is the grave of the Olympians , a four-column canopy grave , which Howard Crosby Butler dated around 1900 to the 3rd or 4th century.
About 500 meters to the north are very well-preserved ruins, which may have belonged to a monastery and which bear the frequently occurring Arabic name Qasr al-Banat ("girl's castle"). The main building, which stands upright at a height of three stories, has a two-story row of arcades made of massive square pillars on the southern long side . On the eastern side of the gable, the building is extended by a small square prayer room , corresponding to the apse on a church . The complex in an overall strict, simple style stands free on a flat hill. Butler thought the building was more like an inn with perhaps a small prayer room attached. Traces of a church can be seen from the 6th century .
literature
- Frank Rainer Scheck, Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Cologne 1998, p. 313, ISBN 3770113373
- Ross Burns: Monuments of Syria. A Historical Guide. IB Tauris, London / New York 1992, p. 108
Web links
- Gertrude Bell Archive, Photoghraphs. Photograph by Gertrude Bell, March 1905. Dana (B 225)
- worldofstock.com Photo of the funerary pyramid
- naturales.wordpress.com Photos from Qasr al-Banat
Individual evidence
- ^ Warwick Ball: Rome in the East. The Transformation of an Empire. Routledge, London / New York 2000, p. 363, ISBN 0-415-11376-8
- ↑ Christine Strube ( The "Dead Cities". City and Country in Northern Syria during Late Antiquity. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1996, ISBN 3805318405 ) states the end of the 5th century. The tower tomb is shown on the cover