Priene synagogue
Coordinates: 37 ° 39 ′ 30.8 ″ N , 27 ° 17 ′ 44.4 ″ E
The synagogue of Priene probably dates to the second century AD. At that time, Priene was only an insignificant provincial town. The synagogue was discovered during the excavations from 1895 to 1898 by Theodor Wiegand and Hans Schrader . The meeting room was initially mistaken for a Christian church. Only later did the view prevail that it was the remains of a former synagogue. The original building was a residential building, presumably with shop space, from the Hellenistic period, which had been converted into a synagogue with considerable effort.
The actual assembly room of the synagogue was 10 × 14 m in size with a bench on the north side. On the east side there was a niche that may have served as a Torah shrine . There was a larger anteroom on the west side. The assembly room was once supported by two rows of columns, forming a basilica. Only the remains of a column were found during the excavations. In the north and east there were various smaller rooms of unknown function, but which were probably also used by the Jewish community.
Various finds support the interpretation as a synagogue: A rough relief shows the depiction of a menorah , on another relief the Jewish symbols Etrog (citrus fruit), Shofar (horn) and Lulav (palm branch) are depicted, and above the Torah shrine there is an incised image of a another menorah. There was also a marble basin in the synagogue, which was probably used as a ritual bath .
literature
- Hans Schrader, Theodor Wiegand: Priene. Results of the excavations and investigations in the years 1895–1898. Berlin 1904, pp. 480-481. ( Full text . Photos and site plans as digital copies).
- Carsten Claussen: Assembly, community, synagogue, the Hellenistic-Jewish environment of early Christian communities , Göttingen 1999, pp. 194–195.
- Nadine Burkhardt, Mark Wilson: The Late Antique Synagogue in Priene. Its History, Architecture, and Context . In: Gephyra 10, 2013, pp. 169–199 ( digitized version ).