Books in Brief

The Discovery of Dura-Europos

Clark Hopkins, edited by Bernard Goldman (Yale University Press, 1979) $19.95.

“Once, when I was involved in a train wreck, I had no recollection of the moment between the shock when I was thrown from my seat and when I began to pick myself up from the bottom of the overturned car. So it was at Dura. All I can remember is the sudden shock and then the astonishment, the disbelief ….” Clark Hopkins’ 1932 attack of vertigo was the result of the discovery of the now-famous paintings of the synagogue at Dura-Europos in Syria.

The previous season Hopkins had located a large room on the west side of the ruined city, and determined that its walls had been painted; workmen had removed the fill except for the last foot of earth covering the surfaces on which—they hoped—something might still be preserved.