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Damascus: from the Fall of Persia to the Roman Conquest

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Damascus: from the Fall of Persia to the Roman Conquest Dead Sea Discoveries 25 (2018) 299–318 brill.com/dsd Damascus: From the Fall of Persia to the Roman Conquest Paul J. Kosmin Harvard University [email protected] Abstract This contribution aims to provide an outline of the political dynamics, cultural devel- opments, and, ultimately, historical semantics of the city of Damascus for the circle(s) of its eponymous Document. Keywords Damascus – Seleucid empire – Ptolemaic empire – Damascus Document – urbanism 1 Introduction Damascus appears seven times in the Document that bears its name. “The land -is named as the dwelling of the “returners” or “con (ארץ דמשק) ”of Damascus from the land of Judah (CD 6:5). Four ( שבי ישראל) verts” or “penitents” of Israel times, “the land of Damascus” is the site where a new covenant was established or entered into (CD 6:19, 8:21, 19:33‒34, and 20:12). Finally, Damascus appears with reference to two biblical passages: in allusion to Amos 5:26‒27a—“I will exile the tents of your king and the foundation of your images beyond the tents ;(as the destination of displacement (CD 7:15—”(מאהלי דמשק) of Damascus and in an interpretation of Numbers 24:17—“A star has left Jacob, a staff has risen from Israel”—the star is identified as “the Interpreter of the Law who will CD 7:18‒20). The latter use is also) ”(דורש התורה הבא דמשק) come to Damascus attested in the Qumran manuscript 4Q266 3 iii 20. Damascus is the only loca- tion outside Israel or Judah to be mentioned in this Document; no other such references to the city are found in the extant Dead Sea Scrolls. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/15685179-12341482Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 07:59:49AM via free access 300 Kosmin The Syrian city’s prominence within this one text has been understood in various ways. On the basis of internal scriptural allusion, an influential strand of scholarship has taken the Document’s “Damascus” and “the land of Damascus” to be a cipher for Babylonia and the Babylonian exile.1 Others have identified “the land of Damascus” as a textual symbol for Qumran itself, on the basis of a tradition that interpreted Damascus as the site of God’s eschatologi- cal sanctuary.2 Indeed, it has also been claimed, implausibly, that “the land of Damascus” was employed as a geopolitical label for the Nabatean kingdom, and so a term that could at certain moments include Qumran and the shores of the Dead Sea.3 Finally, “Damascus” and “the land of Damascus” have been taken in their plain sense, with the Document recounting a real, historically- situated migration to and community formation within the ancient Syrian city and its chōra.4 With a text as allusive and polyvalent as the Damascus Document, it is not possible to determine finally whether “Damascus” stands for Babylon, Qumran, or, indeed, Damascus. Yet, the actual city and region of Damascus have been entirely missing from scholarly analysis. Damascus was a real place, a near neighbor to the north, that occupied a significant and increasingly urgent role in the political and cultural life of third- to first-century BCE Judea. Even if the 1 See, e.g., Stephen Hultgren, From the Damascus Covenant to the Covenant of the Community: Literary, Historical, and Theological Studies in the Dead Sea Scrolls, STDJ 66 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 96–108; Philip Davies, The Damascus Covenant: An Interpretation of the “Damascus Document,” JSOTSS 25 (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1983), 122–23; Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, “The Essenes and their History,” RB 81 (1974): 215–44; Annie Jaubert, “Le pays de Damas,” RB 65 (1958): 214–48 (225–34); Isaac Rabinowitz, “A Reconsideration of ‘Damascus’ and ‘390 Years’ in the ‘Damascus’ (‘Zadokite’) Fragments,” JBL 73 (1954): 11–35. 2 See, e.g., Geza Vermes, Scripture and Tradition in Judaism: Haggadic Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1973), 43–49, and Jaubert, “Le pays,” 234–35. 3 Robert North, “The Damascus of Qumran Geography,” PEQ 86 (1955): 34–47. This is very un- likely: while it is true that the Nabatean king Aretas III briefly occupied Damascus, perhaps at the request of its citizens, this rule extended only from 83/2 to 72/1 BCE, with possible interruptions (see below); the city was not claimed again even when opportunity permitted with the retreat of Tigranes II. It is highly unlikely that the name of a city so briefly dominat- ed and at a political periphery transferred to all the territory of a long-established kingdom by now centered at Petra. 4 Joseph Baumgarten, Qumran Cave 4. XIII: The Damascus Document (4Q266–273), DJD 18 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 9–10; Samuel Iwry, “The Exegetical Method of the Damascus Document Reconsidered”, in Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site, ed. Michael Wise, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 722 (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994), 329–38. See also Ben Zion Wacholder, The New Damascus Document: The Midrash on the Eschatological Torah of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Reconstruction, Translation, and Commentary, STDJ 56 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 10, 158–59, 229, 237–38, who considers “Damascus” as Damascus but the migration as a prediction. Dead Sea DiscoveriesDownloaded 25 from (2018) Brill.com10/04/2021 299–318 07:59:49AM via free access Damascus: From the Fall of Persia to the Roman Conquest 301 Document’s “Damascus” were but a fictional label or a future destination, the historical developments of the contemporary city gave the term a wider seman- tic force. This is in no way to dismiss the role of biblical and prophetic associa- tions; rather, it is to suggest an additional range of meanings and concerns that were present to the authors and audience of the Damascus Document, even as the total shipwreck of Hellenistic historiography and the disciplinary reflexes of biblical studies have led to their systematic overshadowing. Since the earliest copy of the Damascus Document (4Q266) (with mention at 3 iii 20) dates to the first half or the middle of the first century BCE,5 דמשק of I will examine the history of Damascus down to the Roman provincialization of Syria in 64/3 BCE. The following contribution aims to provide an outline of the political dynamics, cultural developments, and, ultimately, historical se- mantics of the city of Damascus for the circle(s) of its eponymous Document. It must be acknowledged that our evidence is extremely exiguous, amounting to not much more than a few brief references in classical texts, especially geog- raphers and historians paraphrasing now-lost Hellenistic histories, a couple of relevant papyri or inscriptions, and coins. The history of Damascus, from the fall of the Achaemenid empire to the Roman conquest, can be understood as the combined effect of two fundamen- tal conditions, one geographical—oasis urbanism—and the other political— imperial conflict. 2 Oasis Urbanism Much of the character and dynamics of Hellenistic, indeed, of pre-modern Damascus derive from its intersectional location between the Levantine coast- al system and the Syrian desert (see Map 1). The Antilebanon mountain range, looming above Damascus to its west, cuts the city off from easy access to the Mediterranean Sea and the Phoenician littoral; Damascus would never enjoy substantial maritime interests nor a share in the developing cultural koinē of the Hellenized Phoenician world. Instead, the Barada river (Abana in the Bible, Chrysorhoas to the Greeks) channeled the mountain’s trapped rain and snowmelt eastward, down into the gentle plain of Damascus, making it the best-watered of all the inland Levantine cities. Significant investment in an irri- gation infrastructure—canals, wells, and water-lifting technology—formed the 5 Baumgarten, The Damascus Document, 266. Dead Sea Discoveries 25 (2018) 299–318 Downloaded from Brill.com10/04/2021 07:59:49AM via free access 302 Kosmin Map 1 The geographical setting of Damascus Adapted from Burns, Damascus, xvii, Fig. 0.2, by the Harvard Map Collection extensive, miraculously fertile Ghouta oasis to the city’s east.6 The Ghouta’s or- chards and gardens were famed across west Asia and the wider Mediterranean: the Peripatetic philosopher and botanist Theophrastus, for instance, noted that the Damascene terebinth was far taller and more handsome than that of Macedonia or the Troad;7 plums came to be called damaskēna in the Greek- speaking Mediterranean after the city’s favored fruit.8 All Damascene history takes place within this embrace of agricultural abundance, a hypertrophy cel- ebrated most brilliantly in the paradisiacal visions of the Umayyad mosque’s mosaic facade. An Imperial-period inscription from Harran el-Awamid, some forty kilometers east of the city, commemorates local aristocrats hunting 6 Thomas Weber, “‘Damaskòs Pólis Epísēmos’: Hellenistische, römische und byzantinische Bauwerke in Damaskus aus der Sicht griechischer und lateinischer Schriftquellen,” Damaszener Mitteilungen 7 (1993): 135–76 (139–44). 7 Theophrastus, Hist. pl. 3.15.3. 8 Athenaeus, 1.49d–e, with Thomas Weber, “ΔΑΜΑΣΚΗΝΑ: Landwirtschaftliche Produkte aus der Oase von Damaskus im Spiegel griechisher und lateinischer Schriftquellen,” ZDPV 105 (1989): 151–65 (155–62). Dead Sea DiscoveriesDownloaded 25 from (2018) Brill.com10/04/2021 299–318 07:59:49AM via free access Damascus: From the Fall of Persia to the Roman Conquest 303 gazelles at the oasis’ edge,9 an activity also celebrated by the later Arab court. Sadly, the nature of the relationship between the city and oasis is little known for the Hellenistic and Roman periods: it remains unclear, for instance, where village settlements clustered, to what extent they functioned as autonomous administrative units, how irrigation was organized and maintained, and in what ways modes of exploitation and land ownership changed.
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