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This essay reconsiders the identifications and interpretations of two of the paintings from the Dura-Europos baptistery: a woman at a well on the southern wall and the procession of women on the eastern and northern walls. Previously unheralded artistic and textual comparanda provide support for alternative identifications of the baptistery's female figures. This essay offers new reasons why the woman at a well could be interpreted as the Virgin Mary, and the procession of women could be interpreted as the wise and foolish virgins of Jesus' parable. In the end, though, it will provide rationales for polysemic interpretations of these figures.
In 1931, a team of archaeologists discovered the earliest securely dateable Christian church: a third-century "house church" in Syria. In the fortified military town of Dura-Europos, situated on what was then the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, the Christian building was in use for several decades of the third century before being intentionally buried by the Romans to build a rampart against the invading Persians.1 The misfortune of the Roman garrison-it was defeated in that battle-was good fortune for modern scholars. Soon after its discovery, this "Pompeii of the Syrian desert" became widely celebrated. The surviving wall paintings from the baptistery, which are among the earliest Christian art from anywhere, were brought to the United States and installed in the Yale University Art Gallery.2 Over time a consensus formed about the baptistery's interpretation- a consensus solidified by Carl Kraeling's archaeological report of 1967.3 The art became appropriately famous to scholars of early Christianity, but since that final report, there has been only sparse criticism of Kraeling's main conclusions. When the art was removed from its gallery in the late 1970s, being deemed materially unfit for further display, critical reflection on the consensus views continued to fade away. Less than fifty years after it was unearthed, the baptistery seemed to have been reburied.
Some of the antiquities from Dura-Europos have recently been on display again, and scholarship has advanced through two exhibition catalogs.4 The present essay will build on current research with respect to two of the paintings: the woman at a well on the southern wall and the procession of women on the eastern and northern walls. The interpretation of these two...