Amida: A New City on the Boundaries

Amida (now known as Diyarbakır) is a city of geographical and chronological boundaries. Set on the Roman-Persian limes, it may have been (re)founded on two occasions during Late Antiquity: a first time by Constantius II who, according to Syriac authors cherished it above any other city of his empire, and shortly after by Valens, if we are to go by the only Latin inscription found on the site. It was therefore both one of the latest and one of the most recent cities. Likewise, following the loss of Nisibis in 363, it became the most eastern Roman city of the Empire.

Thus, as we are bound to the period and space of ancient Rome, the nature of the site questions the implementation of norms, and the deviations from norms. Here, its border location meant that Amida was a window case for the Roman world, a weapon of armed Romanisation which, therefore, showed all that Rome had retained, and wished to display, of its millennial experience.

Recent work has revealed that the urban structure stems from an ‘etrusco ritu’ plan, compliant with the canons of classic Roman influence, to such an extent that it seems to be an exact replica of a groma design. Yet this demonstration swayed between measure and excess, particularly when the city was equipped with the most formidable black basalt wall of the Middle-East.

The dynamics of this policy can also be deduced from the hapax formed by the classicising development of late Upper-Mesopotamian art, in particular the Christian art of Tur’Abdin, whose characteristics continue to astonish the scientific community. Recent studies have demonstrated that certain architectural cartoons stem from the observation of Amida’s monuments.