The Synagogue of Dura Europos

A fresco from the famous Dura Europos Synagogue representing a niche designating the direction of Jerusalem and surmounted by an entablature featuring, from left to right, the following themes from the Torah:

1. A menorah. 

2. The Temple of Solomon.

3. Abraham in the process of immolating Isaac. 

Dura Europos is a Hellenistic city erected in 303 B.C. and destroyed by the Sassanids in 256 C.E. Its ruins are located south of the Euphrates River and northwest of abū Kamāl near the modern village of aṣ-Ṣāliḥīyyā. A collaborative effort of Yale University and the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres led to the excavation of the above synagogue in the first half of the twentieth century. The edifice was probably constructed in the year 250 C.E., shortly before the fall of the city. It was restored and reassembled at the National Museum of Damascus in 1936. The archaeological site fell to the humanoid hordes known as the Islamic State in 2014 to be looted and ravaged in yet another orgy of modern madness.