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Ana on the Euphrates in the Roman Period

The current excavations taking place on the island of Ana in the Euphrates have naturally focused attention on the available literary references. The Islamic sources are especially rich and to some extent we are relatively well-served for the classical period too, not least from the graphic account provided by Ammianus Marcellinus of the Emperor Julian's attack on the island fortress in A.D. 363. It is clear from that account that the city was a Persian stronghold. Hence the presence of Anatha in the late fourth century Notitia Dignitatum must either be an anachronism or, more likely, an homonymous site: everything we know of the location of the Roman military installations in Mesopotamia and Syria after the peace concluded by Jovian in 363 militates against so advanced a post well down-stream from Dura Europus which itself was never re-occupied after the mid-third century sack. What then was the status of Ana/Anatha in the earlier centuries of the Roman Empire? Apart from the reference in an unknown context in a fragment of Arrian relating to Trajan's Parthian War with the implication—as one would expect—that it was then Parthian, the literature is silent until the campaign of Julian. Fortunately we have some interesting epigraphic references which offer a clue.