Page 20 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

THE SELEUCID PERIOD 7

by which Orhay was to achieve renown—and this is the name by which it
will be called henceforward in the present work.1
We may conjecture the appearance of the Mesopotamian Edessa in the
Seleucid period. Roman coins carry a portrait of the city goddess seated on a
mound with the figure of a river deity swimming at her feet. The theme is a
hackneyed one and it was shared by Edessa with neighbouring cities. She
was none the less well entitled to it as her emblem, and doubtless from an
early time. We have observed that the Citadel mount and the river and
springs and pools were prominent features of the city.
On these natural features was superimposed a scheme of town planning
whose shape seems to be preserved to the present day. With the contours of
the ground narrowly confined between the foothills and the river-bed, this
could scarcely have been otherwise.2 The engineers of the Byzantine Em-
peror Justinian, it is true, carried out important alterations to the course of
the river to the north and west of the city, but with one exception this still
followed the lines of the hills and valley bed.3 The walls to the north and
west could not but run alongside the wadi; to the south they included the
springs and pools necessary for the supply of water. Sluices and river gates
in the west admitted the river, which flowed out of the city into the plain
through sluices and river gates in the east. There were four road gates, sited,
with fair precision, at the four cardinal points of the compass. These con-
tinued in use, though under different names at different epochs, until the
twelfth century—three of them until the present time.4 The defences pro-
bably consisted of both an outer and an inner wall; in Byzantine times, we
are told that in the intervening space was built a covered colonnade, and the
inner wall must therefore have already been constructed. As in other cities
in the East designed under the Seleucids, the main streets ran in straight
transverse lines—north-south and east-west, and they have largely survived
until modern times.
Only part of the Citadel mount was included within the walls in Seleucid
times. This was rightly regarded as a defect in the city's defences by the
Byzantines, and they enlarged the circuit of the walls to include the whole
hill.5 The Citadel was presumably the residence of the Seleucid governor, as
later it was of the kings of Edessa. Its present complex covers an area of

of a modern scholar that the name Edessa interest. The town was given, we are told, a
is a distortion of Syriac Hadatta, or the new strong and high wall, with four towers—the
(city); this is nowhere attested in records, and author adds that a little of one of them still
presents serious philological difficulty. remained in his time—and 'four splendid and
1 In Syriac, however, the city continued to fortified citadels at the four corners of the city',
be called Orhay; the name Edessa occurs only In addition, palaces, temples, and markets
rarely in Syriac chronicles, and usually under were provided, and a carefully planned water
the influence of Greek. supply ensured adequate irrigation.
z An idealized description of the building 3 See p. 187 below. 4 Pis. 5 a, b> 6.
of Edessa by Seleucus in a Syriac chronicle is of s See p. 188 below and PI. 40.

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