Page 4 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

PREFACE

book is the product of five visits to Urfa—in 1952, 1956, 1959,
T to the persons and institutions whose help made here my gratitude
I
is with
pleasure that
1961, and
1966. It
express
fruit-
visits
those
enjoyable:
ful
and
the
the
Ministry
Ankara and its courteous officials, Turkish Department of of Antiquities at
representatives
the
local
of Education, and the staff of the newly-erected museum at Urfa; the British
Institute of Archaeology at Ankara under whose auspices my researches were
conducted, its former Directors, Professor Seton Lloyd and Professor Michael
Gough, and its staff, notably Mr. F. de la Grange; the Central Research Fund
of the University of London, the Pilgrim Trust fund administered by the
British Academy, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, all of which
contributed generously towards the expenses of various expeditions; the com-
panions whose friendship stood the test of the Anatolian summer, Professor
Donald Strong and Dr. Michael Ballance, Mr. Arthur North, Dr. Ge"za
Fehervari, and above all, the late Professor Storm Rice whose brilliant talents
and whose enthusiasm on my first three visits to Urfa converted the remains
of the past into the living experience of the present. To my colleagues who
have allowed me to exploit their great knowledge, Professor C. J. Dowsett,
Dr. D. N. MacKenzie, Dr. V. L. Manage, Professor H. W. F. Saggs and
Professor E. Ullendorff, I am deeply indebted. No less a tribute should be paid
to my predecessors in the study of the history of Edessa, both at the desk and
in the field, without whose scholarly labours and integrity this work could not
have been written, particularly Pognon, Sachau, and Cyril Moss—but espec-
ially Rubens Duval whose Histoire d'fidesse remains a model of erudition;
if the present volume in some measure supersedes it, this derives from the
security in which the student can pursue his enquiries in modern Turkey.
The plans of Urfa were prepared by Mr. Arthur North during a survey of
the city in 1959; they have been revised in the light of information I obtained
on later visits and were then redrawn by Mr. A. F. de Souza. The coloured
reproductions of the mosaics—based upon my own rubbings and photographs
on the site—are the work of Mrs. Seton Lloyd, and appear here by kind
permission of Messrs. Thames & Hudson. My debt to the patience and the
remarkable skill of the staff of the Clarendon Press can be measured only by
those authors who have had the good fortune to entrust a typescript to their
capable hands and who are the envy of their confreres in the academic
world.
My last word of thanks is directed to the successive Valis and Mayors and,

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