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→Rise of Multiculturalism
Perhaps one good example of how multicultural ideas began to persist and penetrate societies can be found in the ancient city of Dura Europos, found in modern day eastern Syria. While this region might be known for strife and ravages created by ISIS today, the reality was very different in the 1 century CE. During that time, Dura Europos was a thriving small city that had such languages as Latin, Greek, Syriac, Persian, and others. The many temples and places of worship represented gods across Europe, the Near East, and India, reflecting perhaps the diversity of people found in the city. Cultures also began to influence each other. For instance, one famous find in the city is a synagogue with beautiful style frescoes. However, many of these frescoes were influenced or mixed Near East styles with classical art, showing that cultures began to borrow ideas from each other. This is something we call as artistic syncretism (Figure 5).<ref>For more information on how Classical art influences and blends with Near Eastern art and styles, including in religion, see: Reid, P. V. 1987. Readings in Western religious thought. New York: Paulist Press.</ref> What was happening was not bad copies of Classical art in the Near East, but art began to now be influenced by local cultures mixed with new populations who had come to the region, including Greeks and Romans.
Given this rise of multiculturalism, it is perhaps not surprising that when we do get the rise of Christianity and Judaism, religions that were universal and monotheistic, they seem to have been accepted or tolerated in many areas of the Near East ruled by Iranian dynasties, such as the Parthians and Sasanians, by then had a long experience with multiple cultural groups and beliefs. These groups recognized, perhaps, the benefits of keeping a united state through the tolerance to different groups, even those that emphasized a narrower worldview of salvation that Rome found so threatening. <ref> For information on religious tolerance in the Parthian and Sasanian periods, see: Curtis, John, Vladimir Grigorʹevich Lukonin, and British Museum, eds. 2000. Mesopotamia and Iran in the Parthian and Sasanian Periods: Rejection and Revival C. 238 BC-AD 642: Proceedings of a Seminar in Memory of Vladimir G. Lukonin ; Funded by a Gift from Raymond and Beverly Sackler. London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press.</ref>While this was never a smooth process, and persecutions against groups did exist, we see that attitudes towards multiple cultures allowed also the freedom to develop new thoughts and ideas, giving way to the rise of very different and new religions that attempt to bond people even closer through common and universal faiths.
[[File:4496698964 ed80712436 b.jpg|thumbnail|Figure 3. Darius I depicted as Pharaoh in Egypt.]]
