PALMYRA

Palmyra, the “place of palms,” the Roman version of Tadmor, the old Semitic name, is located at an oasis in the Syrian desert. Although occupied since prehistoric times, its early settlements are poorly known. The city’s great prosperity and most surviving architecture date from the late Hellenistic period to the late third century AD. Especially in the second and third centuries, Palmyra grew rich from long-distance caravan trade, from its central position on an east-west trade route between the Mediterranean coast and the Euphrates River and Mesopotamia. Political

Figure 24.6 South Gate, Hellenistic period, Perge

Conditions in the Near East made this route important at this time. To the south, the Nabataeans, who earlier dominated trade from their capital city of Petra (in modern Jordan), were annexed by the Romans in the early second century and lost their commercial ascendancy. In addition, Palmyra was well placed between long-standing rivals, the Romans and, to the east, the Parthians, the rulers of Mesopotamia and Iran. Although the city belonged to the Romans, the Palmyrenes were Semitic. Their culture was thus a blend of local Syrian with an admixture of Mediterranean Greco-Roman elements.

The Romans took control of Palmyra some time in the first century. Hadrian visited in 129 with great celebration. The most dramatic episode in the city’s history occurred in the later third century. After the Sassanian Persians (the successors of the Parthians) defeated and captured the Roman emperor Valerian at Edessa in 260, Roman rule in Syria seemed to crumble. A Palmyrene tribal leader, Odainat (Odaenathus, in Latin), stepped into the gap to protect his city’s interests. He declared himself king of Palmyra, although remaining nominally a vassal of Rome. Acting as Rome’s regional ally, he consolidated his position with victories over the Sassanians. His success was short-lived: in 267 he was assassinated. His widow, Bat Zabbai (better known as Zenobia),

Figure 24.7 North nym-phaeum (reconstruction), Perge

Figure 24.8 North nymphaeum, Perge

Took charge as regent for her infant son, and quickly put into motion an ambitious program of conquest. Her armies captured Egypt and marched into Asia Minor. Then she proclaimed her son Augustus, that is, a ruler independent of Rome. At this the Romans finally reacted. In 272, the emperor Aurelian attacked and captured Palmyra, but spared the city. Zenobia, by most accounts, was taken to Rome and displayed to the crowd in Aurelian’s triumphal procession; she spent the rest of her life in comfortable detention in Tivoli, outside Rome. Soon after Aurelian’s victory, the Palmyrenes massacred the occupying garrison; in revenge, the Romans sacked the city. The city never recovered from this blow.

Palmyra is an extremely evocative site. The warm colored, intricately carved classical architecture of this abandoned oasis city spreads out in the desert sands at the foot of a bare mountain (Figure 24.9). From the seventeenth century, western travelers began to visit and write about the ruins. Systematic exploration began in the late nineteenth century with a Russian team; German, French, Swiss, Polish, and Syrian researchers have followed.

The architecture of Palmyra is, in general, Greco-Roman, but modifications were made by this Semitic people with their own gods and their own customs. The main colonnaded street, with its monumental arched gateway and tetrapylon, is firmly Roman; so too is the theater. Colonnaded streets, gateways and theaters are architectural forms fulfilling functions found throughout the Roman world, so the Roman architectural style comes as no surprise. Different in style, in contrast, are temples and tombs, building types that reflect local religious practices.

The major temple at Palmyra was consecrated to the Semitic god Bel. The cult on this site must antedate the temple of the Roman period, for the orientation of the precinct and temple differs from that of the central colonnaded street and the rough grid plan of the city proper. Built in the first half of the first century, dedicated in 32, the Temple of Bel shows a remarkable synthesis of Near Eastern and Greco-Roman forms (Figures 24.10 and 24.11). From the outside,

Figure 24.9 City plan, Palmyra

The temple follows the Classical tradition. It lies inside a large precinct lined by porticoes. It is rectangular, oriented north-south, and surrounded by a colonnade of the typical Roman sort. Inside the colonnade, the exterior north and south walls of the cella are decorated with attached Ionic columns.

Other features of the temple, especially its interior plan, differ significantly from standard Greek and Roman practice. Stone beams connecting the top of the cella walls with the outer colonnade, the supports for the roofing, were decorated with relief sculpture; subjects include

Figure 24.11 Temple of Bel, Palmyra. View from the south-east

Local gods with worshippers, and a procession of priests and veiled women with a camel carrying a small shrine. From a flight of steps on the west, on the long side, one enters the temple by stepping into a central hall, lit by two pairs of windows cut high in the two long walls. To the north and the south lie two small rooms reachable by broad steps, the shrines of Bel and other local gods. In three corners of the building, stairwells led up to rooftop terraces, another feature not seen in the standard Roman temple.

Burials were made in towers solidly built of stone masonry and located in the desert west of the city. The tower tombs, of which more than 150 are known, were ten stories high, with long rectangular niches projecting lengthwise back from the central room in which the body would be placed. The opening would be blocked by a stone plaque with a sculpted bust of the deceased, his or her name carved in the local Aramaic language. Many of these sculpted plaques have survived. Their style is stiff, hieratic; they display the local conventions favored by this city on the fringes of the empire, not the classic realism of standard Roman portraits.