Palmyra (Tadmor)

The reason for the settlement’s existence was – and is – its role as a major oasis in the middle of the desert, providing an ideal stopping place for the trading caravans plying between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. Regarding the Palmyrene and Roman city itself, there signs of enduring oriental traditions in the apparently classical architecture of the site.

Nowhere is this more striking than in the Bel Temple itself, which rests on the original pre-classical city of Tadmor. The temple follows well-attested semitic temple-types of ground plan, sitting in the centre of a large open precinct. Parallels for this can be seen at the Persian period water-shrine at the Phoenician sanctuary of Amrit and also at the recently excavated precinct adjacent to the 'Great Temple' in Petra. The temple itself has a modified tripartite plan, with the entrance on one of the long walls of the cella, but with the orientation of the three 'parts' being on the transverse axis.

Around the rim of the city, there is a necropolis with monumental tombs scattered about. The walls of a Palmyrene stone-built tomb or hypogeum, are lined with niches, which would hold the body of the deceased. A stone plaque carved in relief and bearing a likeness of the individual would seal the niche after burial. These likenesses seem to have been based around four or five types, or templates, which were then modified to better reflect the individual concerned. Often, the tombs contained the remains of several families, who would have bought or leased their plot within the tomb. Each family ‘plot’ would be presided over by the head of the family. He was often represented in an elaborate full sized sculpture surrounded by his loving family and reclining on a couch, wearing his finest outfit, holding a goblet and wearing his badge of office or social status. In the most elaborate of these tombs, a family would build a superstructure above ground, creating these so-called ‘tower tombs. Typologically, these bear some relation to earlier Phoenician tombs, which also combine a subterranean ‘hypogeum’ with a monumental superstructure. The 6th century tombs at the Phoenician city of Amrit on the Syrian coast illustrate this tradition.