Funerary portraits in Palmyra
Syria - 2,000 years ago
Palmyra
Located in the north-western Syrian desert, the Palmyra oasis stands at the centre of several desert trails. Mentioned in textual sources as early as the 2nd millennium BCE, it came to prominence in the Greek-Roman period and was later inextricably linked to Queen Zenobia.
Temple of Bel, 1995. Palmyra
Palmyra, also called Tadmor, has existed at least since the 19th century BCE. Although remains from this period have not been found by archaeologists, epigraphic sources reveal that it was an oasis on the border between two large kingdoms: Mari and Qatna.
A city of the Roman Empire
Around 19 BCE, Palmyra was made part of the Roman Empire and belonged to the province of Syria. It adopted the material resources of a Roman city. Its centre was composed of public buildings, including a marketplace, colonnaded street, temples, theatre and baths.
An eastern city
Despite the clear Roman influences on Palmyra, its architecture bears the hallmark of certain Near Eastern practices. The temple of Bel is a good example of this dual heritage: its peripteral plan is typically Roman, but its entrance, to the west, and statues of deities placed in high niches opposite each other reflect local traditions.
Palmyra and Queen Zenobia
A figure closely associated with Palmyra, Zenobia was the wife of a local chief, Odaenathus. After the murder of her husband in 267 CE, she entered into conflict in 271 CE with the Roman Emperor Aurelian, as it was impossible to transfer her husband’s titles to her youngest son. Although Zenobia had a powerful army, her forces were crushed in 272. Zenobia was captured after the fall of Palmyra. The queen was taken to Rome where she was paraded in the Aurelian triumph.
Decline of Palmyra
Following the looting of the city in 272, its appeal waned: although it was rebuilt and protected by a Roman military camp, the use of an alternative land route, the silk road, led to a decline in trade with India through the Persian Gulf.
International research
The first general excavations were led by German archaeologists Otto Puchstein and Theodor Wiegand, in 1902 and 1917 respectively. In 1929, the Frenchman Henri Seyrig began intensive excavation at the site. Since 1958, Palmyra has been studied by Polish archaeologists, teams led by the Syrian Director General of Antiquities, and a French mission from 2001 to 2008 led by Christiane Delplace.
Excavations have been suspended since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011. An extensive collection of artefacts from Palmyra are conserved by the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities at the Musée du Louvre.
Learn more
- Consult the article on Palmyra in the Bibliothèques d'Orient ("Patrimoines partagés" collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France) or consult the documents.
- Visit the page devoted to Palmyra on the UNESCO website.
- Explore the online archives of the Hauts-de-Seine and vintage photographs of Palmyra by clicking on the "Images" tab.
This site builds on the Eternal Sites. From Bamiyan to Palmyra exhibition held at the Grand Palais from 14 December 2016 to 9 January 2017. This immersive exhibition explored four endangered sites using the 3D records made by Iconem.
Combating the theft and illicit trafficking of cultural property is one of the priorities of the French Ministry of Culture, which pays close attention to these issues, in line with its regulatory responsibility to control the movement of cultural property.
