Palmyra By Carol Miller

"Never put passion before principle." Sun Tzu

We were checking into the Palmyra Cham Palace Hotel, for our second trip in less than twelve months. We felt we had been here always, or never left and, as usual, I was mesmerized by the trompe d'oeil lobby, which recreates the Colonnaded Street of the ruins just east of here, and the clouds scuttling in a blue sky. Magritte clouds, in a Watteau sky. I was so engrossed I had failed to notice the group of tourists on the bench against the low wall that separates the lobby from the bar, or really pay attention to the tall, burly man with new desert boots, in pink shorts and matching pink shirt. Tomas was nodding in his direction however, so I turned and with this, heard the voice, and the Scottish accent.

Sean Connery was holding court with his wife, and a group of friends. He was nevertheless alone at the breakfast buffet the next morning and, as it happens, seated at the table next to ours. I told him how much I admired his work but he seemed unimpressed. It hardly mattered. We saw all of them, properly impressed, making their dutiful rounds of the archaeological site, later in the morning, the sun rising in the sparkling sky while the shadows, still long, added their harsh forms to the rows of pink-gold columns, the soaring porticoes, the crumbled temples.

Palmyra is one of the legendary places of the world, like Angkor or Machu Picchu or  Chichén Itzá or the Forbidden City. Nineteenth century travelers described in ink, water color or carefully chosen phrases its every detail. Like Great Zimbabwe or the Pyramids of Egypt, it is the essence of its culture. Like the Great Wall of China it seems to ramble on forever. Like the Taj Mahal it changes with the light and must be seen at dawn, at dusk, by moonlight and under the stars.

Palmyra is like many things, but it is also unlike anything else. The wind whispers through the columns, the sand drifts across the tumbled stones, camels with their lurching walk lumber along in slow motion in search of amiable tourists, and the coffee tables on the terrace of the Zenobia Hotel, on the remains of the perimeter walls overlooking the Temple of Bel Shemin, are simply outsized Corinthian capitals, rescued from the site.

There are other Roman ruins in the desert and few are lovelier or more astonishing than Gerasa (Jerash, in Jordan, to the south of here), yet Palmyra is more famous. Fame is its own magic. Palmyra, in any case is not just magic; it is also a hybrid. For Roman it became but Roman it never was.

Palmyra was, and is, in actual fact, a gift of the spring called Efqa ("Source"), that gave life to the oasis, and provides the boundless water to grow the trees, to laugh and splash and bathe the children, and wash the newly shorn wool. The name is Aramean and refers to the subterranean water that gushes from beneath the base of the Jebel Muntar, the mountain or "sky island", surrounded by desert, that dominates the city from the southwest. One of Palmyra's oldest and most traditional local deities, Yarhibol, is called "The Idol of the Source", and according to Syrian archaeologist Adnan Bounni, who explored Palmyra from 1963 to 1979, "there is no doubt that the dedication to Gad ("Fortune") is meant for him, or that during the Seleucid period he was identified with Zeus."

Residue from a lively lithics production ratifies Palmyra's strategic location, and the volcanic origin of the springs. During the Late Paleolithic the area around the present salt flats, or Mallaha, had become a great lake of brackish water but by the Neolithic, according to archaeological materials found there, settlement in the oasis was nonetheless well established, probably, says Dr. Bounni, as early as the seventh millennium. The mountains on the Palmyrene steppe and the wadis that embraced them were covered then with abundant vegetation: pines, fig trees, and terebinths, among other trees. The vast herds of oryx and gazelle have since been exterminated by hunters but sheep, goats, camels and horses came to be domesticated, and they flourished here. Lions and panthers survived until the nineteenth century. One of the gems of world art, unearthed in the Temple of Allat and currently on display at the entrance to the Palmyra Museum, portrays an enormous, and highly stylized lion, with an oryx at its feet. Today's wildlife, and scarce it is, includes wolves, jackals, foxes, hyenas, birds of prey and migratory fowl, all of them, at one time or another, deified in the sense of their accompanying human figures on votive, funerary and temple bas reliefs, sculpture and mural painting.

Yet it was the dates, miracle of the desert, that gave Palmyra, "The City of the Myriad Palms", a Greco-Roman reference to the palm trees in the oasis, its original name. In the nineteenth century B.C. an Assyrian contract found in Kultepe - the ancient city of Kanish in Cappadocia in Anatolia - makes mention of a witness in a legal case, by name Puzur-Ishtar Tadmurium: "Puzur-Ishtar of Tadmor". The name Tadmor had certainly come to be identified with the site and might have referred to the Semitic word tamr, or "date", although the Semitic root "dh-m-r", means "to protect" or "a guardhouse". The Arab poet al-Mutannabi justifiably associated "Tadmor" with damar, or "destruction", and in effect, the city on occasion was nearly obliterated by its enemies. Local tradition nevertheless referred to tatmor in the sense of "burying" or "covering". This would be consistent, says Dr. Bounni, with the hundreds of tombs in the area.

Yet Tadmor, regardless of other associations, had become synonimous with overland trade. The Mari archives mention Tadmer and its trade across the Euphrates in the time of the Amorite Hamurabi, king of Babylon, in the eighteenth century B.C. Cuneiform tablets at Meskeneh (ancient Emar), on the Euphrates, describe three Palmyrenes, presumably merchants of textiles, perfumes and medicinal plants; and bear the seal of one of them. This may be the earliest registered incidence of a Palmyrene seal impression, c. fourteenth to thirteenth century B.C. At the beginning of the eleventh century B.C. the annals of the Assyrian monarch, Tiglath-Pileser I, refer to "Tadmar in the country of Amarrú" in the report of a raid against the Arameans in the Syrian Desert. This verifies, as far as Dr. Bounni is concerned, that the population of the oasis was initially Amorite, then Aramean, and finally Arab.

By the beginning of the Hellenistic period, following Alexander's conquest of Syria and the end of Darius' Persian Empire in 331 B.C., Palmyra (Tadmor) constituted a totally Arab principality. When the Egyptian king Ptolemy IV defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus III, the latter had been supported by an Arab chieftain, the Palmyrene Zabdibelos, who had raised for the purpose an army of ten thousand desert fighters.

The Alexandrian historian Appian further reports that in the autumn of 41 B.C. Antoninus "sent his cavalry to plunder Arabian Palmyra", for it was well known, adds geographer-historian Strabo, "that the merchants there transported goods from China, Persia, India and Arabia, bound for the voracious markets of Rome, for in their hunger for luxury - gems, rare essences, leather, rugs, wild beasts, eunuchs, ivory, ebony, sandalwood, indigo, pearls, onyx, amethyst, carbuncle, diamonds, iron products, cosmetics, wine, metals, purple (murex), pepper and other spices -- the Romans import more from Syria and India than any other country except Spain." As for silk, both raw and manufactured, the Romans, says Strabo, thought it was a vegetable product combed from trees and valued it at its weight in gold.

What had been a Greek political structure, with an effective Senate and an Assembly of the People, by the first century A.D. had been transformed into a Roman protectorate, with a Legate of the Province. The Palmyrenes, meantime, in addition to trade goods, kept the Empire supplied with detachments of foot soldiers, horsemen and camel corps. Pliny the Elder, in A.D. 77, described Palmyra as "densely populated, and a noble city, given its location, the richness of the soil and the charm of its waters. The oasis, especially delightful with its misshapen mud-brick walls and slanted light, in addition to its date palms, offers half a million olive trees and countless pomegranate. Beyond the oasis, on every side, the desert stretches, so Nature isolates her from the rest of the world."

Hadrian visited Palmyra c. 129 and declared a "Free City" called "Hadriana Palmyra". With this he returned power, and the right to determine taxes, budget and finance, to the Senate and the Assembly, but a "Curator", appointed directly by the Emperor, exercised financial control. He was supported by the local militia, with its celebrated archers, to ensure order in the city and protection for the caravans. While the second century became Palmyra's "golden age", the Emperor had no intention, in the final analysis, of letting trade and commerce slip from Roman control.

Palmyra, by now, had assumed the commercial leadership formerly enjoyed by Petra, another legendary site, but which in 106 A.D. had been annexed, not profitably at all, to the Roman Empire. Palmyra's major temples, including Bel (initially the Temple of the Sun), Nabu, Bel Shemin and Allat, were enlarged, improved or completed. The agora was also extended. An unrivalled Colonnaded Street, the largest in the empire, with 1454 columns, was lengthened to roughly two thousand meters, and was flanked by shaded porticoes. It was left unpaved, however, since the camel caravans had access to the city center.

The dynasty of Septimus Severus (193-235 A.D.), with its Syrian connections, encouraged Palmyra's thriving economy. The Emperor had married Julia Domna, daughter of the prince-priest of Emesa (Homs). Their son, Caracalla (211-217) gave both Emesa and Palmyra status as a Roman Colony, and jus italicum, which exempted them from taxation. Palmyra's expansion during this period included the completion of the theater, and the Colonnaded Street up to the entrance to the Temple of Bel; and at the juncture of the new street and the old, not far from the Temple of Nabu, a colossal triumphal arch on a triangular ground plan, one of the masterpieces of conspicuous architecture in the Near East.

Numerous new tombs appeared, as well, many with temple façades, their orgy of construction fueled by a period of unparalled privilege and prosperity. Funerary tower tombs became not only taller, but also more lavish in their interior art and decoration. The underground tombs called hypogaeum became, in effect, subterranean chapels. One we visited was particularly worthy of attention. The stairway leading down to the underground entrance is traversed, indifferent to the spirits of the deceased in the chamber, by the oil pipeline from Iraq.

Still patent, in all these artistic expressions - civil, symbolic, religious, official -- was the original, rustic Palmyrene style, with its Buddhist presence from Alexander's conquests in Gandhara (Bactria, Sogdiana and Ferghana), in which larger figures are hierarchically more important, or older in age, than the smaller, and the drapery of the clothing, in typically Palmyrene textiles, defines movement and body contours.

Then the style shifted subtly to the Greco-Parthian influence from Babylon, from Doura Europos and from Seleucia-on-the-Tigris. Subjects, especially in funerary pieces, are often reclining in Oriental postures, but facial expression - either on full figure or busts, in frontal or three-quarter view - are representational, almost portraiture, with elaborate hair curls and lavish jewelry, though stylized, given to patterns or templates. They are disquieting, realistic without really being so, almost caricature, but alarmingly prolific. Palmyrenes were apparently vain and self-obsessed, in this world and the next. Finally, however, by the climax of Roman cultural penetration, art was unavoidably infiltrated by the fashionable influences of Antioch and the West.

When the Sassanids replaced the Parthians, however, as the dominant hegemony in the East, Palmyra's preeminence as a caravan crossroads, thus its prosperity, was seriously threatened. Occupation of the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates cut off access to the Persian Gulf so the caravan traffic moved northward. Palmyra took the side of Rome, both politically and militarily, against the Sassanids, but as Rome was perceptibly in decline, and the Empire's power waning, Palmyra's position was one of increasing independence and self-sufficiency, supported in the prominence of a local Arab rash Tadmor, or "Prince of Palmyra".

This period, which would determine the rest of Palmyra's history, began with Hairan, c. 251 A.D., son of Odainat, founder of the dynasty, whose nobility had been granted by Septimus Severus. Hairan's son was also named Odainat, Latinized as Odinatus, mentioned as early as 258 as clarissimus consularis, and appointed provincial governor by the Emperor Valerian. Soon after this event, however, the Sassanian Shapur or Sapor I, King of Persia, defeated and captured Valerian.

Odainat, with his well-disciplined Palmyrene desert corps, intercepted Sapor's retreat to his capital in Ctesiphon, on the Euphrates, and as Homer might have described it, "snatched Valerian from the jaws of disaster". The Emperor's dramatic rescue was hailed publicly as a triumph for Rome, but privately it was decried as Rome's weakness, which had become a threat to the stability of the eastern provinces.

Valerian was replaced by Gallienus, who nevertheless, in gratitude, proclaimed Odainat dux Romanorum: "Commander in Chief of the Armies of the East", "Corrector of the Entire East", and even Imperator. Odainat, as further embellishment, proclaimed himself "King of Kings" or "King of the World", a favored Oriental royal title.

Odainat, according to historical accounts, in fact defended his titles admirably, procured the interests of Palmyra without sacrificing Rome's, and reinstated the caravan traffic along the Euphrates, until he and Herodianos, the Crown Prince, were assassinated by a cousin, Maeonius, who proclaimed himself emperor, until he, in turn, was murdered, possibly by Odainat's widow, who assumed power as regent for their son, Wahballat.

And here begins one of history's great legends. If Queen Zenobia Septimia claimed ascendance from Cleopatra, and spoke Egyptian fluently, she certainly shared with the mythic Ptolemaic monarch the will and the wiles of mind, body and spirit. Zenobia was educated, well versed in history and politics. She wrote a history of the East. She was a linguist. In addition to Egyptian she spoke Aramaic, Greek, Syriac and Latin. Her confidents included Paul of Samosatha, Bishop of Antioch, and the Greek philosopher Longinus. According to tradition she was a great equestrienne, to the extent of riding regularly with her cavalry, and an implacable disciplinarian, who resolutely marched with her infantry. She dressed in luxurious purple, her head shielded by a helmet, and addressed the crowds, says fifth century Greek historian Zosimus, as an emperor might. "She had pale skin, black eyes, and beautiful teeth as white as pearls. She was considered the most noble and the most beautiful woman in the Orient."

While Queen Zenobia's image appeared beside that of her son on coins, milestones and papyrus or parchment documents, she carried out her role with zeal and verve, in the true spirit of the iconoclast. Her troops, attempting - or so she claimed-- to guarantee new trade routes, were engaged in Anatolia and reached the Bosporus in Chalcedonia, brushing against Roman provinces south of the Danube. Additional troops, under her orders, were en route to India by way of the Nile and the Red Sea, taking the long way around the Sassanid blockade of the Persian Gulf by crossing the Arabian Peninsula and southern Iran.

Domitius Aurelianus, whose nickname was Manu ad ferrum ("hand on sword"), was proclaimed emperor in the spring of 270, at a time of palpable weakening of the imperial power and the decline of Pax Romana. Preferring offense to defense, and interpreting Zenobia's movements as an attempt at secession, he decided to restore the empire by first using Zenobia as an example, then Tetricus, usurper of sovereignty in Gaul. While his general Probus recovered Egypt from Zenobia's son, Aurelian marched through the Balkans, crossed the Hellespont, defeated the Queen's army at Emesa and besieged Palmyra. When she tried to escape and enlist Persian aid, she was captured. The city was surrounded and was spared, but her counselor Longinus, author of Palmyra's most memorable literature, was put to death in 272.

While the Emperor was leading his army back to the Hellespont, Palmyra revolted and slaughtered the garrison Aurelian had left there. The Emperor turned back in a fury, again besieged and soon took the city and abandoned it to be pillaged by his troops. He razed the famous walls, redirected Palmyra's trade and let the burgeoning metropolis lapse into the desert village it has largely remained ever since. Destruction was not unconditional however. According to the testimonies in the Augustian History, the Emperor set aside part of the riches looted in Palmyra for the restoration of the temple of the sun god, Sol Invictus, referring to the Temple of Elagabalus in Emesa, capital of Syro-Phoenicia. He would further dedicate a sanctuary to this, his preferred deity, to whom he credited his victory, in Rome the following year.

Zenobia, according to legend bound by chains of pure gold, and accompanied by the rebellious Tetricus, as well as the state chariot she had confected, it was said, for her triumph over Rome, graced Aurelian's glorious entrance into the Imperial Capital. The various versions of what happened afterward parody the Iliad. In one, the exotic queen was allowed to spend her remaining years in comparative freedom at the royal villa upriver on the Tiber. In another, she married a Roman Senator, and though exiled to Tivoli, produced a number of children who would all be counted among the Roman nobility. According to Malalas, however, Syrian chronicler of the sixth century, Aurelian had her decapitated

In the year 297 the Croatian Diocletian, by this time emperor, signed a treaty with the Sassanid Persians at Nisibus and with this moved the border to the Khabur River, nearly parallel to the Upper Euphrates. The new network of roads and small forts comprised the eastern Syrian limes, along the new artery denominated Strata Diocletiana, which linked Damascus to the Euphrates. The provincial governor in Palmyra, Sossianus Hierocles, to commemorate the event c. 300, ordered the construction of "Diocletian's Camp", to be built over the prior ruins of what was probably a royal palace, adjacent to the Temple of Allat. At this point the reinforced walls inch along the hillside, then descend again to the desert floor; they were originally distinguished by square towers, and so encompassed the northern extreme of the city. The historian Procopius describes the walls, ultimately collapsed, as eventually recovered by Justinian (527-565), and attributes to this period the transformation of every fourth tower into a huge, semi-circular bastion. Justinian, he goes on to say, also rescued the irrigation system, thus revived agriculture, by drawing water along the canal from Aboul-Fawares, ten kilometers west of Palmyra.

Christianity, says Adnan Bounni, was well established in Palmyra by the fourth century. Its bishop, Mainus, took part in the Council of Nicea (present-day Iznik, in Turkey), in 325. During the Byzantine period the cellas of the temples of Bel and Bel Shamin were converted to churches, and additional basilicas - thought to have been only two but now, it seems, there were eight-lie just west of the Temple of Bel Shemin. Completely constructed of recycled stone, therefore difficult to decipher, they are currently under archaeological investigation by a Polish team.

By the end of the fifth century and beginning of the sixth, the Syrian Desert was dominated by the Ghassanids, Byzantium's Christian allies originally from the Arabian Peninsula, who resided indiscriminately wherever they found suitable architectural remains. They settled in Palmyra as a link along their pilgrimage route to Resafa and the tomb of St. Sergius. A poet from the Ghassanid court, al-Nabighah al-Thubiani, describes the legend in vogue at the time, which attributes to the Djinns the founding of Palmyra, for purposes of the romantic encounters of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (historic Yemen, facing the Red Sea at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula).

Khaled ibn al-Walid, the celebrated "Sword of Allah", general in charge of the troops of the Umayyad Caliph Abu-Bakr, (upon his death buried with full honors in an imposing green tomb in the mosque in Homs) peacefully occupied Palmyra in 634, and with this restored a share of its strategic importance. Situated between the desert castles of the West (al-Gharbi) and the East (al-Sharqi), the site was favored by Caliph Hisham (724-743), until in 745, the last Umayyad Caliph, Marwan II, put down a revolt in the city and dismantled the Justinian ramparts.

The Abbassid era saw a definitive change in Palmyra's fortunes. Al-Mamun, the son of a Persian slave, had himself proclaimed Caliph in 813, entered Baghdad in 818 as the acknowledged ruler of Islam and ultimately ranks, according to historian Will Durant, with al-Mansur and al-Rashid, as one of the great caliphs of the Abbassid line. Under his leadership the royal patronage of arts, sciences, letters, and philosophy became more varied and discriminating than ever before. He sent to Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, among the capitals of culture, for examples of the writings of the Greek masters and hired a corps of translators to render these books into Arabic. He established an academy of sciences in Baghdad and observatories both there, and at Palmyra. With this he engaged an entire staff of astronomers to make observations and keep records of their findings, to test the hypotheses of Ptolemy, and to study the spots on the sun. Taking for granted that the earth was a sphere, in dramatic counter position to the European assumptions of the day, they measured a terrestrial degree by simultaneously taking the position of the sun from both Palmyra and the plain of Sinjar. Since Islam lived, as Durant stresses, "by tillage and trade", the charting of the skies and the mapping of the earth both became priorities, to the extent of ordering the construction of costly instruments, to extend the scientific potential initiated by Aristotle: not only astrolabes and armillary spheres, known to the Greeks, but also quadrants with a radius of ten meters, and sextants with a radius of nearly thirty. The astrolabe, much improved by the Abbassids at their laboratory in Palmyra, reached Europe in the tenth century, and was widely used by mariners until the seventeenth. Says Will Durant: "The Arabs designed and constructed it with aesthetic passion, making it at once an instrument of science and a work of art."

The city was again seen favorably under the Bourids of Damascus in the twelfth century, and Saladin's Ayyubids during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Mongol raids of the thirteenth century left terrible damage in and around Palmyra but the Mamluks, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, saw to partial restoration. By this time the Temple of Bel had been transformed into a fortress, using its Roman columns as random reinforcements. The cella had become a mosque. The remnants of the miqrab are still visible in the eastern wall. Archaeological exploration has unearthed other mosques from this period, as well as olive presses, and ovens for pottery making, glass blowing and bread baking.

High above Palmyra, visible from every angle and peeking out of every photograph, is the sentinel castle on a rounded hillock, 150 meters high, and the tourists' favorite spot at sunset, attributed to the Emir Ibn Maan Fakhr al-Din (1595-1634), though pottery found in the ruined interior dates much earlier, from the Mamluk period.

Many have lauded Palmyra's beauty and fascination, as well as that of this custodian castle. Especially detailed descriptions were adoringly produced by historian and public official Ibn Fadl Allah (1301-1349), who was so obsessive about Palmyra he assumed the self-appointed role of chronicler, especially of the sumptuous homes, the ostentatious gardens, and the thriving commerce during the city's prime.

An anonymous chronicler left us an additional account of a less indulgent encounter, by Mongol khan Tamerlane, or "Timur Link" ("The Lame Timur"), who with his troops bound for Turkish settlements in Central Anatolia or near the Marmara, sent a detachment, in 1401, to ransack whatever was left of Palmyra. The city's decline was completed during the Ottoman period (1516-1919). The desolate village was left to the caprice of the nomadic tribes. That is, until the advent of archaeology in the Near East, and the passion of the modern European powers for collecting, classifying, and displaying the antiquities of the region. England, France and Germany, especially, felt they had a new lease on culture.

So the "desert bridge" between the Mediterranean and the Mesopotamian worlds was "rediscovered" and reassessed, and though often overshadowed by Roman stylistic mannerisms, its singular idiom was never fully eclipsed, particularly in the art devoted to its burial customs and death worship, and its dazzling architecture.

Adnan Bounni worked with his team in the site throughout the sixties, beginning along the Colonnaded Street from the Temple of Bel to the Tetrapylon, including the sanctuary of Nabu, the agora, theater, two Nymphaea, and the Caesarium, as well as the ruins along the lane leading from "Zenobia's Baths" to the Temple of Bel Shemin. After 1969 efforts were concentrated along the walls, the baths, the Temple of the Arabian deity Arsu, one of the opulent residential villas, a tomb in the western necropolis and the Umayyad souks behind the Tetrapylon. A German mission continued this labor of deciphering the jigsaw puzzle of centuries of superimposition of stones, and of styles, working in the tombs of House 36, while excavating additional tombs in collaboration with a Japanese mission.

A consistent effort has been applied, as well, to the deciphering of the great walls, which correspond to various construction phases. A six-kilometer-long stretch of irregular construction dates from the first century A.D., that is, the outset of the Roman period. These walls only assumed their definitive form, however, under Zenobia, during the late third century.

The perimeter "Customs Walls" encompassed the city and the oasis but not the necropolis. They followed the slopes of Mount Muntar, defining the limits of jurisdiction before becoming defensive walls when solid ground was reached, along the eastern rim and over the rocky terrain to the west. Construction was confected of large limestone blocks, both rough-hewn and finished. The sculpted side faced outward. Smaller blocks turned toward the interior of the enclosure. Rectangular defensive towers were concentrated especially on the seven principal apertures, including the two most accessible entrances along the south wall, the Damascus Gate and the theater entrance. Other gates offered accesses in the east or north. These might have been later orientations, say the archaeological reports, given the placement of the tower tombs in the great necropolis to the west, here as in other cultures the direction associated with the setting sun, therefore the death of the day, human death, the underworld and the journey beyond. Most of the visible tombs date from the early third century and border the western extension of the oasis with its outlets for a number of both sweet and sulphur springs, and the grounds of the Cham Palace Hotel.

Between 1970 and 1983 work was advanced along 1.5 kilometers of the northern walls, from the present-day museum, through the Zenobia Hotel, up to the so-called "Diocletian's Camp", continuing another 300 meters along the southern wall. Parts of this stretch had been destroyed especially during Aurelian's campaign against Zenobia in 272 but were later repaired for defensive purposes, once by Diocletian at the end of the third century and again by Justinian during the first half of the sixth century. At this stage the walls were not only restored but modified as well, in style and defensive strategy, using materials salvaged from ruined walls and buildings inside the city. Parts of the wall protruded at the base, in a trapezoidal shape intended to achieve additional stability. Where the terrain was rocky no buttressing was deemed necessary, yet holes and blank spots were indiscriminately filled with ceramic and statuary, literally tons of the stuff, with no regard whatever for the original intention or the aesthetic style. Some of this material has been salvaged for exhibit in the museum but much of it lies discarded, as debris in the site.

Walls were again destroyed in 745 during battles between the Qaysites and the Yemenites during the reign of the last Umayyad Caliph Marwan II. No further repairs were ever made, since the local population, during the Atabek, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, were content to live crowded inside the fortified enclosure, 210 by 205 meters, surrounding the Temple of Bel.

The Temple of Bel, in effect, has a long history, and has translated a singular religious significance to a seemingly endless sequence of cultures, that inexplicably gravitates toward the precinct. The complex on view today, now partially restored, was built over an earlier ensemble. Remains previously concealed by the temenos have finally been unearthed, says Dr. Bounni; they date to the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (2200-1500 B.C.), at a depth of approximately six meters. These remains correspond to a temple that was erected on the tel or artificial hill, which in turn supported a still earlier temple to the Sun God. As of the Bronze Age, the temple was resolutely dedicated to Bel, the Babylonian expression of the storm god Baal. During the Hellenistic period the deity, considered a local phenomenon, was more broadly associated with Zeus.

The cella or main hall, as it appears today, was dedicated in A.D. 32 and was identified by the Romans with Jupiter. Niches on either side nonetheless still bear the attributes of the Solar Deity Yarhibol and his mate, the Lunar Goddess Aglibol, respectively, but construction on the grandiose peribolos, with its elaborate and intricately decorated porticoes and propylaea, continued to the middle of the second century. Serious destruction began with Aurelian's second siege of Palmyra in 273, and constitutes a great loss to the world history of art.

The Temple of Nabu, southwest of the triumphal arch -- according to reconstructive drawings an exquisite architectural synthesis -- was dedicated to the Mesopotamian deity Nabu, son of Bel-Marduk and scribe of the "Tables of Destiny". Though popular throughout Syria and especially revered in Palmyra he was identified during the Hellenistic period with Apollo. According to texts found in the site by Dr. Bounni's archaeological team, construction of the temple in its eventual form was initiated during the first century A.D. and continued into the second century. The Nabushuri family, a mercantile dynasty, along with the Elahbel family - who built the most elaborate tower tomb in the necropolis or "Valley of the Tombs"-- contributed generously to the funding of this temple.

East of the Tetrapylon stands the Temple of Bel Shemin, with its remarkably well-preserved cella, that dates from the first half of the second century. The vestibule, or pronaos, has six columns, still intact, with consoles serving as the bases for commemoratory statues. The console on the left bears an inscription in both Greek and Palmyrene praising the Secretary of the City, or Mayor, one "Malé son of Yarhai", for his generosity during the visit of "The Divine Hadrian", and for the construction, at his expense, of this temple dedicated to "Zeus Baalshemin, Du-Rakhlun [the god of Rakhleh on Mount Hermon in the Golan] and the Vast Fortune of Bene-Yedi'bel [credited to the generosity of Allat or Allath]". The clan of Bene-Yedi'bel pertained to the Arabian tribe of the Bene-Ma'ziyan. The text is dated to the year 442 of the Seleucid era, or 130-131 A.D.

Bel, or Baal, Shemin (or Shamaan), whose name literally describes the "Master of the Heavens", was the god, or perhaps initially the goddess, of storms, but particularly of fertility and abundance associated with the nourishing rains that watered the crops, that turned this rocky, "drought-resistant" desert into a seasonally green and gracious plain, and which further provided pasturage for the nomad flocks.

Around 800 B.C. Bel Shemin was described in specific references as the favorite deity of Zakir, king of Hama. Earlier, around 950 B.C., he was portrayed in texts and inscriptions of the times as the particular god of Yahimilik, king of Byblos. At Palmyra, a bilingual inscription calls upon, in Palmyrene "Baalshamin, great and merciful", and in Greek "Zeus most high who hears and grants (the petition of his servant)". Many dedications on the altars in this sanctuary, accompanied by the incense and essences for which Palmyra was celebrated, describe the deity as "good and who hears", and "master of the good name", but he is also, according to the Semitic root 'alam, simultaneously, and to some, ambiguously, interpreted as "Lord of the World" and of "Eternity", and mentioned in this dual capacity in an inscription that dates from 115 A.D.

The temple complex was excavated from 1954 to 1956 by a Swiss team, headed by Paul Collart. Four courtyards, an ancient tomb of the Bene-Yadi'bel family still visible behind the cella, numerous statues now displayed in the museum on the town's main street, and hundreds of additional inscriptions, provided the clues to the history of the temple and the character of its elaborate architectural disposition. Two mummified figures from the tomb, furthermore, a male and a female stretched out full length, are provided with special chambers on the museum's upper floor.

The Temple of Allat, or Allath, the great Arabian warrior-goddess later identified by the Greeks with Athena and by the Romans with Minerva, is the fourth of Palmyra's principal places of worship. The ruins today rise toward the west of the city, in the northern quarter of "Diocletian's Camp". A Polish mission directed by Kazimierz Michalowsky began excavations in 1959. Michael Gawlikowski directed the team after 1974. Both of them verified that the second century cella is an enlargement of a more modest construction, referred to in an inscription as the pyrethée, or "fire altar".

Another altar dating from the sixth century B.C. is dedicated "to Allath who is also Artemis", a deity described by Homer as "The Lady Beloved of the Wild Beasts". The 3.5 meter lion we mentioned before, found in the temenos of the temple and currently on display at the entrance to the museum, bears the inscription: "Allath doth bless the one who spilleth not blood against this temple". This is presumably an early Arabian antecedent to the Koranic prohibition of animal sacrifice. It is certainly associated with Atargatis, another expression of Artemis, protector of animals, generally depicted between two lions. In the second and third century her cult statue took on a greater significance, since it was apparently inspired by Phidias'"Athena Parthenes". Fragments of this masterful marble sculpture were discovered in the cella and later reconstructed in the museum.

The Bene-Ma'ziyan tribe, benefactors of the temple, insured provisions for other Arabian deity figures as companions to Allat, among them Rahim - possibly the Arabian Adonis-and Shams (the Sun), who are also honored in the Bel Shemin sanctuary. The latter is associated with the fifth son of Noah, who brought the sun, and dry weather, after the long and stormy deluge.

The ruins of Palmyra, discounting the expanded excavations that constantly unearth smaller temples or sanctuaries to additional deities - such as Arsu or Belhammon - cover approximately ten square kilometers. Greco-Roman concepts of urban planning ultimately influenced the distribution of the principal structures, over an area comparable to that of Antioch, Syria's capital, yet permitted the autonomy, a Persian characteristic, of the various sectors. Suburban residential areas, on the other hand, out toward the Efqa spring, have yet to be excavated. And since archaeological sites are never "finished", Palmyra will go on into countless generations of exploration and excavation. Each of them will revise the findings of its predecessors.

Yet none will diminish the whisper of the wind through the oasis, the humming of the dragonflies, the sun or the dust. We have climbed to the top of the ruined inner staircase of a tower, and are looking out over the so-called Temple of the Standard-Bearers in Diocletian's Camp. A horseman rides by, his tiny Arabian stallion picking his way gingerly through the archaeological debris. The rider waves to us. He, like the jockeys on the track behind the Justinian Walls and the Zenobia Hotel, are training their mounts for the coming races, during the annual spring Palmyra Festival. The little flat hooves kick up Palmyra's red dust and tails are high, like banners in the air, as the diminutive desert steeds speed past our rapt gaze. These little horses are the finest, the fastest, the bravest; their blood runs in every legendary equine breed from Spain to China and across the Americas.

Bedouin tents are scattered across the plain. Camels and horses, still wearing the wool and cotton padding that passes for saddles, are tethered near their buckets of water and their sacks of feed. Men and boys gather in clusters, their loose headgear and light garments fluttering in the wind, to wager, to boast, to buy and sell the horses and camels that won last year or the years before, or who were bred from the winners. "The Bedouin loved horses," it has been written, " but in the desert the camel was his greatest friend."

Carol Miller, an independent journalist, scholar, sculptress and photographer, writes regularly for Syria Gate and for newspapers and magazines in Mexico City, where she lives. For bio and abstracts of her books see www.xlibris.com/CarolMiller.html