Palmyra

• 1. Introduction

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  Palmyra rises from the Syrian Desert like a riddle carved in stone. Positioned 215 km northeast of Damascus, this ancient city guarded one of the most lucrative crossroads in the ancient world, where the civilizations of the Mediterranean met the empires of the East. Its merchants spoke Aramaic at home, Greek in the marketplace, and buried their dead in elaborate tower tombs that still stand against the desert sky. How did a small oasis settlement become one of the Roman Empire's most powerful allies, and then its most dangerous rebel? And how does a city that survived emperors, caliphs, and conquerors end up facing dynamite in the twenty-first century? The story of Palmyra is really the story of what happens when a crossroads becomes a kingdom.

• 2. A Name With Two Lives

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  Tablets discovered at Mari, dating to the 18th century BC, record the name of the settlement as "Ta-ad-mi-ir", written in cuneiform. Assyrian inscriptions from the 11th century BC call it "Ta-ad-mar". The people who actually lived there used two versions themselves: TDMR and TDMWR, or Tadmar and Tadmor. The city had, in other words, been arguing about its own name for more than a thousand years before the Greeks arrived.

  Pliny the Elder was the first to record the Greek form, Palmyra, in the first century AD. The connection to the Latin word palma, meaning date palm, seemed obvious and tidy. But linguists have never fully agreed on how Tadmor became Palmyra. Albert Schultens proposed that Palmyra was a corruption of Tadmor, travelling through an unattested middle form "Talmura" before shifting under the influence of the Latin word for palm. The philologist Jean Starcky favored a different route entirely: that Palmyra was a straightforward translation of Tadmor, assuming that Tadmor already meant palm, derived from the Greek word palame.

  A third possibility, favored by Franz Altheim and Ruth Altheim-Stiehl in 1973, ties the name to the Syriac word tedmurta, meaning "miracle" or "object of wonder." Starcky and the archaeologist Michael Gawlikowski both rejected that reading, and the debate has never been settled. Michael Patrick O'Connor offered a fourth avenue in 1988, suggesting that both names originated in the Hurrian language entirely, with Tadmor deriving from the Hurrian word tad meaning "to love," and Palmyra from the word pal meaning "to know." The oasis city, depending on your theory, was a palm grove, an object of wonder, a thing loved, or a thing known.

• 3. Desert Crossroads

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  The earliest evidence of human activity near Palmyra reaches back to Paleolithic settlements. Stone tools found at the Efqa spring site are dated to 7500 BC. A mud-brick structure excavated beneath the Temple of Bel was built around 2500 BC. The city formally entered written history around 2000 BC, when a man named Puzur-Ishtar the Tadmorean agreed to a contract at an Assyrian trading colony in Kultepe.

  The Mari tablets, written a few centuries later, describe Palmyra as a stop for trade caravans and nomadic tribes including the Suteans. King Yahdun-Lim of Mari conquered the city and its region. King Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria passed through in the early 18th century BC while marching to the Mediterranean. By that point, Palmyra sat at the eastern edge of the kingdom of Qatna, wedged between competing powers and periodically disrupted by Sutean raiders who paralyzed the caravan routes.

  The Hebrew Bible records a city called Tadmor as a desert city built or fortified by King Solomon of Israel, a claim repeated by Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews. Later Arabic traditions attributed the founding to Solomon's Jinn. Scholars have concluded, however, that this is a conflation of Tadmor with a different city called Tamar that Solomon built in Judea. Archaeological evidence from Palmyra itself shows only a small settlement during the 10th century BC when Solomon would have reigned. The legend stuck nonetheless, becoming part of the city's long habit of accumulating identities it didn't strictly earn.

• 4. Merchant Republic

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  When the Roman Republic absorbed the Seleucid kingdom in 64 BC and established the province of Syria, Palmyra was left deliberately outside the new arrangement, trading with both Rome and Parthia while belonging to neither. The earliest known inscription in Palmyrene dates to around 44 BC. Even then, the city was described as a minor sheikhdom that sold water to passing caravans. Within a century it would dominate the Silk Road.

  Palmyra came fully under Roman control during the reign of Tiberius, around 14 AD. Roman authority in the first century was minimal. Tax collectors were present, and a road connecting Palmyra to Sura was built in 75 AD, but no local Roman magistrates or prefects were ever recorded in the city. The Romans needed Palmyrene trade more than they needed Palmyrene obedience.

  The trading empire that grew from this arrangement was built on two pillars. The first was a network of caravan routes built and garrisoned by the Palmyrenes themselves, including a garrison at Dura-Europos manned in 117 AD. The second was the Roman conquest of the Nabataean capital Petra in 106, which stripped control of the southern Arabian trade routes from the Nabataeans and redirected it through Palmyra. By the second century, Palmyrene merchants had planted colonies across the Roman Empire and along the Silk Road. A Nabataean cavalryman is recorded in 132 as serving in a Palmyrene military unit stationed at Anah, suggesting the reach of Palmyrene military organization even at a distance.

  The emperor Hadrian visited in 129, renamed the city "Hadriane Palmyra," and declared it a free city. New construction followed: the theatre, the Great Colonnade, and the Temple of Nabu. The 1.1 km Colonnade, lined with columns each 9.50 m high, became the commercial spine of the city. The Great Agora, a massive 71 by 84 m structure with 11 entrances, held 200 columnar bases for statues of prominent citizens. The eastern side was reserved for senators, the northern side for Palmyrene officials, the western side for soldiers, and the southern side for caravan chiefs.

• 5. Odaenathus and the Persian Wars

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  An inscription dated to 252 AD names Odaenathus bearing the title of exarchos, or lord, of Palmyra. The Sasanian Empire had been dismantling Palmyrene commercial colonies in Persia, and the Roman Empire was faltering badly. Odaenathus approached the Persian king Shapur I to negotiate guarantees for Palmyrene interests, but Shapur refused even to meet with him.

  The crisis came to a head in 260, when Emperor Valerian fought Shapur at the Battle of Edessa and was defeated and captured, the only time a sitting Roman emperor had been taken prisoner. In the chaos that followed, a Roman officer named Macrianus Major and his sons Quietus and Macrianus seized imperial power in Syria, challenging the legitimate succession. Odaenathus assembled an army of Palmyrenes and Syrian peasants and struck back. The Augustan History records that Odaenathus declared himself king before the battle. He drove Shapur's retreating forces to the banks of the Euphrates and routed them.

  The following year, 261, Odaenathus turned on the usurpers in Syria, defeating and killing both Quietus and their prefect Balista. The emperor Gallienus rewarded him with the title Imperator Totius Orientis, Governor of the East, granting him authority over Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Anatolia's eastern regions. Palmyrene inscriptions began calling the city a "metrocolonia," a rank above ordinary Roman colonias.

  Odaenathus pressed further. In 262 he invaded Mesopotamia, recovering the key cities of Nisibis and Carrhae, and besieged the Persian capital Ctesiphon. He assumed the title King of Kings and crowned his son Hairan I as co-King near Antioch in 263. A second campaign in 266 again reached Ctesiphon before Gothic attacks on Asia Minor forced him north. On the return journey in 267, Odaenathus and Hairan I were assassinated; according to the Augustan History and the historian Joannes Zonaras, the killer was a cousin or nephew named Maeonius, who was briefly proclaimed emperor before being killed by his own soldiers.

• 6. Zenobia's Empire

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  Odaenathus was succeeded by his young son Vaballathus, who was ten years old. His mother Zenobia became the de facto ruler. She moved carefully at first, claiming only the titles her husband had held and securing the frontier with Persia, including fortifying citadels at Halabiye and Zalabiye on the Euphrates. When Gallienus dispatched his prefect Heraclian to manage Persian operations, Zenobia sidelined him entirely and sent him back to Rome.

  In the spring of 270, under the reign of Claudius Gothicus, Zenobia launched her military campaign. Using an attack on the Tanukhid tribes as a pretext, she seized Roman Arabia. That October, she invaded Egypt, won the province, and had herself proclaimed queen of Egypt. In 271 Palmyrene forces pushed through Anatolia all the way to Ankara. She issued coins in the name of Claudius' successor Aurelian, depicting Vaballathus as king, framing the expansion as loyalty while absorbing Roman territory. Aurelian, occupied with insurgencies in Europe, tolerated the arrangement for a time. In late 271, Zenobia and Vaballathus dropped the pretense and assumed the full titles of Augusta and Augustus.

  Aurelian crossed the Bosphorus the following year and moved quickly. Roman forces under Marcus Aurelius Probus retook Egypt. Aurelian himself entered Issus, advanced to Antioch, and defeated Zenobia at the Battle of Immae. She was defeated again at the Battle of Emesa, fell back to Homs, then made for her capital. When the Romans besieged Palmyra, Zenobia refused to surrender personally to the emperor. She fled east to seek Persian aid but was captured by Roman soldiers. The city then capitulated. Zenobia, commander of an army of 70,000 at the Battle of Emesa, ended the war as a Roman prisoner.

• 7. Ruin and Return

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  Aurelian initially spared the city, leaving a garrison of 600 archers under a commander named Sandarion. In 273 the city rebelled under Septimius Apsaios, who declared a relative of Zenobia's named Antiochus as Augustus. Aurelian returned and razed Palmyra to the ground. He seized the most valuable monuments to decorate his Temple of Sol in Rome. Buildings were smashed, residents massacred, and the Temple of Bel pillaged. The city that had been a metrocolonia was reduced to a small garrison post.

  Partial recovery came under Diocletian. A 4 ha military camp, the Camp of Diocletian, was built shortly before 303 as a base for the Legio I Illyricorum. The Baths of Diocletian were renovated. Palmyra became a Christian city in the decades after Aurelian's destruction, and the emperor Justinian I further strengthened it in late 527, ordering restoration of churches and public buildings to guard against raids by the Lakhmid king Al-Mundhir III ibn al-Nu'man.

  The city fell to the Rashidun Caliphate in 634, taken by the general Khalid ibn al-Walid after an 18-day march across the Syrian Desert from Mesopotamia. Palmyra prospered again under the Umayyad Caliphate, recovering its role as a node on the East-West trade route and growing a significant merchant class. The Banu Kalb tribe dominated the city, and in 744, after backing the losing side in a caliphate civil war, the city's walls were demolished on the orders of the caliph Marwan II. The Abbasid succession brought further punishment. Palmyra was destroyed by Timur in 1400, leaving a village of roughly 6,000 people at the start of the 20th century. In 1929, the French excavator Henri Seyrig began systematic archaeological work, eventually convincing the residents to relocate to a new planned village. That relocation was completed in 1932, and the ancient site was fully opened to excavation.

• 8. Destruction and What Remains

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  On the 23rd of May 2015, Islamic State militants destroyed the Lion of Al-lāt and other statues, days after publicly promising the city's residents they would leave the monuments alone. The Temple of Baalshamin was destroyed on the 23rd of August 2015. The cella of the Temple of Bel was destroyed on the 30th of August. The United Nations confirmed the destruction the following day. On the 4th of September 2015, three of the best-preserved tower tombs, including the Tower of Elahbel, were destroyed. The Arch of Triumph, one of the city's monumental monuments, was brought down with dynamite. On the 20th of January 2017, the tetrapylon and part of the Roman theatre were destroyed.

  On the 18th of August 2015, Palmyra's retired antiquities chief Khaled al-Asaad was beheaded after a month of torture; he had refused to tell his captors where the city's treasures were hidden. Syrian government forces, backed by Russian airstrikes, retook the city on the 27th of March 2016. ISIL briefly reoccupied it on the 11th of December 2016. The Syrian Army recaptured it a final time on the 2nd of March 2017. On the 7th of December 2024, Palmyra was taken by the Syrian Free Army following the fall of the Assad government.

  Response to the destruction came from around the world. On the 21st of October 2015, Creative Commons launched the New Palmyra project, building a public-domain archive of three-dimensional models of the city's monuments, based on images gathered by the Syrian internet advocate Bassel Khartabil between 2005 and 2012. The archaeologist and discoverer of Ebla, Paolo Matthiae, assessed the damage and concluded that 20-30% of the site was seriously affected, and that by using both traditional and advanced restoration methods, it might be possible to recover 98% of the site. By May 2023, the first phase of reconstruction of the Arch of Triumph was completed. The Lion of Al-lāt, restored over two months, was put on display on the 1st of October 2017 and sent to the National Museum of Damascus.