Palmyra in Perspective

The famous oasis city of Palmyra, located in the Syrian Desert, has long been the subject of scholarly research, and over the last decade, it has been the focus of three key projects based at Aarhus University in Denmark. Together, these projects have yielded results that have both shed new light on Palmyra and profoundly changed what we know about the city itself and its place in the wider Roman Empire, through a focus on sculptural production, the sustainability and economy that underpinned this, urban development, excavation history, and legacy data. This volume, based on a conference organized under the auspices of the Palmyra research projects in Aarhus, draws together papers that reflect on our understanding of Palmyra up to now, and pave the way for new lines of enquiry. Experts in the field engage with discussions of best practice, offer new perspectives on the city, its society, and its environs, and outline approaches that will allow research to continue to break new ground in our understanding of Palmyra.

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1. Palmyra in Perspective: A Decade of Research in Retrospective
Rubina Raja

2. Harald Ingholt on Palmyra in his Own Words: Audience, Language and Contexts in Ingholt’s Archaeological Reports, Newspaper Articles, and Field Diaries
Olympia Bobou, Rubina Raja, and Julia Steding

3. Shifting our Perspective on the Female Portraits
Maura K. Heyn

4. Perspectives on the Palmyrene Religious Epigraphy: Cultural Context and Organization of Religious Life
Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider

5. Revisiting the Palmyrene Pantheon: Methodological Considerations on the Many and the Few – The Nature of the Evidence
Rubina Raja

6. The Contribution of the Palmyra Portrait Project to Research on the Epigraphy of Palmyra
Jean-Baptiste Yon

7. Perspectives on Palmyrene Long-Distance Trade
Eivind Heldaas Seland

8. Small Coins, Big Implications?
Kevin Butcher

9. Palmyra and the Problem of Parthian Art
Henry P. Colburn

10. Late Antique and Early Islamic Palmyra in Perspective: The Potential and Limits of Incomplete Datasets
Emanuele E. Intagliata and Alberto Bacchetta

11. Documents pour l’histoire de l’archéologie au temps du mandat français en Syrie. IV. Le « Service des Antiquités » de la République Française au Levant durant ses premières phases : ‘Histoire d’une réussite archéologique’
Michel Al-Maqdissi

12. The Sanctuary of Bel in Perspective: Selective Destructions, Selective Memories, Selective Realities
Jen A. Baird, Zena Kamash, and Rubina Raja

13. The Hauran Needs Palmyra
Maurice Sartre

14. Does Palmyra Still Have a Future?
Annie Sartre-Fauriat