The ancient city of Palmyra, which today lies in the desert of modern Syria, was once a flourishing city of trade. During the Roman era, when Palmyra was at the height of its powers, several hundred funerary monuments were constructed in the city, and within these, portraits of Palmyra's inhabitants were once displayed. These representations of men, women, and children from the Roman Imperial period form the largest body of portraiture known outside of Rome itself, and their study is essential to our understanding of how funerary portraiture in the Roman provinces was used as a mechanism to shape and express identity. This volume offers a study and catalogue of the funerary portraits of Palmyrene women from the first century BC to the third century AD. It explores both the visual qualities of the portraits themselves, and the complexities of the space in which they were originally situated. By analysing the civic and religious activities of women within Palmyra, this book also situates these portraits in a broader context. Through this approach, the work thus addresses key questions concerning the characteristics of Palmyrene female portraits and what this indicates about the nature of female identity in Roman Palmyra, how the portrayals of women changed over time, and what might have caused such changes.

"The present volume includes articles stemming from a two-part workshop on the representations of women and children and their roles in the families in Roman period Palmyra. The workshops were held at Aarhus University, Denmark, under the auspices of the Palmyra Portrait Project in October 2016 and February 2017. During the workshops concerning women, children and family constellations, various aspects of representations of women and children as well as the wider family groups within which they were shown in Palmyra were explored, as well as the implications these might have carried in relation to the Palmyrene family structure and wider Palmyrene society. Since the evidence from the public sphere does not give much insight into how women and children were perceived in Palmyra, the material from the funerary sphere remains central to these issues"--Publisher's description.

Ancient funerary reliefs are full of representations of writing materials and instruments, the interpretation of which can help us better understand the phenomenon of ancient literacy. The eight studies in this volume enrich our knowledge of Roman writing with many new aspects and detailed observations.

With contributions from thirty archaeologists, epigraphists, historians, and philologists, this book covers Palmyra's archaeological remains and history from its earliest phases in the pre-Roman era to the destruction of many of its monuments during the Syrian Civil War and subsequent looting. The authors give comprehensive overviews of already published evidence, as well as significant new findings and analyses from fieldwork, and cover a broad range of themes, which not only relate to the archaeology and history of the site, but also to its relationship with the rest of the ancient world as a major trade hub during the Roman period.

During the Roman era, when the ancient city of Palmyra was at the height of its powers, several thousand funerary portraits were sculpted, each carefully crafted to represent the men, women, and children who had once lived there as members of the Palmyrene elite. In their commemorative monuments, these individuals were given specific attributes to express their social status, wealth, identity, and skills. This volume provides an in-depth exploration of different aspects of these funerary portraits, and illuminates in particular the addition of attributes and how and why they were used by both artists and their patrons. The eight contributions gathered here examine the range of choices available to commissioners of art works in Palmyra, the prevalence or rarity of specific attributes, and the ways in which the variation and selection of attributes could be used in funerary, religious, or public contexts to express social cohesion and group identity, as well as to demonstrate individuality. Crucially, while these funerary monuments may be closely associated with Palmyra, they in fact provide clear evidence of the city's relationships across the wider region: examination of the different attributes suggests that the Palmyrenes were aware of how these were used, perceived, and adapted by neighbouring people as a way of transmitting various social meanings and expressing their own values.

Palmyra has long attracted the attention of the world. Even before its rediscovery in the eighteenth century it had gained legendary status because of its third-century CE Queen Zenobia, who had rebelled against the Romans and expanded Palmyra's territory into that of an Empire, stretchingfrom what is modern eastern Turkey into Egypt. The city and its queen featured in European art and literature already in the century. Zenobia's Palmyra already existed as a mirage in the minds of the educated Europeans. Even though Zenobia's reign and extensive power was a fairly short interlude andthe Romans struck hard against the Palmyrenes devastating the city, this path to imperial power was one which tells us an immense amount about Palmyrene identity in the period before the devastation. While Zenobia has gained renewed interest among both scholars and the press, and while she hasserved as a political symbol for Syria's president As'ad (a statue of her was recently erected in Damascus), the time leading up to her reign still remains underexplored.With the current situation in Syria, a researched-based narrative is urgently needed to communicate the importance of this site to the general public. Palmyra has over the last years been used as a symbol of the resistance of the rebels, the power of ISIS over the region, as well as the supremacy ofthe Syrian state. UNESCO and the Russians have together with the Syrian state taken a particular interest in Palmyra and in monopolizing the potential rebuilding of the site after the destruction and looting of the past several years have subsided. We are, so to speak, standing at yet anotherturning point in Palmyra's long history, where history is being reinvented actively by several parties. There can be no doubt that the time is ripe for a book on the archaeology and history of Palmyra, as well as an analysis of the current situation, including the destruction and illicit traffickingof material remains from Palmyra. These three main topics will together highlight the ways in which this fascinating site has again and again captured the world's focus.Organized in nine chapters, this compact book will set out to provide an introduction for students and general readers. Following two overview chapters, the next six will give a chronological narrative of Palmyra from the late Hellenistic period through to Rome's destruction in 273 CE and itssurvival in the Byzantine and medieval Islamic periods. The book ends with a shorter conclusion chapter, which will summarize the most important findings and conclusions of the chapters of the book and will set out a number of lines of enquiry which could be taken up in research and culturalheritage management over the coming years. The result will be the best and most up-to-date account of Palmyra in English.

A recent surge of interest in network approaches to the study of the ancient world has enabled scholars of the Roman Empire to move beyond traditional narratives of domination, resistance, integration and fragmentation. This relational turn has not only offers tools to identify, map, visualize and, in some cases, even quantify interaction based on a variety of ancient source material, but also provides a terminology to deal with the everyday ties of power, trade, and ideology that operated within, below, and beyond the superstructure of imperial rule. Thirteen contributions employ a range of quantitative, qualitative and descriptive network approaches in order to provide new perspectives on trade, communication, administration, technology, religion and municipal life in the Roman Near East and adjacent regions.

An archaeological and art-historical study of the images and monuments of Roman 'client' kings in the Near East from the Taurus to Edom during the transitional period between 100 BC and AD 100. Kropp treats images and monuments as historical documents and aims at uncovering royal identities and ideological aspirations.

"A Journey to Palmyra" originates from the desire to remember Delbert R. Hillers, who greatly contributed with his work to Palmyrene studies. However, it is not meant just as a memorial volume, but as a research tool. It contains thirteen papers by scholars in the field of Palmyrene studies and Semitics focusing on different aspects of Palmyrene history, social history, art, archaeology and philology, with publication of newly discovered inscriptions. It offers a state-of-the-art discussion on several issues pertaining to the field of Palmyrene studies, and illustrates methodologies to be employed in order to increase our knowledge of the complex and multifaceted culture of ancient Palmyra and of neighbouring areas.

How can material artifacts help illuminate the religious lives of women in antiquity? In what ways do archaeological and art historical studies recover women’s religious perspectives and experiences that the literary record misses or underrepresents? The authors of the essays in this volume set out to answer such questions in fascinating, new case studies of women and ancient religions in the Near East and Mediterranean world. They cover a broad historical, geographic, and religious spectrum as they explore women’s lives from the time of ancient Egypt in the second millennium BCE into the early medieval period, from the Syrian Desert to Western Europe, in the religious traditions of Egypt, Canaan, Greece, Rome, ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity. Working at the intersections of religion, archaeology, art history, and women’s history, these authors make fresh contributions to interdisciplinary studies, and their essays will be of interest to students and scholars across these academic fields.