The oasis city of Palmyra in the Syrian Desert has long been the focus of scholarly attention, both as a major cultural locus at the heart of the ancient world, active in trade and politics, and as an important local centre of religion, attested through the archaeology and historical sources related to the site. In this volume, which is the outcome of a conference organized within the framework of the Palmyra Portrait Project, the latest research from scholars working on Palmyra is drawn together to offer new insights into both the city's religious life and its wider implications for our understanding of religious life in the Near East in general in the first three centuries CE. Incorporating analyses and discussions of archaeological, epigraphic, and literary sources that shed light on Palmyrene religion, the contributions gathered here reassess and discuss the beliefs and practices that were followed in the city, assess the different cults that existed, and present new insights into the development and function of the city's religious communities and spaces. Together, these chapters provide a vital update to our understanding of how people lived and worshipped in this city, which remains crucial to the broader understanding of the role of religion and religious practices in urban contexts in antiquity.

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.

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.

Discover a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary handbook exploring several sub-regions and key themes perfect for a new generation of students A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East delivers the first complete handbook in the area of Hellenistic and Roman Near Eastern history. The book is divided into sections dealing with interdisciplinary source material, each with a great deal of regional variety and engaging with several key themes. It integrates discussions of the classical Near East with the typical undergraduate teaching syllabus in the Anglo-Saxon world. All contributors in this edited volume are leading scholars in their field, with a combination of established researchers and academics, and emerging voices. Contributors hail from countries across several continents, and work in various disciplines, including Ancient History, Archaeology, Art History, Epigraphy, Numismatics, and Oriental Studies. In addition to furthering the integration of the Levantine lands in the classical periods into the teaching canon, the book offers readers: The first comprehensively structured Companion and edited handbook on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East Extensive regional and sub-regional variety in the cross-disciplinary source material A way to compensate for the recent destruction of monuments in the region and the new generation of researchers’ inability to examine these historical stages in person An integration of the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East with traditional undergraduate teaching syllabi in the Anglo-Saxon world Perfect for undergraduate history and classics students studying the Near East, A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East will also earn a place in the libraries of graduate students and scholars working within Near Eastern studies, as well as interested members of the public with a passion for history.

The Lived Ancient Religion project has radically changed perspectives on ancient religions and their supposedly personal or public character. This volume applies and further develops these methodological tools, new perspectives and new questions. The religious transformations of the Roman Imperial period appear in new light and more nuances by comparative confrontation and the integration of many disciplines. The contributions are written by specialists from a variety of disciplinary contexts (Jewish Studies, Theology, Classics, Early Christian Studies) dealing with the history of religion of the Mediterranean, West-Asian, and European area from the (late) Hellenistic period to the (early) Middle Ages and shaped by their intensive exchange. From the point of view of their respective fields of research, the contributors engage with discourses on agency, embodiment, appropriation and experience. They present innovative research in four fields also of theoretical debate, which are “Experiencing the Religious”, “Switching the Code”, „A Thing Called Body“ and “Commemorating the Moment”.

A fresh look at how Christianity and Judaism became two distinct religions through the parting of their intellectual traditions How, when, and why did Christianity and Judaism diverge into separate religions? Emanuel Fiano reinterprets the parting of the ways between Jews and Christians as a split between two intellectual traditions, a split that emerged within the context of ancient debates about Jesus’s relationship to God and the world. Fiano explores how Christianity moved away from Judaism through the development of new practices for religious inquiry. By demonstrating that the constitution of communal borders coincided with the elaboration of different methods for producing religious knowledge, the author shows that Christian theological controversies, often thought to teach us nothing beyond the history of dogma, can cast light on the broader religious landscape of late antiquity. Three Powers in Heaven thus marks not only a historical but also a methodological intervention in the study of the parting of the ways and in scholarship on ancient religion.

The Roman city of Palmyra had an outward appearance that was conventionally hellenised, but many aspects of social and religious life were influenced by a number of different cultures and both Greek and local Aramaic languages coexisted. This study which is a revised version of Kaizer's doctoral thesis, studies the religious life and ritual activities of Palmyra under the Romans. Discussing epigraphic, sculptural and architectural evidence from temples, he reveals that, apart from the Imperial cult, direct Roman influence on religious life is largely absent.

Divine Names are a key component in the communication between humans and gods in Antiquity. Their complexity derives not only from the impressive number of onomastic elements available to describe and target specific divine powers, but also from their capacity to be combined within distinctive configurations of gods. The volume collects 36 essays pertaining to many different contexts - Egypt, Anatolia, Levant, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome - which address the multiple functions and wide scope of divine onomastics. Scrutinized in a diachronic and comparative perspective, divine names shed light on how polytheisms and monotheisms work as complex systems of divine and human agents embedded in an historical framework. Names imply knowledge and play a decisive role in rituals; they move between cities and regions, and can be translated; they interact with images and reflect the intrinsic plurality of divine beings. This vivid exploration of divine names pays attention to the balance between tradition and innovation, flexibility and constraints, to the material and conceptual parameters of onomastic practices, to cross-cultural contexts and local idiosyncrasies, in a word to human strategies for shaping the gods through their names.

Les 203 dédicaces votives en araméen de Palmyre de la période entre IIe et IIIe siècle de n.è. intriguent par 3 dénominations divines : « Béni (soit) son nom pour l’éternité », « Maître de l’Univers » et « le Miséricordieux ». Des études précédentes ont postulé univoquement l’anonymat divin. En étant déçu par cette explication du phénomène des inscriptions palmyréniennes, le livre Des dédicaces sans théonyme de Palmyre : Béni (soit) son nom pour l’éternité a pris pour le point de départ les concepts de remerciement et de louange, en découvrant l’existence d’un hymne rituel comme origine de la formule « Béni (soit) son nom pour l’éternité ». Qui sont donc des dieux, des récepteurs des dédicaces de Palmyre ? Peut-on combiner un nom propre d’un dieu avec ces trois formules ? Ce livre répond à ces questions flagrantes. 203 Palmyrene-Aramaic votive inscriptions from the period between the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE contain three intriguing designations of the gods: “Blessed (be) his name forever”, “Master of the Universe” and “the Merciful”. Previous studies have claimed that the god to whom these inscriptions are addressed is anonymous. Not satisfied with this explanation, Des dédicaces sans théonyme de Palmyre: Béni (soit) son nom pour l’éternité addresses the phenomenon through the lens of thanksgiving and praise, revealing the existence of a contemporary ritual hymn, the origin of the Palmyrene formula “Blessed his name forever”. Who, then, were these gods, the recipients of the dedications? Can we find a match between the formulae and a proper name? This book provides answers to these fascinating questions.

The volume explores linguistic practices and choices in the late antique Eastern Mediterranean. It investigates how linguistic diversity and change influenced the social dimension of human interaction, affected group dynamics, the expression and negotiation of various communal identities, such as professional groups of mosaic-makers, stonecutters, or their supervisors in North Syria, bilingual monastic communities in Palestine, elusive producers of Coptic ritual texts in Egypt, or Jewish communities in Dura Europos and Palmyra. The key question is: what do we learn about social groups and human individuals by studying their multilingualism and language practices reflected in epigraphic and other written sources?