Comments on: Photographs of Palmyra

Photographs of Palmyra

Rumple — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:17:05 -0800

Photographs and more photographs of the ancient city of Palmyra, seat of the Palmyrene Empire and home to Queen Zenobia.

By: pointystick

pointystick — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:18:50 -0800

These are beautiful! Thanks, Rumple!

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:35:15 -0800

Nice! BTW, the History of Rome podcast that was on Mefi a while back is great stuff, and covers Zenobia baout, oh, somewhere between 100 and 500 hours in. :-)

By: rebent

rebent — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:41:45 -0800

Yes, I also learned about Palmyra and Queen Zenobia from Mike Duncan. Man that was one crazy queen, what did she think she was doing butting heads with the roman empire?

By: jquinby

jquinby — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:43:32 -0800

Beautiful stuff, thanks for posting this (and how in the hell did I that awesome post back in July??)

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:56:58 -0800

If there was a post of the year competition that one would get my vote.

By: The 10th Regiment of Foot

The 10th Regiment of Foot — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:00:41 -0800

When I visited Palmyra it was the first time I'd ever ridden a camel. I rode down the grand collonade from the oasis at the new city, through the valley of the monuments and up to the Mamluk citadel. It was 130 degrees (no fooling) in the sun so the camel drovers placed me in a keffiyeh, after a long argument, the drovers decided which tribal style turban I would have my keffiyeh tied. When we stopped at one of the tower tombs, I rolled a rather large stone near the entryway with my foot and its shadow erupted with scarab beetles. Such a neat place, such a neat country, such a sad state of affairs!

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:21:50 -0800

I've been there too. To cast a tiny downer, it's disappointing that a fair proportion of the ruins are actually modern concrete reconstructions, poorly daubed with that "wash effect" paint to make them look marbled.

By: Artw

Artw — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:22:10 -0800

Thanks to The History of Rome I now know that Celopatra, who was pretty much the template for Zenobia, was in fact Greek. Possibly this is a hole in my education but her not being Egyptian was news to me.

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 11:38:00 -0800

Yeah, Alexander conquered Egypt in 332BC and installed the Ptolemaic dynasty, who were a bunch of Greeks who ruled until 30AD, apparently refusing to learn or speak Egyptian, with Cleopatra as the sole exception who bothered to learn the local language. Their capital was, unsurprisingly, Alexandria, and the Greek influence there was why it attracted so many great scholars & established itself as an intellectual powerhouse of the ancient world, including such leading lights as Euclid, Ptolemy (the astronomer, unrelated to the dynasty) and Eratosthenes.

By: kcds

kcds — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:05:29 -0800

Saskatoon is in the room Poulsbo is in the room Bennettsville is in the room Palmyra is in the room

By: Slithy_Tove

Slithy_Tove — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:40:31 -0800

You, Andrew Marvell And here face down beneath the sun And here upon earth's noonward height To feel the always coming on The always rising of the night: To feel creep up the curving east The earthy chill of dusk and slow Upon those under lands the vast And ever climbing shadow grow And strange at Ecbatan the trees Take leaf by leaf the evening strange The flooding dark about their knees The mountains over Persia change And now at Kermanshah the gate Dark empty and the withered grass And through the twilight now the late Few travelers in the westward pass And Baghdad darken and the bridge Across the silent river gone And through Arabia the edge Of evening widen and steal on And deepen on Palmyra's street The wheel rut in the ruined stone And Lebanon fade out and Crete high through the clouds and overblown And over Sicily the air Still flashing with the landward gulls And loom and slowly disappear The sails above the shadowy hulls And Spain go under and the shore Of Africa the gilded sand And evening vanish and no more The low pale light across that land Nor now the long light on the sea: And here face downward in the sun To feel how swift how secretly The shadow of the night comes on . . . -- Archibald MacLeish emphasis mine

By: UbuRoivas

UbuRoivas — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:38:14 -0800

On the subject of poetry, people often remark that there's something so very Ozymandian about the ruins there in the sand, and as it turns out, a poet called Thomas Love Peacock wrote a poem about, and named, Palmyra. He was a close friend of P.B. Shelley (and even became his literary executor after the latter's death) so there's an argument that Ozymandias was a response to the poem, Palmyra*. * Mary A. Quinn, "'Ozymandias' as Shelley's Rejoinder to Peacock's 'Palmyra.'" English Language Notes 24 (1984): 48-56.

By: MykReeve

MykReeve — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:39:28 -0800

I visited Palmyra back in 2008. It was an amazing place, and one of many astonishing highlights of Syria. I've put up a handful of photos on flickr: Palmyra. Just as impressive were the ruins at Apamea and the ghost city of Resafa.