Download or read book Studies on Palmyrene Sculpture written by Olympia Bobou and published by . This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents the first English translation of Harald Ingholt's seminal work Studier over Palmyrensk Skulptur, together with a number of studies that contextualise this important volume in the light of current research. Almost a century after its publication in 1928, Ingholt's ground-breaking Danish-language monograph remains essential reading for all scholars of Palmyrene archaeology and iconography, setting out observations on the typology and style of securely dated Palmyrene portraits, and establishing a stylistic and chronological sequence that remains in use today. Included alongside the translation of Ingholt's writings are contributions by leading scholars in the field who seek to introduce Harald Ingholt and explore the impact of his work in Palmyra, as well as presenting a survey of all the portraits from Palmyra that can be securely dated by inscription. The translation and commentary have been realized as part of the Palmyra Portrait Project, directed by Prof. Rubina Raja.
Download or read book Individualizing the Dead written by Maura Heyn and published by . This book was released on 2021-05 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Journey to Palmyra written by Delbert R. Hillers and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2005 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.
Download or read book The Ingholt Archive written by and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Remarks on the Architecture Sculpture and Zodiac of Palmyra written by Bartholomew Prescot and published by . This book was released on 1830 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Carvers and Customers in Roman Palmyra written by Julia Steding and published by 3repols Publishers. This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Palmyra, located in the Syrian desert, is famous for the portraiture of its citizens, produced when the ancient city was at the height of its powers in the Roman era. At this time, several hundred funerary monuments were built and the Palmyrenes decorated their tombs with numerous portraits. The most common of these are the loculus reliefs that depicted Palmyra's men, women, and children, and were used to close off the niches in tombs behind which the dead were buried. Between AD 50 and AD 273, these stone slabs were produced in sufficient numbers to make Palmyra home to the largest corpus of funerary portraits outside Rome itself. This volume offers a fresh and nuanced analysis of Palmyrene funerary reliefs and their production in order to shed light not just on the people they depicted, but on the individuals responsible for their creation. Across a range of different case studies, the author explores the making of single portraits from the local limestone, examining how Palmyrene carvers worked, the techniques they used, the tools they employed, the ways in which style and technique changed over time, and the mode of production that was in place. Furthermore, the workshops' organization, the interaction between carvers and customers, and their influence on the portraits are explored. In doing so, the volume offers not just a detailed study of limestone carving and the techniques that underpinned Palmyra's famous portraits, but also offers a significant contribution to wider research on funerary portraiture of the city and in Roman Syria.
Download or read book The Art of Palmyra written by Malcolm A. R. Colledge and published by Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press. This book was released on 1976 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pearl of the Desert written by Rubina Raja and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Palmyra has long attracted the attention of the world. Well before its rediscovery in the seventeenth century, the ancient city gained legendary status because of its Queen Zenobia, who in the third century CE rebelled against Rome and expanded Palmyra's territory into what is now modern Turkey and Egypt. Even though Zenobia's empire was a fairly short interlude and the Romans struck back hard, devastating the city, her path to imperial power was one which tells us much about Palmyrene identity in the period before the defeat. While Zenobia has gained renewed interest among both scholars and the press, and while she has served as a political symbol for Syria's president Assad--a statue of her was recently erected in Damascus--the time leading up to her reign still remains underexplored. Pearl of the Desert is the most comprehensive history of this fabled ancient city in English. Assimilating the rich archaeological and literary evidence, Rubina Raja unfolds the story chronologically, from the earliest evidence of settlement in the Bronze Age to Palmyra's rise as an urban center in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, its destruction by Rome in 273 CE, and its survival in the Byzantine and medieval Islamic periods. The book ends with a discussion of Palmyra's modern rediscovery and, more recently, its chaotic misfortunes during the Syrian civil war when it was used as a symbol of, alternately, the resistance of the rebels, the power of ISIS, and the supremacy of the Syrian state. After several years of destruction and looting, securing of the site has begun as well as planning for its restoration. At this turning point in Palmyra's long history, there is no better time to assess the past, present, and future of this remarkable city.
Download or read book Palmyra written by Paul Veyne and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-10-05 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Located northeast of Damascus, in an oasis surrounded by palms and two mountain ranges, the ancient city of Palmyra has the aura of myth. According to the Bible, the city was built by Solomon. Regardless of its actual origins, it was an influential city, serving for centuries as a caravan stop for those crossing the Syrian Desert. It became a Roman province under Tiberius and served as the most powerful commercial center in the Middle East between the first and the third centuries CE. But when the citizens of Palmyra tried to break away from Rome, they were defeated, marking the end of the city’s prosperity. The magnificent monuments from that earlier era of wealth, a resplendent blend of Greco-Roman architecture and local influences, stretched over miles and were among the most significant buildings of the ancient world—until the arrival of ISIS. In 2015, ISIS fought to gain control of the area because it was home to a prison where many members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood had been held, and ISIS went on to systematically destroy the city and murder many of its inhabitants, including the archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, the antiquities director of Palymra. In this concise and elegiac book, Paul Veyne, one of Palymra’s most important experts, offers a beautiful and moving look at the history of this significant lost city and why it was—and still is—important. Today, we can appreciate the majesty of Palmyra only through its pictures and stories, and this book offers a beautifully illustrated memorial that also serves as a lasting guide to a cultural treasure.
Download or read book Palmyrene Sarcophagi written by Olympia Bobou and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the funerary portraiture of Palmyra is rightly world-renowned, up to now, the corpus of sarcophagi from the ancient city has received relatively little attention as a cohesive group in their own right. Comprising sarcophagi, banqueting reliefs and founder reliefs, as well as sarcophagus reliefs, most of these objects share a common iconographic motif, that of the banquet, although other scenes, mostly drawn from the daily life of the city?s caravan leaders and their families, also appear. The emphasis on the banqueting scene in particular reveals the crucial importance of dining in ancient Palmyrene society: for the living, banquets were a marker of social standing and gave hosts a chance to honour the gods and offer an ephemeral benefaction to their fellow citizens, while for the dead, the banquet motif offered the opportunity for the entire family to be depicted together and showcase their wealth and sophistication, as well as their connections outside the city.00This single corpus of material gathered through the Palmyra Portrait Project, is presented in this beautifully illustrated two-volume monograph. Through careful analysis of the portraits, and the costumes and attribute choices that appear in these images, the authors explore how the sarcophagi were used by Palmyrenes to project an image of local pride, while at the same time participating in the visual cultures of the Roman and Parthian Empires between which their city was situated
Download or read book Funerary Representations of Palmyrene Women written by Signe Krag and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Odds and Ends written by Maura Heyn and published by . This book was released on 2023-07-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The funerary art that was produced in Roman Palmyra, a caravan city in the Syrian steppe desert, is rightly world-renowned. The frontal depictions of the deceased, featured in torso-length portraits, and the large-scale banqueting scenes are iconic, and lent an added mystique by the absence of any literary sources that might aid in their interpretation. But while from a distance these exquisite portraits might seem rather formulaic, when examining more closely, it is clear that these scenes reveal a surprisingly rich and varied funerary decor. Alongside the more popular iconographic choices are singular scenes, motifs, and elements that deviate from the norm, while new patterns and connections between Palmyra and its surroundings are identifiable. This volume, which draws on the vast materials gathered under the auspices of the Palmyra Portrait Project directed by Professor Rubina Raja, explores the 'oddities' raised by the Palmyrene corpus; it examines one-off scenes or elements, and unusual or unparalleled iconographical choices, and questions how and why such unusual choices should be interpreted. The chapters gathered here not only focus on these visual 'hapax legomena' in Palmyra, but also explore the city's connections with the art of Roman centres to the west, as well as the nearby Hellenistic city states, regional centres of production, and Parthian and Persian sites to the east. Through this approach, the authors engage with the visual richness and sheer amount of choice that existed in Palmyrene funerary art, while also providing unique insights into the knowledge culture that existed within Palmyrene society.
Download or read book The Religious Life of Palmyra written by Ted Kaizer and published by School-Age Notes. This book was released on 2002 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The World of Palmyra written by Andreas Jacob Marwan Kropp and published by Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. This book was released on 2016 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an edited volume consisting of 16 articles by the leading scholars working on Palmyra, many of whom have conducted field work in the city before the time of the Civil War.
Download or read book Positions and Professions in Palmyra written by Tracey Long and published by Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. This book was released on 2017 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Palmyra in the Syrian Desert has in the last years come to the attention of the world due to the destructions caused by the Civil War. Right before the conflict broke out the Palmyra Portrait Project funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and headed by Rubina Raja was initiated. The anthology, Positions and Professions in Palmyra, is one of the results emerging from the project. The contributions are written by leading scholars, who focus on Palmyra, portraiture in the Roman Empire, art and writing in Palmyra and the cultures of the Near East in general. Issues of how status and professions were communicated through self-representation stand at the center of the volume. Through the contributions it becomes clear that there was a dichotomy between the funerary sphere and the public sphere. In the funerary sphere the family alone took center stage, whereas the public sphere was a space for civic status to be communicated. These differences inform us about the choices made by the Palmyrenes according to the meaning of the spaces in which self-representations were displayed. The Palmyrenes were world citizens, who saw themselves as central players within the broader imperial context. This book gives the basis for assessing some of the mechanisms at play within Palmyrene society, both in family contexts as well as broader societal contexts.
Download or read book The Small Stuff of the Palmyrenes written by Rubina Raja and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient city of Palmyra is, rightly, famous for its major monumental architecture and its vast corpus of funerary portraiture, most of which dates from the first three centuries ad. This material has long been central to art-historical, archaeological, and epigraphical studies of the region. However, up to now, relatively little attention has been paid to the 'small stuff' from Palmyra - seemingly minor items such as the enigmatic local coinage and the richly iconographic banqueting tesserae found scattered across the city's sanctuaries - which has never been comprehensively studied, but may have had huge importance for the people who lived in Roman Palmyra. This volume, which arises from the research project Circular Economy and Urban Sustainability in Antiquity headed by Prof. Rubina Raja, aims to redress the balance by giving new focus to these small finds with a view to studying them and better understanding their significance in Palmyrene social and religious life. Drawing together experts on Palmyra's archaeology, history, and language, the volume offers insights and reflections into various aspects of the city's coins and tesserae in both their local setting and their wider regional context. In doing so, the contributions gathered here open up new lines of enquiry, and at the same time underline how much we still have to learn from studying even the smallest items.
Download or read book Revisiting the Religious Life of Palmyra written by Rubina Raja and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
