Monday, 24 August 2015

Palmyra, Temple of Baal Shamin

Temple of Baal Shamin (Wood 1753)
It is being widely reported that the temple of Baal Shamin at Palmyra has been deliberately destroyed. The temple featured in Robert Wood's Temples of Palmyra, otherwise Tadmor, in the desert (London 1753). The ruins had been observed in 1751 (with James Dawkins).

The temple carries an inscription, dated to AD 130/31, in the wake of the visit of the emperor Hadrian to the city. The temple was initiated by Malé son of Yarhai.

Parts of the sanctuary are dated epigraphically to AD 23.

I was asked to comment for the BBC with live interviews this morning for BBC 24 and BBC World, and prerecorded interviews for BBC World Service and BBC1.

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1 comment:

Salvor said...

If ISIL is doing this under the banner of iconoclasm then why are they also selling looted artifacts? I remember when the Bamiyan Buddhas were demolished and the Taliban made a statement to the effect that if the world doesn't care about the plight of the Afhgan people they will care about this [the destruction of the Buddhas]. At the same time a Taliban member was found selling artifacts in Europe. It seems a pretty thin ideology when you can just toss your moral ideals in exchange for money.

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