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Palmyra03/26/2005
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| This Friday we travelled by bus to the eastern Syrian desert...whereas the route N. from Damascus is thru hilly country, often quite green with pines & juniper, orchards & pasture, the trip east goes thru/into barren desert, flat and without any real visable life until approaching Palmyra - as with Petra in Jordan, this is purported to be the one thing to see in Syria, an ancient oasis in the middle of nowhere. Ruins of the 2nd century AD city cover a huge area...at one time a Greek outpost it was an Assyrian caravan town for 1000 yrs...enjoying Greek glory for only 200 yrs before being annexed by Rome in 217 AD and becoming a center of unsurpassed wealth. Zenobia was its most famous ruler(half Arab, half Greek) from 267 AD after the suspicious death of her husband Odenathus. She claimed to be a descendant of Cleopatra setting her sights on Rome...altho her troops were soundly defeated in 271 by forces of Aurelian, the beginning of the end of Palmyra, falling to Muslims in 634 and then completely destroyed in an earthquake in 1089. Rediscoveded in 1678 by English merchants in Aleppo. |
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