Lady Hester Stanhope, a Monumental Arch, and Multiple Readings of a Triumph at Palmyra

Abstract

On 27 March 1813, Lady Hester Stanhope, the granddaughter of Lord Chatham, rode a black stallion into Palmyra, the famed ancient caravan city. She was the first Western woman ever to do so, and she was met by a welcoming party: tribal horsemen firing guns, cheering crowds, dancing girls in diaphanous costumes holding Dionysiac thyrsi, and bards singing her praises. The procession led down the long colonnaded avenue to the Monumental Arch, under which Hester was crowned as queen. A wondrous and frenzied desert pageant, the choreographed spectacle evoked memories of Roman triumphs with Dionysiac overtones. In Lady Hester Stanhope, a Monumental Arch, and Multiple Readings of a Triumph at Palmyra, Fikret Yegül examines the relationship between ancient Roman spectacles and the dynamic show put on by the Bedouin desert village of Tadmor in honor of an English lady who escaped her aristocratic privileges to embrace what to her appeared to be the enchanted life of an exotic culture. His essay explores how that special event linked the past to the present with its complex layers of significance concretized by an extraordinary arch and informed by the exuberant imagination of Lady Hester, as well as memories of Palmyra’s warrior queen, Zenobia, who challenged the Romans. Simultaneously, the juxtaposition of a Bedouin village with the famous arch reveals further contradictions and inconsistencies inherent in the re-created “triumph” and shines new light on recent violent efforts to obliterate the monument and the city.