Mystery Of The Funerary Reliefs Of Palmyra (Tadmor) In The Desert Of Syria

Abstract

Throughout history, people were delighted to express their sense and availibities on various types of arts by using different materials. Art was also the way in which people could reveal their possesions in both materially and morally. The tower tomb reliefs of Palmyra reflect the wealth, power and the eclectic taste of people of the city although the area looks unnatural for these possesions. Extraordinary tower tombs with their unique architectural structure were mainly made of lime stone by looking austere from outside but quite surprisingly eclectically elegant with their marble and limestone reliefs inside. It can be derived from the reliefs that the religious art of Palmyra was woven out of many strands. In many superficial ways it is Greco-Roman but in detail and from pictorial subjects is ‘oriental’. The compositions of the family and the individual men and women on the reliefs with their dress, jewellery, ornaments and household utensils reflects overwhelmingly Parthian and Mesopotamian, Anatolian effects. The country of Syria is under political disorder nowadays and its cultural heritage is also endangered. The aim of this article (before any vanishment of these important cultural heritage), is to reveal how and to what extend the people of ancient Palmyra developed themselves in the middle of the Syrian desert and how much they reflected their own culture and wealth on the tower tomb reliefs of Palmyra.