JOIN USAt the receiving end of a cult’s onslaught, the World Heritage Site of Palmyra has been reduced to rubbles. But not all hope is lost. A ground reality by Michael Jansen
The road to Palmyra is strewn with permits, check points manned by smiling soldiers, and armed guards for journalists to visit the spectacular ancient site in war-torn Syria. The first relay of guards came in a yellow taxi, the second in a pick-up with a mounted machine gun, the third in an armoured pick-up with a machine gun.
Islamic State fighters are said to lurk in the desert waiting to kill or kidnap people travelling to the city, liberated from the cult after nearly a year of deadly and destructive occupation. When we reached a point 60 km from Palmyra, our protectors disappeared.
On the roadside near Palmyra lay a charcoaled corpse in boots, a reminder that the war has not finished. The modern city is battered, blasted and bashed; shops are gutted, their metallic shutters curled and crumpled; homes collapsed and looted. The city’s 7,50,000 residents and 2,50,000 refugees have long since fled. Soldiers have settled into undamaged houses. A few days after my visit the town’s inhabitants began to return and survey damage.
The ancient City of Palms, a Neolithic site that entered the history books 4,000 years ago, was a regional commercial hub, a transit point for Silk Road caravans travelling to and from India and China to West Asia and the Mediterranean. The merchants of Palmyra grew wealthy, its rulers powerful. After Palmyra became a part of the Roman Empire during the 1st century AD, rulers built massive monuments to celebrate victories and praise gods. Merchants constructed grand houses.
From 269-272 AD Palmyra’s beautiful, well-educated warrior Queen Zenobia, a descendant of Egypt’s Cleopatra, waged a war against Rome. She conquered large swathes of territory in Turkey as well as Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt. However, her rebel empire was short-lived, the Romans returned in 273 AD, defeated her army at Antioch, captured Zenobia, and took her to Rome where, it is said, she married a provincial governor and became a prominent philosopher.
Last May, Islamic State (called Daesh by the Arabs) swept down from its stronghold at Deir al-Zor, drove out Palmyra’s Syrian army defenders, and took possession.
During the following months, the cult brought down the splendid Bel Temple, dedicated in 32 AD to the god Baal; the smaller, older Bel Shamim Temple; the equally ancient Arch of Triumph; and the tower tombs on the edge of the site.
Daesh also executed Khaled al-Asaad, the 82-year-old archaeologist-guardian of Palmyra, by decapitating him and displaying his body, head placed between his feet, in the square that lies between the ravaged museum and the municipality.On March 27, the army, provided with air cover by Russia, expelled Daesh — which fled with families, hostages and slaves — and captured both the modern city and the sprawling archaeological site.
A lion silenced
One of Daesh’s first targets was the Lion of Lat, a 1st century BC statue of a lion gripping a crouching gazelle. The museum building, cleared of all but its largest and heaviest treasures two days before Daesh arrived, was holed by mortars. The floor of the entrance hall is littered with fallen wood, plaster and stones. Statues in an inaccessible side chamber have been beheaded.
Mohamed al-Asaad, son of the murdered guardian, said, “We are trying to close the holes in the roof and craters in the floor made by shells, and repair the building.” The younger Asaad, who has worked here for 26 years, managed to escape Daesh’s clutches.
For the time being, the guardian of the ancient city is the Russian army which has demined the entrance and the iconic buildings. A Russian captain told us we could safely visit the ruins, white in the mid-day sun. Shady Martk, a Syrian photographer loosed his small white drone armed with cameras to take photos of the ruins for the Department of Antiquities. The drone buzzed over Palmyra’s 1,300 columns, handsome amphitheatre, and ruins of the temples and arch.
The walls of the Bel Shamim temple lie on the ground, beside standing arches; the Arch of Triumph consists of two stumps and a huge pile of rubble. The amphitheatre — which used to host modern concerts and plays — remains whole. Soon after conquering the city and site, Daesh lined up 25 Syrian soldiers on the stage and ordered teenage recruits to shoot them.
The graffiti on the gate to the compound housing the Bel Temple warns “citizens and brothers (cult members) entry is forbidden.” The monument, which rivals Lebanon’s Baalbek, has been reduced to a single arch rising over a mound of whole and broken limestone blocks.
The colonnade of Straight Street, the main thoroughfare of Graeco-Roman Palmyra, stands tall. Small shelves high up on the columns were for statues of the city-state’s successful generals, with their names written on plaques below in Palmyrene and Greek.
“The statues were put so high so they could be seen by Zenobia and her retinue as they rode by on their camels,” stated Joseph Bashoura, a former tour guide who now guides journalists. From afar come the metallic reports of explosions as Russian sapper blew up mines and boobytraps left behind by Daesh.
Stripped of colour at noon, Palmyra glowed golden as the sun began to sink in the late afternoon. I strolled out of the ruins with Wael al-Hafian, chief engineer of the Homs branch of the Antiquities Department.
“It will take a month to clear the mines before we can begin the technical work (on the broken monuments). Palmyra was ruled for 1,400 years by Muslims who did not seek to destroy it. Only these (puritan) Wahhabis have tried. They want to take away our history, culture and identity so we will accept them,” he said.
Restoration plans
Back in Damascus, Syria’s Director of Antiquities, Maamoun Abdulkarim, was happy over the liberation of Palmyra from Daesh. Although he had not yet visited Palmyra due to concerns over his security, he had seen the drone’s photos. “All the stones are there, we can rebuild. We can reconstruct the two temples and the Triumphal Arch from materials in place on the sites,” he stated.
“We have photos of the state of the buildings before Daesh and after Daesh. We will respect the authenticity of the buildings and not add foreign material to the facade. The foundations of the Bel Temple and the Bel Shamim are solid, the stones are not broken. We can quarry stone from Palmyra if we need to.”
The same is true of the broken Triumphal Arch. He has architectural drawings of the two temples prepared by French archaeologists Robert Ami in the 1930s and Paul Collar from 1953-56. “We have a team of 30 persons — architects, archaeologists and engineers.”
His department is preparing plans for UNESCO and its partners and consulting international experts who can help raise funds. “I can promise you that we can finish the maximum of the work within 5 years. The monuments will not be the same as before Daesh. I hope the international community understands that the restoration of Palmyra is for the whole world, and the issue will not be politicised.”
He fears the embargo on the Syrian government could hinder the work. “Palmyra is our common heritage,” he said.