Det er anden gang i historien, denne unikke oaseby midt i den syriske ørken er blevet ødelagt. Første gang var det romerne, der hærgede byen efter at have nedkæmpet den berømte dronning Zenobia, som i sin ganske korte regeringstid (ca. 267-272) gjorde oprør mod det romerske overherredømme og erobrede Ægypten og store dele af Lilleasien. Hun er blevet en legende, som skildres i en af artiklerne i den nyudkomne antologi. Den indeholder i alt 16 artikler af verdens førende Palmyra-forskere, som her øser af deres viden om byen, dens arkæologi og dens historie. Set i lyset af den sidste tids udvikling er det en uvurderlig bog, der bidrager til forståelsen af Palmyras antikke kultur.

ENGELSK SALGSTEKST: 

The World of Palmyra is an edited volume consisting of 16 articles by the leading scholars working on Palmyra, many of whom have conducted field work in the city before the time of the Civil War. The volume therefore presents us with state of the art research and insight into the archaeology and history of a Palmyra, which does not exist anymore, but which even more so should be remembered and communicated to the broader scholarly and public communities interested in learning more about this fascinating site, also called the Pearl of the Desert.

The articles of The World of Palmyra stem from a conference held at the Royal Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen. The conference was held under the auspices of the Palmyra Portrait Project headed by Rubina Raja, Professor of Classical Archaeology, Aarhus University. The Palmyra Portrait Project has since 2012 collected and analyzed the largest corpus of portraits from the Roman period. The corpus holds more than 3,000 portraits. These stem from the tombs in Palmyra and belong to the period from 1st to the 3rd century CE, when Palmyra was sacked by the Roman due to the upraise headed by the legendary Queen Zenobia. The Palmyra Portrait Project has among other things been featured in BBC's radioprogramme “Museum of Lost Objects”.