Palmyra: the modern destruction of an ancient city


Terrorists overran Palmyra twice despite international cries for protection, sowing irreversible destruction.

 

A conversation between Dr. Salam Al Kuntar and Dr. Steven Zucker about the ancient city of Palmyra while looking at six funerary reliefs, c. 150-200 C.E., varying dimensions, limestone (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). An ARCHES video.


[0:00] [music]

Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:05] We’re on the second floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, looking at tomb portraits that come from the ancient city of Palmyra, in what is now Syria. This city, which is on the edge of the desert, is an oasis, and was this point in the caravan route between the Roman Empire and Asia.

[0:25] They controlled this critical link in what we call the Silk [Roads] that linked the Mediterranean region with Central Asia as far as China. Palmyra in 2015 and 2017 was overrun by ISIS.

Dr. Salaam al-Kuntar: [0:41] ISIS had to mobilize whatever resources they had. These were resources they could use to draw media attention. That was a unique opportunity at Palmyra because for them, the whole event is the video. ISIS marched to the site over five days. And the US military and its allies were holding major operations in Syria against ISIS at the time.

[1:05] Many American archaeologists and international archaeologists appeal[ed] to the protection of the site of Palmyra because they saw that ISIS was marching there, but there was no response whatsoever. So there was no intention of protecting the site.

[1:19] It is shameful that in the 21st century, with all the appreciation of cultural heritage and art, it still happened to a World Heritage site. Then we start asking ourselves, what is the meaning of a World Heritage site if that site cannot be protected?

Dr. Zucker: [1:36] In a sense, there was a double failure. On the one hand, we allowed ISIS to take the city hostage, to use it for its own propaganda purposes, but in a more permanent sense, the monuments of Palmyra suffered irreparable harm. This was an event that possibly could have been stopped if the US Army, if the Assad regime, had tried to turn ISIS’s path away from this treasured archaeological site.

Dr. al-Kuntar: [1:59] These wars in the Middle East that show you how even in the 21st century we have little appreciation of culture. Culture comes at the bottom of priorities of all governments.

Dr. Zucker: [2:10] But it is this heritage that makes up people’s identity, their sense of self, and so I can’t imagine something more important in the long run.

Dr. al-Kuntar: [2:20] People underestimate how much damage to cultural heritage affects people and their identity and self-awareness. If you think about the trauma that people go through, it’s not only the very personal story of killing and torture and forced migration but it’s also the destruction of the beloved places, the loss of the homeland with all this cultural heritage, that [which] makes a homeland a homeland.

Dr. Zucker: [2:47] We’re looking at six relief carvings that originally functioned as closing stones for tombs that were placed within towers just on the outside of the city of Palmyra. These six are of many thousands that existed and that have been collected since the 18th century. ISIS didn’t just destroy objects, they also looted and raised money through their illicit sale.

Dr. al-Kuntar: [3:10] There were looters who already went in to take advantage of the instability and lack of security. What ISIS did is regulate the looting and considered antiquities as resources like oil.

[3:26] They said, “OK, whatever that is not a figurative artifact, you can sell it and we will tax you.” But of course, the looters are finding these busts and figurines. So they would hide those from ISIS and then sell them off-market. It was a very ad hoc situation.

Dr. Zucker: [3:44] The tower tombs met a tragic fate under ISIS in 2015. They targeted the most intact and the largest of the tombs, destroying seven of them.

Dr. al-Kuntar: [3:53] They did blow them up. They did them one by one. Some of them, they publicized it. Others, we found out through satellite imagery.

Dr. Zucker: [4:01] The event that upset the archaeological community most deeply was the murder of the longtime director of antiquities of the site, a man who had given his life to understanding and protecting the antiquities of Palmyra.

Dr. al-Kuntar: [4:10] Khalid al-Assad, he’s a Syrian archaeologist from Palmyra. He studied Palmyra very deeply. No one knows Palmyra the way he knows. He knows every stone. He refused to leave, even though the threats of ISIS coming. He was executed in a horrific way.

Dr. Zucker: [4:32] This crisis has not ended. But as we begin to look towards the future, the archaeological community, the community concerned with historical preservation, and of course most centrally the Syrian people themselves, need to start grappling with how do we retrieve ancient history while respecting the loss of life that has happened recently.

Dr. al-Kuntar: [4:58] We need to look back and document even the destruction event itself. It’s not an easy process. International organizations and UNESCO should not take decisions on behalf of the people of Palmyra who are still refugees.

[5:19] We want to learn from the Syrian civil war and the destruction. How are we going to tell the ancient story and the destruction story? Any visitors to the site in the future, they need to see it. The same way as lots of the atrocities of Nazi Germany, it is still there to see and learn from.

[5:56] We need to carefully think about how we’re going to tell the story of this modern event, not only go back and erase any traces of destruction and build the site back like nothing happened. This is important for people to know and learn from.

[6:02] [music]

Cite this page as: Dr. Salam Al Kuntar and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Palmyra: the modern destruction of an ancient city," in Smarthistory, January 5, 2018, accessed March 19, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/palmyra-destruction-2/.