Palmyra and the East

SUMMARY The ancient caravan city of Palmyra, although located in the Syrian Desert, was very much a cultural locus, a place where peoples, goods, and ideas met and mingled from as far afield as Europe to the west and India and China to the east. It was a city that stood balanced between the power of the Roman Empire to one side, and the Parthian Empire to the other. Yet despite the city's location at a cultural crossroads, and its greater proximity to Parthia than Rome, scholars focusing on Palmyra have traditionally focused on links with the west, while relatively little attention has been paid to the threads that wove a connection between Palmyra and regions further to the east. This edited volume seeks to address this lacuna in scholarship by offering an in-depth exploration of Palmyra's connections with its eastern neighbours in the first three centuries ad. The papers gathered here examine the city's art, architecture, and material finds, its languages and inscriptions, its political interactions, social life, and religious identity from a time when Palmyra was at the height of its powers in order to shed light on the city's own distinctive identity, as well as its close - and often tense - relationships with Parthia and beyond. Together, these contributions offer fascinating new insights into Palmyra's dynamic relationships with the regions to its east, as well as on how these influences underpinned and were diffused throughout Palmyrene culture. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Introduction - Palmyra and the East: Reassessing an Oasis City and its Cultural Relations KENNETH LAPATIN and RUBINA RAJA Part I. Language, History, and Trade 1. Language as Power: Aramaic at (and East of ) Palmyra CATHERINE E. BONESHO. 2. Palmyra's Maritime Trade KATIA SCHÖRLE 3. From Palmyra to India: How the East Was Won JEAN-BAPTISTE YON 4. Palmyra and the Sasanians in the Third Century ad TOURAJ DARYAEE 5. Zenobia and the East NATHANAEL J. ANDRADE 6. The Fate of Palmyra and the East after ad 273: A Few Remarks on Trade, Economy, and Connectivity in Late Antiquity and the Early Islamic Period EMANUELE E. INTAGLIATA Part II. Art and Archaeology 7. Palmyrene Funerary Art between East and West: Reclining Women in Funerary Sculpture RUBINA RAJA 8. Ashurbanipal and the Reclining Banqueter in Palmyra MAURA K. HEYN 9. So-Called 'Servants' or 'Pages' in Palmyrene Funerary Sculpture FRED ALBERTSON 10. Notes on Some Palmyrene Religious Imagery TED KAIZER 11. A Palmyrene Child at Dura-Europos LISA R. BRODY 12. Edessa and the Sculpture of Greater North Mesopotamia in the Romano-Parthian Period MICHAEL BLÖMER Index Language english text